“He does not have the hots for me,” Luce started to say, fingering the gold chain inside the box, imagining how it would look on her skin. She hadn’t told Penn anything about her picnic with Cam because—well, she didn’t really know why. It had to do with Daniel, and how Luce still couldn’t figure out where she stood—or wanted to stand—with either of them.
“Ha.” Penn cackled. “Which means you kinda like him! Cheating on Daniel. I can’t keep up with you and your men.”
“As if anything is going on with either of them,” Luce said glumly. “Do you think Cam read the notes?”
“If he did, and he still gave you that necklace,” Penn said, “then he’s really into you.”
They stepped inside the library, and the heavy double doors thudded behind them. The sound echoed through the room. Miss Sophia looked up from the mounds of paper covering her lamplit desk.
“Oh, hello, girls,” she said, beaming so broadly that Luce felt guilty all over again for zoning out during her lecture. “I hope you enjoyed my brief review session!” she practically sang.
“Very much.” Luce nodded, though there had been nothing brief about it. “We came here to review a few more things before the exam.”
“That’s right,” Penn chimed in. “You inspired us.”
“How wonderful!” Miss Sophia rustled through her paperwork. “I’ve got a further reading list somewhere. I’d be happy to make you a copy.”
“Great,” Penn lied, giving Luce a small push toward the stacks. “We’ll let you know if we need it!”
Beyond Miss Sophia’s desk, the library was quiet. Luce and Penn eyed the call numbers as they passed shelf after shelf toward the books on religion. The energy-saving lights had motion detectors and were supposed to turn on as they crossed each aisle, but only about half of them worked. Luce realized that Penn was still holding on to her arm, then realized she didn’t want her to let go.
The girls came to the usually crowded study section, where only one table lamp burned. Everyone else must have been at Gabbe’s party. Everyone except for Todd. He had his feet kicked up on the chair across from him and seemed to be reading a coffee-table-sized world atlas. When the girls walked by him, he looked up with a wan expression that was either very lonely or slightly annoyed at being disturbed.
“You guys are here late,” he said flatly.
“So are you,” Penn retorted, sticking out her tongue dramatically.
When they’d put a few shelves between them and Todd, Luce raised an eyebrow at Penn. “What was that?”
“What?” Penn sulked. “He flirts with me.” She crossed her arms over her chest and blew a brown curlicue of hair out of her eyes. “As if.”
“Are you in fourth grade?” Luce teased.
Penn stuck her pointer finger up at Luce with an intensity that would have made Luce jump if she hadn’t been giggling so much. “Do you know anyone else who would delve into Daniel Grigori’s family history with you? Didn’t think so. Leave me alone.”
By then, they had reached the far back corner of the library, where all the 999 books were arranged along a single pewter-colored bookshelf. Penn crouched down and traced the books’ spines with her finger. Luce felt a tremor, like someone was running a finger along her neck. She craned her head around and saw a wisp of gray. Not black, like the shadows usually were, but lighter, thinner. Just as unwelcome.
She watched, wide-eyed, as the shadow stretched out in a long, curling strand directly over Penn’s head. It came down slowly, like a threaded needle, and Luce didn’t want to think about what might happen if it touched her friend. The other day at the gym had been the first time the shadows had touched her—and she still felt violated, almost dirty from it. She didn’t know what else they could do.
Nervous, unsteady, Luce stretched her arm out like a baseball bat. She took a deep breath and swung forward. She bristled at the icy contact as she knocked the shadow away—and clocked Penn upside the head.
Penn pressed her hands against her skull and looked back at Luce in shock. “What is wrong with you?”
Luce sank down next to her and smoothed the top of Penn’s hair. “I’m so sorry. There was … I thought I saw a bee … land on your head. I panicked. I didn’t want it to sting you.”
She could feel how utterly, utterly lame this excuse was and waited for her friend to tell her she was crazy—what would a bee be doing in a library? She waited for Penn to walk out.
But Penn’s round face softened. She took Luce’s hand in both of hers and shook it. “Bees terrify me, too,” she said. “I’m deathly allergic. You basically just saved my life.”
It was like they were having a huge bonding moment—only they weren’t, because Luce was wholly consumed by the shadows. If only there were a way to push them from her mind, to shrug the shadow thing off, without shrugging off Penn.
Luce had a strong, uneasy feeling about this light gray shadow. The uniformity of the shadows had never been comforting, but these latest variations were a new level of disconcerting. Did it mean more kinds of shadows were finding their way to her? Or was she just getting better at distinguishing them? And what about that weird moment during Miss Sophia’s lecture, when she’d actually pinched a shadow back before it could enter her pocket? She’d done it without thinking, and had had no reason to expect that her two fingers would be any match for a shadow, but they had been—she glanced around the stacks—at least temporarily.
She wondered whether she had set some kind of precedent for interacting with the shadows. Except that to call what she’d done to the shadow hovering over Penn’s head “interacting”—even Luce knew that was a euphemism. A cold, sick feeling grew in her gut when she realized that what she’d started doing to the shadows was more like … fighting them off.
“It’s the strangest thing.” Penn spoke up from the floor. “It should be right here between The Dictionary of Angels and this god-awful Billy Graham fire-and-brimstone thing.” She looked up at Luce. “But it’s gone.”
“I thought you said—”
“I did. The computer had it listed as on the shelves when I looked this afternoon, but we can’t get online this late to check again.”
“Go ask Todd-o out there,” Luce suggested. “Maybe he’s using it as a cover for his Playboys.”
“Gross.” Penn whacked her on the thigh.
Luce knew she’d only made the joke to try to downplay her disappointment. It was just so frustrating. She couldn’t find out anything about Daniel without running up against a wall. She didn’t know what she’d find inside the pages of his great-great-whatever’s book, but at least it would tell her something more about Daniel. Which had to be better than nothing.
“Stay here,” Penn said, standing up. “I’m going to go ask Miss Sophia if anyone’s checked it out today.”
Luce watched her traipse back up the long aisle toward the front desk. She laughed when Penn sped up to pass the area where Todd was sitting.
Alone in the back corner, Luce fingered some of the other books on the shelves. She did a quick mental run-through of the student body at Sword & Cross, but she couldn’t think of any likely candidates for checking out an old religious book. Maybe Miss Sophia had used it as reference for her review session earlier. Luce wondered what it must have been like for Daniel to sit there, listening to the librarian talk about things that had probably been dinner-table topics of conversation when he was growing up. Luce wanted to know what his childhood had been like. What had happened to his family? Had his upbringing at the orphanage been religious? Or was his childhood anything like hers, in which the only things pursued religiously were good grades and academic honors? She wanted to know whether Daniel had ever read this book by his ancestor and what he’d thought about it, and if he liked writing himself. She wanted to know what he was doing right now at Gabbe’s party and when his birthday was and what size shoe he wore and whether he ever wasted a single second of his time wondering about her.