by Lauren Kate
“How was I supposed to learn?” Luce said. “No one told me anything!”
Bill fluttered down from her shoulder and paced along the ledge. “You’re right, you’re right. We’ll just go back to basics.” He stopped in front of Luce, tiny hands on his thick hips. “So. Here we go: What is it that you want?”
“I want … to be with Daniel,” she said slowly. There was more, but she wasn’t sure how to explain it.
“Huh!” Bill looked even more dubious than his heavy brow, stone lips, and hooked nose made him look naturally. “The hole in your argument there, Counselor, is that Daniel was already right there beside you when you skipped out of your own time. Was he not?”
Luce slid down the wall and sat, feeling another strong rush of regret. “I had to leave. He wouldn’t tell me anything about our past, so I had to go find out for myself.”
She expected Bill to argue with her more, but he simply said, “So, you’re telling me you’re on a quest.”
Luce felt a faint smile cross her lips. A quest. She liked the sound of that.
“So you do want something. See?” Bill clapped. “Okay, first thing you ought to know is that the Announcers are summoned to you based upon what’s going on in here.” He thumped his stony fist against his chest. “They’re kind of like little sharks, drawn by your deepest desires.”
“Right.” Luce remembered the shadows at Shoreline, how it was almost as though the specific Announcers had chosen her and not the other way around.
“So when you step through, the Announcers that seem to quiver before you, begging you to pick them up? They funnel you to the place your soul longs to be.”
“So the girl I was in Moscow, and in Milan—and all the other lives I glimpsed before I knew how to step through—I wanted to visit them?”
“Precisely,” Bill said. “You just didn’t know it. The Announcers knew it for you. You’ll get better at this, too. Soon you should begin to feel yourself sharing their knowledge. As strange as it may feel, they’re a part of you.”
Each one of those cold, dark shadows, a part of her? It made sudden, unexpected sense. It explained how even from the beginning, even when it scared her, Luce hadn’t been able to stop herself from stepping through them. Even when Roland warned her they were dangerous. Even when Daniel gaped at her like she’d committed some horrible crime. The Announcers always felt like a door opening. Was it possible that they really were?
Her past, once so unknowable, was out there, and all she had to do was step through into the right doorways? She could see who she’d been, what had drawn Daniel to her, why their love had been damned, how it had grown and changed over time. And, most importantly, what they could be in the future.
“We’re already well on our way somewhere,” Bill said, “but now that you know what you and your Announcers are capable of, the next time you go stepping through, you need to think about what you want. And don’t think place or time, think overall quest.”
“Okay.” Luce was working to tidy the jumble of emotions inside her into words that might make any sense out loud.
“Why not try it out now?” Bill said. “Just for practice. Might give us a heads-up about what we’re going to walk into. Think about what it is you’re after.”
“Understanding,” she said slowly.
“Good,” Bill said. “What else?”
A nervous energy was coursing through her, as if she was on the brink of something important. “I want to find out why Daniel and I were cursed. And I want to break that curse. I want to stop love from killing me so that we can finally be together—for real.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Bill started waving his hands like a man stranded on the side of a dark road. “Let’s not get crazy. This is a very long-standing damnation you’re up against here. You and Daniel, it’s like … I don’t know, you can’t just snap your pretty little fingers and break out of that. You gotta start small.”
“Right,” Luce said. “Okay. Then I should start by getting to know one of my past selves. Get up close and see her relationship with Daniel unfold. See if she feels the same things I feel.”
Bill was nodding, a wacky smile spreading across his full lips. He led her to the edge of the ledge. “I think you’re ready. Let’s go.”
Let’s go? The gargoyle was coming with her? Out of the Announcer and into another past? Yes, Luce could use some company, but she barely knew this guy.
“You’re wondering why you should trust me, aren’t you?” Bill asked.
