Miss Sophia sighed and laid Penn down on the stone, quickly popping back up to lock the front door they'd just come through. Luce fell to her knees in front of Penn. Her friend looked so small and fragile. In the dim light coming from the delicate wrought iron chandelier overhead, Luce could at last see how badly she'd been injured.
Penn was the only friend Luce had at Sword & Cross she could really relate to, the only one she wasn't intimidated by. After Luce had seen what Arriane and Gabbe and Cam were capable of, few things made sense. But one did: Penn was the only kid at Sword & Cross like her.
Except Penn was stronger than Luce. Smarter and happier and more easygoing. She was the reason Luce had made it through these first few weeks of reform school at all. Without Penn, who knew where Luce would be?
"Oh, Penn." Luce sighed. "You're going to be okay. We're going to get you all fixed up."
Penn murmured something incomprehensible, which made Luce nervous. Luce turned back to Miss Sophia, who was closing all the windows in the foyer one by one.
"She's fading fast," Luce said. "We need to call a doctor."
"Yes, yes," Miss Sophia said, but something in her tone sounded preoccupied. She seemed consumed with closing up the building, as if the shadows from the cemetery were on their way here right now.
"Luce?" Penn whispered. "I'm scared."
"Don't be." Luce squeezed her hand. "You're so brave. This whole time you've been such a pillar of strength."
"Give me a break," Miss Sophia said from behind her, in a rough voice Luce had never heard her use. "She's a pillar of salt."
"What?" Luce asked, confused. "What does that mean?"
Miss Sophia's beady eyes had narrowed into thin black slits. Her face pinched into wrinkles and she bitterly shook her head. Then, very slowly, from the sleeve of her cardigan, she produced a long silver dagger. "The girl is only slowing us down."
Luce's eyes widened as she watched Miss Sophia raise the dagger over her head. Dazed, Penn didn't register what was happening, but Luce certainly did.
"No!" she screamed, reaching up to stop Miss Sophia's arm, to turn away the dagger. But Miss Sophia knew what she was doing and deftly blocked Luce's arm, pushing her aside with her free hand while she dragged the blade across Penn's throat.
Penn grunted and coughed, her breath turning ragged. Her eyes rolled backward in their sockets the way they did when she was thinking. Except she wasn't thinking, she was dying. At last her eyes met Luce's. Then they slowly dulled and Penn's breathing quieted.
"Messy but necessary," Miss Sophia said, wiping the blade clean on Penn's black sweater.
CHAPTER 19. OUT OF SIGHT
At the top of the stairs was a flat brick wall. Dead ends of any kind had always made Luce claustrophobic, and this one was even worse because of the knife poised at her throat. She dared a glance back at the steep flight they'd climbed. From here, it looked like a very long and painful fall.
Miss Sophia was speaking in tongues again, muttering under her breath as she skillfully eased open another hidden door. She shoved Luce into a tiny chapel and locked the door behind them. It was freezing inside and smelled overwhelmingly of chalky dust. Luce struggled to breathe, to swallow the bilious saliva in her mouth.
Penn could not be dead. That whole thing could not just have happened. Miss Sophia could not be that evil.
Daniel had said to trust Miss Sophia. He'd said to go with her until he could come for Luce…
Miss Sophia paid Luce no attention, merely made her way around the room, lighting candle after candle, genuflecting at each one, and continuing to chant in a language Luce didn't know. The twinkling votives revealed that the chapel was clean and well maintained, which meant it must not have been too long since someone else had been up there. But surely Miss Sophia was the only one on campus who would have a key to the hidden door? Who else would even know this place existed?
The red tile ceiling was sloping and uneven. Broad, faded tapestries cloaked the walls, depicting images of creepy half-man, half-fish creatures battling on a roiling sea. There was a small white altar up at the front, and a few rows of simple wooden pews ranked along the gray stone floor. Luce looked around frantically for an exit, but there were no other doors and no windows.
Luce's legs were shaking with fury and fear. She was in agony over Penn, betrayed and lying alone at the foot of the stairs.
"Why are you doing this?" she asked, backing up against the arched chapel doors. "I trusted you."
"That's your own fault, dear," Miss Sophia said, roughly twisting Luce's arm. Then the dagger was back at her neck and she was being marched up the chapel's aisle. "Trust is a careless pursuit at best. At worst, it's a good way to get yourself killed."
Miss Sophia pushed Luce toward the altar. "Now be a dear and lie down, would you?"
Because the knife was still too close to her throat, Luce did as she was told. She felt a spot of coolness on her neck and reached up to touch it. When she took her fingers away, the tips were red with dots of blood where the knife had pricked her. Miss Sophia slapped her hand down.
"You think that's bad, you should see what you're missing outside," she said, making Luce shudder. Daniel was outside.
The altar was a square white platform, a single slab of stone no bigger than Luce herself. She felt cold and desperately exposed atop it, imagining the pews filled up with shadowy churchgoers waiting for her torture to take place.
Looking straight up, she saw that there was a window in this cavernous chapel, a large stained-glass rosette like a skylight in the ceiling. It had a complicated geometric floral pattern, with red and purple roses against a navy-blue background. It would have been a whole lot prettier to Luce if it had offered a view of the outside.
"Let's see, where did I… ah yes!" Miss Sophia reached below the altar and returned with a thick length of rope. "Don't wiggle, now," she said, waving the knife in Luce's direction. Then she set about securing Luce to four holes drilled into the altar's surface. First each ankle, then each wrist. Luce tried not to writhe as she was tied down like some sort of sacrifice. "Perfect," Miss Sophia said, giving her intricate knots a firm tug.
"You planned all this," Luce realized, aghast.
Miss Sophia grinned as sweetly as she had the very first day Luce had stumbled into the library. "I would say it's nothing personal, Lucinda, but actually, it is," she cackled. "I've been waiting a long time for this moment alone with you."
"Why?" Luce asked. "What do you want from me?"
"You, I just want eliminated," Miss Sophia said. "It's Daniel I want freed up."
She left Luce on the altar and moved to a lectern near Luce's feet. She hoisted the Grigori book onto the lectern and began rapidly flipping through the pages. Luce thought back to the moment she'd opened it and seen her face next to Daniel's for the first time. How it had finally hit her that he was an angel. She'd known next to nothing then, and yet she'd felt certain that the photograph meant she and Daniel could be together.
Now that felt impossible.
"You're just sitting there swooning over him, aren't you?" Miss Sophia asked. She smacked the book closed and banged her fist on its cover. "This is precisely the problem."
"What's wrong with you?" Luce strained against the ropes binding her to the altar. "What do you care about what Daniel and I feel for each other, or who either one of us dates in the first place?" This psycho had nothing to do with them.
"I should like to have a word with whoever thought putting the fate of all of our eternal souls in the hands of one lovesick pair of infants was so brilliant an idea." She raised a shaking fist high in the air. "They want the balance to be tipped? I'll show them tipping the balance." The point of her dagger gleamed in the candlelight.