Fallen - Lauren Kate [64]
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.
Luce shook her head. This train of thought was heading straight for Pity City, and she wanted to get off. She pulled the first book off the shelf—the very unfascinating cloth-covered Dictionary of Angels—and decided to distract herself by reading until Penn came back.
She’d gotten as far as the fallen angel Abbadon, who regretted siding with Satan and constantly bemoaned his bad decision—yawn—when a blaring noise rang out over her head. Luce looked