And it hit her.
“I remember you!”
“Lovely,” Dee said, “I remember you, too!”
“Didn’t I live in a hut on an open plain?” Dee nodded.
“And we did talk about my hair! I’d—I’d run through a patch of nettles diving after something on a hunt . . .
was it a fox?”
“You were quite the tomboy. Braver than some of the men on the prairie, actually.”
“And you,” Luce said, “you spent hours picking them out of my hair.”
“I was your favorite auntie, figuratively speaking.
You used to say the devil cursed you with such thick hair.
A trifle dramatic, but you were only sixteen—and not far off from the truth, as only sixteen-year-olds can be.”
“You said a curse is only a curse if I allowed myself to be cursed by it. You said . . . I had it in my power to free myself of any curse—that curses were preludes to bless-ings. . . .”
Dee winked.
“Then you told me to cut it off. My hair.”
“That’s right. But you wouldn’t.”
“No.” Luce closed her eyes as the cool mist of a cloud washed over her, its condensation tickling her skin. She was suddenly inexplicably sad. “I wouldn’t. I wasn’t ready to.”
“Well,” Dee said. “I certainly like how you’ve styled your hair since you’ve come to your senses!”
“Look.” Daniel pointed to where the cloud floor fell away like a cliff. “We’re here.”
They descended into Avignon. The sky above the town was clear, no clouds to interrupt their view. The sun cast shadows of the angels’ wings onto the small medieval village of stone buildings bordered by verdant pastures of farmland. Cows loafed below them. A tractor threaded through land.
They banked left and flew over a horse stable, breathing in the dank stench of hay and manure. They swooped low over a cathedral made from the same tawny stone as most of the buildings in the town. Tourists sipped coffees in a cheerful café. The town glowed golden in the mid-day sun.
The startled sense of arriving so quickly mingled with the feeling of time slipping through Luce’s fingers. They had been searching for the relics for four and a half days.
Half the time was up before Lucifer’s Fall would be upon them.
“That’s where we’re going.” Daniel pointed to a bridge on the outskirts that did not extend fully across the shimmering river winding through the town. It was as if half the bridge had crumbled into the water. “Pont Saint Bénézet.”
“What happened to it?” Luce asked.
Daniel glanced over his shoulder. “Remember how quiet Annabelle got when I mentioned we were coming here? She inspired the boy who built that bridge in the Middle Ages in the time when the popes lived here and not in Rome. He noticed her flying across the Rhône one day when she didn’t think anyone could see her. He built the bridge to follow her to the other side.”
“When did it collapse?”
“Slowly, over time, one arch would fall into the river.
Then another. Arriane says the boy—his name was Bénézet—had a vision for angels, but not for architecture.
Annabelle loved him. She stayed in Avignon as his muse until he died. He never married, kept apart from the rest of Avignon society. The town thought he was crazy.” Luce tried not to compare her relationship with Daniel to what Annabelle had had with Bénézet, but it was hard not to. What kind of a relationship could an angel and a mortal really have? Once all this was over, if they beat Lucifer . . . then what? Would she and Daniel go back to Georgia and be like any other couple, going out for ice cream on Fridays after a movie? Or would the whole town think she was crazy, like Bénézet?
Was it all just hopeless? What would become of them in the end? Would their love vanish like a medieval bridge’s arches?
The idea of sharing a normal life with an angel was what was crazy. She sensed that every moment Daniel flew her through the sky. And yet she loved him more each day.
They landed on the bank of the river under the shade of a weeping willow tree, sending a flock of agitated ducks flapping into the water. In broad daylight, the angels folded in their wings. Luce stood behind Daniel to watch the intricate process as his retracted into his skin.
They drew in from the center first, making a series of soft snaps as layers of muscle folded on empyreal feathers. Last came Daniel’s thin, nearly translucent wing tips, which glowed as they disappeared inside his body, leaving no trace on his specially tailored T-shirt.
They walked to the bridge, like any other tourists interested in architecture. Annabelle walked much more stiffly than normal, and Luce saw Arriane reach out and touch her hand. The sun was bright and the air smelled like lavender and river water. The bridge was made of big white stones, held up by long arches underneath.
There was a small stone chapel with a single tower attached to one side near the entrance of the bridge. It held a sign that read CHAPEL DE SAINT NICOLAS. Luce wondered where the real tourists were.
The chapel was coated with a fine, silvery dust.
They walked the bridge silently, but Luce noticed that Annabelle wasn’t the only one upset. Daniel and Roland were trembling, keeping well clear of the entrance to the chapel, and Luce remembered they were forbid-den to enter a sanctuary of God.
Dee ran her fingers over the narrow brass railing with a heavy sigh. “We are too late.”
“This isn’t—” Luce touched the dust. It was insubstantial and light, with a hint of silver shimmer, like the dust that had covered her parents’ backyard. “You mean—”
“Angels have died here.” Roland’s voice was monotone as he stared into the river.
“B-but,” Luce stammered, “we don’t know whether Gabbe and Cam and Molly even made it here.”
“This used to be a beautiful place,” Annabelle said.
“Now they’ve marred it forever. Je m’excuse, Bénézet. ”
That was when Arriane held up a quivering silver feather. “Gabbe’s pennon. Intact, so it must have been taken by her own hand. Perhaps to give to an Outcast who didn’t get it before . . .” She looked away, holding the feather to her chest.
“But I thought the Scale didn’t kill angels,” Luce said.
“They don’t.” Daniel bent down and wiped away some of the dust that was mounded like snow at his feet.
Something was buried underneath it.
His fingers found a dusty silver starshot. He wiped it on his shirt and Luce shivered each time his fingers drew near the deadly dull tip. At last, he held it out for the others to examine. It was branded with an ornate letter Z.
“The Elders,” Arriane whispered.
“They are happy to kill angels,” Daniel said softly.
“In fact, there’s nothing they’d rather do.” There was a sharp crack.
Luce whipped around, expecting . . . she didn’t know what. Scale? Elders?
Dee shook out her fist, rubbing red knuckles with her other hand. Then Luce saw: The wooden door to the chapel was smashed in the center. Dee must have punched it. No one else thought it was remarkable that such a tiny woman could cause so much damage.
“You all right there, Dee?” Arriane called out.
“Sophia has no business here.” Her voice quaked with rage. “What Lucifer is doing is beyond the compass of the Elders’ concern. And yet she could ruin everything for you angels. I could kill her.”
“Promise?” Roland asked.
Daniel slipped the starshot into the satchel and clasped it shut. “However this battle ended, it must have begun over the third relic. Someone found it.”
“A war of resources,” Dee said.
Luce flinched. “And someone died for it.”
“We don’t know what happened, Luce,” Daniel said.
“And we won’t know until we stand before the Elders.