“No, I—”
“I get it,” he said, hovering in the air in front of her. “I’m an acquired taste. Especially compared to the company you’re used to keeping. I’m certainly no angel.” He snorted. “But I can help make this journey worth your while. We can make a deal, if you want. You get sick of me—just say so. I’ll be on my way.” He held out his long clawed hand.
Luce shuddered. Bill’s hand was crusty with rocky cysts and scabs of lichen, like a ruined statue. The last thing she wanted to do was take it in her own hand. But if she didn’t, if she sent him on his way right now …
She might be better off with him than without him.
She glanced down at her feet. The short wet ledge beneath them ended where she was standing, dropped off into nothing. Between her shoes, something caught her eye, a shimmer in the rock that made her blink. The ground was shifting … softening … swaying under her feet.
Luce looked behind her. The slab of rock was crumbling, all the way to the wall of the cave. She stumbled, teetering at the edge. The ledge jerked beneath her—harder—as the particles that held the rock together began to break apart. The ledge disappeared around her, faster and faster, until fresh air brushed the backs of her heels and she jumped—
And sank her right hand into Bill’s extended claw. They shook in the air.
“How do we get out of here?” she cried, grasping tight to him now for fear of falling into the abyss she couldn’t see.
“Follow your heart.” Bill was beaming, calm. “It won’t mislead you.”
Luce closed her eyes and thought of Daniel. A feeling of weightlessness overcame her, and she caught her breath. When she opened her eyes, she was somehow soaring through static-filled darkness. The stone cave shifted and pulled in on itself into a small golden orb of light that shrank and was gone.
Luce glanced over, and Bill was right there with her.
“What was the first thing I ever told you?” he asked.
Luce recalled how his voice had seemed to reach all the way inside her.
“You said to slow down. That I’d never learn anything zipping around my past so quickly.”
“And?”
“It was exactly what I wanted to do, I just didn’t know I wanted it.”
“Maybe that’s why you found me when you did,” Bill shouted over the wind, his gray wings bristling as they sped along. “And maybe that’s why we’ve ended up … right … here.”
The wind stopped. The static crackling smoothed to silence.
Luce’s feet slammed onto the ground, a sensation like flying off a swing set and landing on a grassy lawn. She was out of the Announcer and somewhere else. The air was warm and a little humid. The light around her feet told her it was dusk.
They were sunk deep in a field of thick, soft, brilliant green grass, as high as her calves. Here and there the grass was dotted with tiny bright-red fruit—wild strawberries. Ahead, a thin row of silver birch trees marked the edge of the manicured lawn of an estate. Some distance beyond that stood an enormous house.
From here she could make out a white stone flight of stairs that led to the back entrance of the large, Tudor-style mansion. An acre of pruned yellow rosebushes bordered the lawn’s north side, and a miniature hedge maze filled the area near the iron gate on the east. In the center lay a bountiful vegetable garden, beans climbing high along their poles. A pebble trail cut the yard in half and led to a large whitewashed gazebo.
Goose bumps rose on Luce’s ar
ms. This was the place. She had a visceral sense that she had been here before. This was no ordinary déjà vu. She was staring at a place that had meant something to her and Daniel. She half expected to see the two of them there right now, wrapped in each other’s arms.
But the gazebo was empty, filled only with the orange light of the setting sun.
Someone whistled, making her jump.
Bill.
She’d forgotten he was with her. He hovered in the air so that their heads were on the same level. Outside the Announcer, he was somewhat more repulsive than he’d seemed at first. In the light, his flesh was dry and scaly, and he smelled pretty strongly of mildew. Flies buzzed around his head. Luce edged away from him a little, almost wishing he’d go back to being invisible.
“Sure beats a war zone,” he said, eyeing the grounds.
“How did you know where I was before?”
“I’m … Bill.” He shrugged. “I know things.”
“Okay, then, where are we now?”
