Luce tried not to imagine what enemies the blond girl envisioned. She lowered herself to the roof again and sheltered herself from the wind behind the warrior statue with the golden spear, more out of habit than need. She adjusted her body so that she could still see the tall brown brick clock tower with the golden face. Five-thirty. She was marking the minutes until Daniel and the other Outcasts came back.
“Do you want to sit down?” she asked Olianna, who lurked directly behind Luce with her arrow at the ready.
“I prefer to stand guard—”
“Yeah, I don’t guess you can really sit guard,” Luce mumbled. “Ha-ha.”
A siren wailed from below, a police car speeding through a roundabout. When it passed and the air grew quiet again, Luce didn’t know how to fill the silence.
She stared at the clock, squinting as if it would help her see through the fog. Had Daniel reached the warehouse by now? What would Arriane, Roland, and Annabelle do when they saw the Outcasts? Luce realized Daniel hadn’t given anyone but Phil a pennon of his wing. How would the angels know to trust the Outcasts?
Her shoulders were hunched up around her ears, and her whole body stiffened with the sense of futile frustration. Why was she sitting here, waiting, cracking stupid jokes? She should have had an active role in this. After all, it wasn’t Luce the Scale wanted. She should be helping rescue her friends or finding the relic instead of sitting here like a distressed damsel, waiting for her knight to return.
“Do you remember me, Lucinda Price?” the Outcast asked so quietly Luce almost didn’t hear.
“Why do the Outcasts call us by our full names all of a sudden?” She turned around to find the girl’s head tilted down at her, her bow and arrow listing against her shoulder.
“It is a sign of respect, Lucinda Price. We are your allies now. You and Daniel Grigori. Do you remember me?”
Luce thought for a second. “Were you one of the Outcasts fighting the angels in my parents’ backyard?”
“No.”
“I’m sorry.” Luce shrugged. “I don’t remember everything about my past. Have we already met?” The Outcast lifted her head just a bit. “We knew one another before.”
“When?”
The girl shrugged, her shoulders rising delicately, and Luce suddenly realized she was pretty. “Just before. It is hard to explain.”
“What isn’t?” Luce swiveled back around, not in the mood to decode another cryptic conversation. She stuffed her freezing hands inside the sleeves of her white sweater and watched the traffic moving up and down the slick roads, the tiny cars wedged into slanted spaces on crooked alleys, people in long dark coats marching over illuminated bridges, carrying groceries home to their families.
Luce felt painfully lonely. Was her family thinking of her? Did they picture her in the cramped dorm room she’d slept in at Sword & Cross? Was Callie back at Dover by now? Would she be huddled in the cold window seat of her room, letting her dark red fingernails dry, chatting on the phone about her weird Thanksgiving trip to see some friend who wasn’t Luce?
A dark cloud drifted past the clock, rendering it visible as it struck six. Daniel had been gone an hour that felt like a year. Luce watched the church bells ringing, watched the hands of the great old clock, and she let her memory drift back to her lives spent before the invention of linear time, when time meant seasons, the planting and the harvest.
After the sixth gong of the clock came another—
closer, and Luce spun around just in time to see Olianna slump forward to her knees. She fell and landed heavily in Luce’s arms. Luce turned the ragged angel over and touched the Outcast’s face.
Olianna was unconscious. The sound Luce had heard was the Outcast being hit in the head.
Behind Luce stood an enormous black-cloaked figure. His face was craggy with wrinkles and looked impossibly old, layers of skin drooping under his dull blue eyes and below his protruding chin, beneath a mouthful of crooked black-and-yellow teeth. In his huge right hand was the flagpole he must have used as a weapon.
The Austrian flag hung limply from the end of the pole, fluttered softly against the surface of the roof.
Luce shot to her feet, feeling her fists rise even as she wondered what good they’d be against this enormous fiend.
His wings were a very pale blue, just a shade away from white. Even though his body towered over her, his wings were small and dense, spanning only a little farther than his arms could reach.
Something small and golden was pinned to the front of the man’s cloak: a feather—a marbled gold-black feather. Luce knew whose wings it had come from. But why would Roland have given this creature a pennon from his wings?
He wouldn’t have. This feather was bent and severed and missing some of its matter near the quill. Its point was maroon with blood, and instead of standing upright like the brilliant plume Daniel had given to Phil, this feather seemed to have withered and faded when it was attached to the gruesome angel’s black cloak.
A trick.
“Who are you?” Luce asked, falling to her knees.
“What do you want?”
“Show some respect.” The angel’s throat convulsed as if he meant to bark, but his voice came out warbled and faint and old.
“Earn my respect,” Luce said. “And I’ll give it to you.”
He gave her half an evil smirk and dropped his head low. Then he pulled down the cloak to expose the back of his neck. Luce blinked in the dim light. His neck bore a painted brand, which shimmered gold in the glow of streetlights mingled with the moon. She counted seven points on the star.
He was one of the Scale.