Fallen - Lauren Kate [62]
Luce looked up at her. “What does it mean? Why would she need to record this? I thought they had all our arrival dates separately in our files.”
“They do. I can’t figure it out, either,” Penn said. “And I mean, even though you showed up at the same time as those other kids, it’s not like you have anything in common with them.”
“I couldn’t have less in common with them,” Luce said, envisioning the coy look Gabbe always had glued to her face.
Penn scratched her chin. “But when Arriane, Molly, and Daniel showed up, they already knew each other. I think they came from the same halfway house in L.A.”
Somewhere there was a key to Daniel’s story. There had to be more to him than a halfway house in California. But thinking back to his reaction—that washed-out horror that Luce might take an interest in knowing anything about him—well, it made her feel like everything she and Penn were doing was futile and immature.
“What’s the point of all of this?” Luce asked, suddenly annoyed.
“Why Miss Sophia would be collating all that information I can’t figure out. Though Miss Sophia arrived at Sword & Cross the same day as Arriane, Daniel, and Molly …” Penn trailed off. “Who knows? Maybe it doesn’t mean anything. There’s just so little mention of Daniel in the archives, I figured I’d show you everything I came up with. Hence exhibit B.”
She pointed toward the second note in Luce’s hand.
Luce sighed. Part of her wanted to quit the search and stop feeling embarrassed about Daniel. The pushier part of her still yearned to get to know him better … which, strangely, was far easier to do when he wasn’t technically present to give her new reasons to feel embarrassed.
She looked down at the note, a photocopy of an old-fashioned card from a library catalog.
Grigori, D. The Watchers: Myth in Medieval
Europe. Seraphim Press, Rome, 1755.
Call no: R999.318 GRI
“Sounds like one of Daniel’s ancestors was a scholar,” Penn said, reading over Luce’s shoulder.
“This must have been what he meant,” Luce said under her breath. She looked at Penn. “He told me studying religion was in his family. This must be what he meant.”
“I thought he was an orphan—”
“Don’t ask,” Luce said, waving her off. “Touchy subject with him.” She ran her finger over the book’s title. “What’s a watcher?”
“Only one way to find out,” Penn said. “Though we may live to regret it. ’Cause this sounds like possibly the most boring book ever. Still,” she added, dusting her knuckles on her shirt, “I took the liberty of checking the catalog. The book should be in the stacks. You can thank me later.”
“You’re good.” Luce grinned. She was eager to get up to the library. If someone in Daniel’s family had written a book, it couldn’t possibly be boring. Or not to Luce, anyway. But then she looked down at the other thing still in her hand. The velvet jewelry box from Cam.
“What do you think this means?” she asked Penn as they started walking up the mosaic-tiled stairs to the library.
Penn shrugged. “Your feelings on snakes are—”
“Hatred, agony, extreme paranoia, and disgust,” Luce listed.
“Maybe it’s like … okay, I used to be scared of cactus. Couldn’t go near ’em—don’t laugh, have you ever pricked yourself on one of those things? They stay in your skin for days. Anyway, one year, for my birthday, my dad bought me like eleven cactus plants. At first I wanted to chuck them at him. But then, you know, I got used to them. I stopped flipping out anytime I was near one. In the end, it totally worked.”
“So you’re saying Cam’s gift,” Luce said, “is actually really sweet.”
“I guess,” Penn said. “But if I’d known he had the hots for you, I would not have trusted him with our private correspondence. Sorry about that.”
“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