We used to be exemplary people, but I’m ashamed to say we are in decline. You’ve heard of Elders of Zhsmaelim?”
The mention of Miss Sophia’s evil clan sent a chill through Luce’s body.
“All transeternals,” Dee said. “The Elders began nobly. There was a time when I was involved with them myself. Of course, the good ones all defected”—she glanced at Luce and frowned—“not long after your friend Penn was murdered. Sophia has always had a cruel streak. Now it’s become ambitious.” She paused, taking out a white handkerchief to polish a corner of the silver tea cart. “Such dark things to speak of on our reunion.
There is a bright spot, though: You remembered how to travel through my Patina.” Dee beamed at Luce. “Exemplary work.”
“You made that Patina?” Arriane asked. “I had no idea you could do that!”
Dee raised an eyebrow, the faintest smile on her lips.
“A woman can’t reveal all her secrets, lest she be taken advantage of. Can she, girls?” She paused. “Well, now that we’re all friends again, what brings you to the Foundation? I was just about to sit down for my predawn jasmine tea. You really must join me, I always make too much.”
She stepped aside to reveal the silver tray packed with a tall silver teapot, china plates of tiny crustless cucumber sandwiches, fluffy scones with golden raisins, and a crystal bowl brimming with clotted cream and cherries. Luce’s stomach flopped at the sight of the food.
“So you’ve been expecting us,” Annabelle said, counting the teacups with her finger.
Dee smiled, turned around, and took up wheeling the cart down the hallway again. Luce and the angels jogged to keep up as Dee’s heels clicked along, forking right into a large room made of the same pink brick.
There were a bright fire in the corner, a polished oak dining table that could have seated sixty, and a huge chandelier made of a petrified tree trunk and decorated with hundreds of sparkling crystal candlesticks.
The table was already set with fine china for far more guests than they had in their party. Dee set about filling the teacups with steaming amber-colored tea. “Very casual here, just take a seat wherever you like.” After a few purposeful looks from Daniel, Arriane finally stepped forward and touched Dee—who was scooping a mound of cream into a goblet and topping it with fruit—lightly on the back.
“Actually, Dee, we can’t stay for tea. We’re in a bit of a hurry. See—”
Daniel stepped forward. “Has the news reached you about Lucifer? He is attempting to erase the past by carrying the host of angels forward from the time of the Fall to the present.”
“That would explain the shuddering,” Dee murmured, filling another teacup.
“You can feel the timequakes, too?” Luce asked.
Dee nodded. “But most mortals can’t, in case you were wondering.”
“We’ve come because we need to track down the original location of the Fall,” Daniel said, “the place where Lucifer and the host of Heaven will appear. We have to stop him.”
Dee looked strangely undeterred from her tea service, continuing to divvy up the cucumber sandwiches.
The angels waited for her to respond. A log in the fire splintered, cracked, and tumbled from the grate.
“And all because a boy loved a girl,” she said at last.
“Quite disturbing. Really brings out the worst in all the old enemies, doesn’t it? Scale coming unhinged, Elders killing innocents. So much unpleasantness. As if all you fallen angels didn’t have enough bother to with. I say, you must be awfully tired.” She gave Luce a reassuring smile and gestured again for them to sit down.
Roland pulled out the chair at the head of the table for Dee and sat down in the seat to her left. “Maybe you can help us.” He motioned for the others to join him.
Annabelle and Arriane sat beside him, and Luce and Daniel sat across the table. Luce slid her hand over Daniel’s, twining her fingers around his.
Dee passed the final cups of tea around the table.
After a clattering of china and spoons stirring sugar into tea, Luce cleared her throat. “We’re going to stop Lucifer, Dee.”
“I should hope so.”
Daniel grasped Luce’s fingers. “Right now we’re searching for three objects that tell the early history of the fallen. When brought together, they should reveal the original location of the Fall.”
Dee sipped her tea. “Clever boy. Had any luck?” Daniel produced the leather satchel and unzipped it to reveal the gold-and-glass halo. An eternity had passed since Luce dove into the sunken church to pry it from the statue’s head.
Dee’s forehead wrinkled. “Yes, I remember that. The angel Semihazah created it, didn’t he? Even in prehis-tory, he had a biting aesthetic. No written texts for him to satirize, so he made this as a sort of commentary on the silly ways mortal artists try to capture angelic glow. Amusing, isn’t it? Imagine bearing a hideous . . .
basketball hoop on your head. Two points and all of that.”
“Dee.” Arriane reached into the satchel and pulled out Daniel’s book, then thumbed through it until she found the notation in the margin about the desideratum. “We came to Vienna to find this”—she pointed—“the desired thing. But we’re running out of time and we don’t know what it is or where to find it.”
“How splendid. You’ve come to the right place.”
“I knew it!” Arriane crowed. She leaned back into her chair and slapped Annabelle, who was politely nib-bling at a scone, on the back. “As soon as I saw you, I knew we’d be okay. You have the desideratum, don’t you?”
“No, dear” Dee shook her head.
“Then . . . what?” Daniel asked.
“I am the desideratum.” She beamed. “I’ve been waiting such a long time to be called into service.”
TEN
STARSHOT IN THE DUST
“You’re the desideratum?” Luce’s cucumber sandwich fell from her fingers and bounced off her teacup, leaving a glob of mayonnaise on the lace-embroidered table-cloth.
Dee beamed at them. There was an almost impish gleam in her golden eyes that made her look more like a teenager than a woman many hundreds of years old. As she pinned a shiny strand of red hair back into her chignon and poured everyone more tea, it was hard to fathom that this elegant, vibrant creature was also, in fact, an artifact.
“That’s how you got the nickname Dee, isn’t it?” Luce asked.
“Yes.” Dee looked pleased. She winked at Roland.
“Then you know where the site of the Fall is?” The question brought everyone to attention. Annabelle sat straighter, elongating her long neck. Arriane did the opposite, slumping lower in her chair, elbows on the table, chin resting on clasped hands. Roland leaned forward, tucking his dreads behind one shoulder. Daniel clenched Luce’s hand. Was Dee the answer to every question they had?
She shook her head.
“I can help you discover where the Fall took place.” Dee set her teacup down in its saucer. “The answer is within me, but I am unable to express it in any way that I or you can understand. Not until all of the pieces are in place.”
“What do you mean, ‘in place’?” Luce asked. “How will we know when that happens?”
Dee walked over to the fireplace and used a poker to return the fallen log to its place inside. “You will know.
We will all know.”
“But you at least know where the third artifact is?” Roland passed around a plate of sliced lemons after dropping one into his tea.