“You let them do that?”
“I’m not anyone’s keeper, brother.”
“Don’t call me that,” Daniel snapped. “I can’t believe this. How could they? This is my responsibility—”
“Free will.” Cam shrugged. “It’s all the rage these days.”
Daniel’s wings burned against his back, useless. What could he do about half a dozen Anachronisms blundering about in the past? His fellow fallen angels would know how fragile the past was, would be careful. But Shelby and Miles? They were kids. They’d be reckless. They wouldn’t know any better. They could destroy it all for Luce. They could destroy Luce herself.
No. Daniel wouldn’t give any of them the chance to get to her before he did.
And yet—Cam had done it.
“How can I trust that you didn’t interfere?” Daniel asked, trying not to show his desperation.
Cam rolled his eyes. “Because you know I know how dangerous interference is. Our end goals may be different, but we both need her to make it out of this alive.”
“Listen to me, Cam. Everything is at stake here.”
“Don’t demean me. I know what’s at stake. You’re not the only one who’s already struggled for too long.”
“I’m—I’m afraid,” Daniel admitted. “If she too deeply alters the past—”
“It could change who she is when she returns to the present?” Cam said. “Yeah, I’m scared, too.”
Daniel closed his eyes. “It would mean that any chance she had of breaking free of this curse—”
“Would be squandered.”
Daniel eyed Cam. The two of them hadn’t spoken to each other like this—like brothers—in ages. “She was alone? You’re sure none of the others had gotten to her, either?”
For a moment, Cam gazed past Daniel, at a space on the mountaintop beyond them. It looked as empty as Daniel felt. Cam’s hesitation made the back of Daniel’s neck itch.
“None of the others had reached her,” Cam said finally.
“Are you certain?”
“I’m the one who saw her here. You’re the one who never shows up on time. And besides, her being out here at all is no one’s fault but yours.”
“That’s not true. I didn’t show her how to use the Announcers.”
Cam laughed bitterly. “I don’t mean the Announcers, you moron. I mean that she thinks this is just about the two of you. A stupid lovers’ quarrel.”
“It is about the two of us.” Daniel’s voice was strained. He would have liked to pick up the boulder behind Cam’s head and drop it over his skull.
“Liar.” Cam leaped to his feet, hot fury flashing in his green eyes. “It’s far bigger, and you know it is.” He rolled back his shoulders and unleashed his giant marbled wings. They filled the air with golden glory, blocking the sun for a moment. When they curved toward Daniel, he stepped back, repulsed. “You’d better find her, before she—or someone else—steps in and rewrites our entire history. And makes you, me, all of this”—Cam snapped his fingers—“obsolete.”
Daniel snarled, unfurling his own silvery-white wings, feeling them extend out and out and out at his sides, shuddering as they pulsed near Cam’s. He felt warmer now, and capable of anything. “I’ll handle it—” he started to say.
But Cam had already taken off, the kickback from his flight sending small tornadoes of dirt spiraling up from the ground. Daniel shielded his eyes from the sun and looked up as the golden wings beat across the sky, then, in an instant, were gone.
ELEVEN
COUP DE FOUDRE
Splash.
Luce came out of the Announcer underwater.
She opened her eyes, but the warm, cloudy water stung so sharply that she promptly clamped them shut again. Her soggy clothes dragged her down, so she wrestled off the mink coat. As it sank beneath her, she kicked hard for the surface, desperate for air.
It was only a few inches above her head.
She gasped; then her feet found bottom and she stood. She wiped the water from her eyes. She was in a bathtub.
Granted, it was the largest bathtub she had ever seen, as big as a small swimming pool. It was kidney-shaped and made of the smoothest white porcelain and sat alone in the middle of a giant room that looked like a gallery in a museum. The high ceilings were covered by enormous frescoed portraits of a dark-haired family who looked royal. A chain of golden roses framed each bust, and fleshy cherubs hovered between, playing trumpets toward the sky. Against each of the walls—which were papered in elaborate swirls of turquoise, pink, and gold—was an oversized, lavishly carved wooden armoire.
Luce sank back into the tub. Where was she now? She used her hand to skim the surface, parting about five inches of frothy bubbles the consistency of Chantilly cream. A pillow-sized sponge bobbed up, and she realized she had not bathed since Helston. She was filthy. She used the sponge to scrub at her face, then set to work peeling off the rest of her clothes. She sloshed all the sopping garments over the side of the tub.
That was when Bill floated slowly up out of the bathwater to hover a foot above the surface. The portion of the tub from which he’d risen was dark and cloudy with gargoyle grit.
“Bill!” she cried. “Can’t you tell I need a few minutes of privacy?”
He held a hand up to shield his eyes. “You done thrashing around in here yet, Jaws?” With his other hand, he wiped some bubbles from his bald head.
“You could have warned me that I was about to take a plunge underwater!” Luce said.
“I did warn you!” He hopped up to the rim of the tub and tottered across it until he was in Luce’s face. “Right as we were coming out of the Announcer. You just didn’t hear me because you were underwater!”
“Very helpful, thank you.”
“You needed a bath, anyway,” he said. “This is a big night for you, toots.”
“Why? What’s happening?”
“What’s happening, she asks!” Bill grabbed her shoulder. “Only the grandest ball since the Sun King popped off! And I say, so what if this boum is hosted by his greasy pubescent son? It’s still going to be right downstairs in the largest, most spectacular ballroom in Versailles—and everybody’s going to be there!”
Luce shrugged. A ball sounded fine, but it had nothing to do with her.
“I’ll clarify,” Bill said. “Everyone will be there including Lys Virgily. The Princess of Savoy? Ring a bell?” He bopped Luce on the nose. “That’s you.”
“Hmph,” Luce said, sliding her head back to rest against the soapy wall of the tub. “Sounds like a big night for her. But what am I supposed to do while they’re all at the ball?”
“See, remember when I told you—”
The knob on the door of the great bathroom was turning. Bill eyed it, groaning. “To be continued.”
As the door swung open, he held his pointy nose and disappeared under the water. Luce writhed and kicked him to the other side of the tub. He resurfaced, glared at her, and started floating on his back through the suds.
Bill might have been invisible to the pretty girl with corn-colored curls who was standing in the doorway in a long cranberry-colored gown—but Luce wasn’t. At the sight of someone in the tub, the girl reared back.
“Oh, Princess Lys! Forgive me!” she said in French. “I was told this chamber was empty. I—I’d run a bath for Princess Elizabeth”—she pointed to the tub where Luce was soaking—“and was just about to send her up along with her ladies.”
“Well—” Luce racked her brain, desperate to come off as more regal than she felt. “You may not s-send her up. Nor her ladies. This is my chamber, where I intended to bathe in peace.”
“I beg your pardon,” the girl said, bowing, “a thousand times.”