“Helston, England”—he pointed a claw tip toward his head and closed his eyes—“in what you’d call 1854.” Then he clasped his stone claws together in front of his chest like a gnomey sort of schoolboy reciting a history report. “A sleepy southern town in the county of Cornwall, granted charter by King John himself. Corn’s a few feet tall, so I’d say it’s probably midsummer. Pity we missed the month of May—they have a Flora Day festival here like you wouldn’t believe. Or maybe you would! Your past self was the belle of the ball the last two years in a row. Her father’s very rich, see. Got in at the ground level of the copper trade—”
“Sounds terrific.” Luce cut him off and started tramping across the grass. “I’m going in there. I want to talk to her.”
“Hold up.” Bill flew past her, then looped back, fluttering a few inches in front of her face. “Now, this? This won’t do at all.”
He waved a finger in a circle, and Luce realized he was talking about her clothes. She was still in the Italian nurse’s uniform she’d worn during the First World War.
He grabbed the hem of her long white skirt and lifted it to her ankles. “What do you have on under there? Are those Converse? You’ve gotta be kidding me with those.” He clucked his tongue. “How you ever survived those other lifetimes without me …”
“I got along fine, thank you.”
“You’ll need to do more than ‘get along’ if you want to spend some time here.” Bill flew back up to eye level with Luce, then zipped around her three times. When she turned to look for him, he was gone.
But then, a second later, she heard his voice—though it sounded as if it was coming from a great distance. “Yes! Brilliant, Bill!”
A gray dot appeared in the air near the house, growing larger, then larger, until Bill’s stone wrinkles became clear. He was flying toward her now, and carrying a dark bundle in his arms.
When he reached her, he simply plucked at her side, and the baggy white nurse’s uniform split down its seam and slid right off her body. Luce flung her arms around her bare body modestly, but it seemed like only a second later that a series of petticoats was being tugged over her head.
Bill scrambled around her like a rabid seamstress, binding her waist into a tight corset, until sharp boning poked her skin in all sorts of uncomfortable places. There was so much taffeta in her petticoats that even standing still in a bit of a breeze, she rustled.
She thought she looked pretty good for the era—until she recognized the white apron tied around her waist, over her long black dress. Her hand went to her hair and yanked off a white servant’s headpiece.
“I’m a maid?” she asked.
“Yes, Einstein, you’re a maid.”
Luce knew it was dumb, but she felt a little disappointed. The estate was so grand and the gardens so lovely and she knew she was on a quest and all that, but couldn’t she have just strolled around the grounds here like a real Victorian lady?
“I thought you said my family was rich.”
“Your past self’s family was rich. Filthy rich. You’ll see when you meet her. She goes by Lucinda and thinks your nickname is an absolute abomination, by the way.” Bill pinched his nose and lifted it high in the air, giving a pretty laughable imitation of a snob. “She’s rich, yes, but you, my dear, are a time-traveling intruder who knows not the ways of this high society. So unless you want to stick out like a Manchester seamstress and get shown the door before you even get to have a chat with Lucinda, you need to go undercover. You’re a scullery maid. Serving girl. Chamber-pot changer. It’s really up to you. Don’t worry, I’ll stay out of your way. I can disappear in the blink of an eye.”
Luce groaned. “And I just go in and pretend like I work here?”
“No.” Bill rolled his flinty eyes. “Go up and introduce yourself to the lady of the house, Mrs. Constance. Tell her your last placement moved to the Continent and you’re looking for new employment. She’s an evil old harridan and a stickler for references. Lucky for you, I’m one step ahead of her. You’ll find yours inside your apron pocket.”
Luce slipped her hand inside the pocket of her white linen apron and pulled out a thick envelope. The back was stamped shut with a red wax seal; when she turned it over, she read Mrs. Melville Constance, scrawled in black ink. “You’re kind of a know-it-all, aren’t you?”
“Thank you.” Bill bowed graciously; then, when he realized Luce had already started toward the house, he flew ahead, beating his wings so rapidly they became two stone-colored blurs on either side of his body.
By then they had passed the silver birches and were crossing the manicured lawn. Luce was about to start up the pebble path to the house, but hung back when she noticed figures in the gazebo. A man and a woman, walking toward the house. Toward Luce.
“Get down,” she whispered. She wasn’t ready to be seen by anyone in Helston, especially not with Bill buzzing around her like some oversized insect.
“You get down,” he said. “Just because I made an invisibility exception for your benefit doesn’t mean just any mere mortal can see me. I’m perfectly discreet where I am. Matter of fact, the only eyes I have to be watchful about are—Whoa, hey.” Bill’s stone eyebrows shot up suddenly, making a heavy dragging noise. “I’m out,” he said, ducking down behind the tomato vines.
Angels, Luce filled in. They must be the only other souls who could see Bill in this form. She guessed this because she could finally make out the man and woman, the ones who’d prompted Bill to take cover. Gaping through the thick, prickly leaves of the tomato vine, Luce couldn’t tear her eyes away from them.
Away from Daniel, really.
The rest of the garden grew very still. The birds’ evening songs quieted, and all she could hear were two pairs of feet walking slowly up the gravel path. The last rays of the sun all seemed to fall upon Daniel, throwing a halo of gold around him. His head was tipped toward the woman and he was nodding as he walked. The woman who was not Luce.
She was older than Lucinda could have been—in her twenties, most likely, and very beautiful, with dark, silken curls under a broad straw hat. Her long muslin dress was the color of a dandelion and looked like it must have been very expensive.
“Have you come to like our little hamlet much at all, Mr. Grigori?” the woman was saying. Her voice was high and bright and full of natural confidence.
“Perhaps too much, Margaret.” Luce’s stomach tied up in a jealous knot as she watched Daniel smile at the woman. “It’s hard to believe it’s been a week since I arrived in Helston. I could stay on longer even than I’d planned.” He paused. “Everyone here has been very kind.”
Margaret blushed, and Luce seethed. Even Margaret’s blushing was lovely. “We only hope that will come through in your work,” she said. “Mother’s thrilled, of course, to have an artist staying with us. Everyone is.”
Luce crawled along after them as they walked. Past the vegetable garden, she crouched down behind the overgrown rosebushes, planting her hands on the g
round and leaning forward to keep the couple in earshot.
Then Luce gasped. She’d pricked her thumb on a thorn. It was bleeding.
She sucked on the wound and shook her hand, trying not to get blood on her apron, but by the time the bleeding had stopped, she realized she’d missed part of the conversation. Margaret was looking up at Daniel expectantly.
“I asked you if you’ll be at the solstice festivities later this week.” Her tone was a bit pleading. “Mother always makes a big to-do.”
Daniel murmured something like yes, he wouldn’t miss it, but he was clearly distracted. He kept looking away from the woman. His eyes darted around the lawn, as if he sensed Luce behind the roses.
When his gaze swept over the bushes where she crouched, they flashed the most intense shade of violet.
SIX
THE WOMAN IN WHITE
HELSTON, ENGLAND • JUNE 18, 1854
By the time Daniel got to Helston, he was angry.
He recognized the setting at once, as soon as the Announcer ejected him alone onto the shingle banks of the Loe. The lake was still, reflecting big tufts of pink cloud in the evening sky. Startled by his sudden appearance, a pair of kingfishers took off across the field of clover and came to rest in a crooked moorland tree beside the main road. The road led, he knew, into the small town where he’d spent a summer with Lucinda.
Standing again on this rich green earth touched a soft place inside him. As much as he worked to close every door to their past, as much as he strove to move beyond each one of her heartbreaking deaths—some mattered more than others. He was surprised at how clearly he still recalled their time in the South of England.
But Daniel wasn’t here on holiday. He wasn’t here to fall in love with the beautiful copper trader’s daughter. He was here to stop a reckless girl from getting so lost in the dark moments of her past that it killed her. He was here to help her undo their curse, once and for all.
