"Do I need to kill your lover to get you to join me?" he asked, pointing his arrow now at Daniel. "Or do I need to kill them all?"
Luce stared at the strange, at tip of the silver arrow, less than ten feet from Daniel's chest. No chance Phil would miss from this range. She'd seen the arrows extinguish a dozen angels tonight with that paltry ash of light. But she'd also seen an arrow glance o Callie's skin, like it was nothing more than the dull stick it appeared to be.
The silver arrows killed angels, she suddenly realized, not humans.
She leaped in front of Daniel. "I won't let you hurt him. And your arrows can't hurt me."
A sound escaped from Daniel, a weird half-laugh, half-sob. She turned to him, wide-eyed. He looked afraid, but more than that, he looked guilty.
She thought of the conversation they'd had under the gnarled peach tree at Sword & Cross, the rst time he'd told her about her reincarnations. She remembered sitting with him on the beach in Mendocino when he talked of his place in Heaven before her. What a struggle it had been to get him to open up about those early days. She still felt like there was more. There had to be more.
The creak of the bowstring snapped her attention back to the Outcast, who was pulling back the silver arrow. Now it was aimed at Miles. "Enough talk," he said. "I'll take your friends out one at a time until you surrender to me."
In her mind, Luce saw a bright blink of light, a swirl of color, and a whirling montage of her lives ashing before her eyes--her mom and dad and Andrew. The parents she'd seen in Mount Shasta. Vera ice-skating on the frozen pond. The girl she'd been, swimming under the waterfall in a yellow halter-top bathing suit. Other cities, homes, and times she couldn't recognize yet. Daniel's face from a thousand di erent angles, under a thousand di erent lights. And blaze after blaze after blaze.
Then she blinked and was back in the yard. The Outcasts were drawing closer, huddling together and whispering to Phil. He kept waving them back, agitated, trying to focus on Luce. Everyone was tense.
She saw Miles staring at her. He must have been terri ed. But no, not terri ed. He was xating on her with so much intensity that his gaze seemed to vibrate her very core. Luce grew woozy and her vision clouded. What followed was an unfamiliar sensation of something being lifted o her. Like a casing being removed from her skin.
And she heard her voice say, "Don't shoot. I surrender."
Only, it was echoing and disembodied, and Luce hadn't actually said the words. She followed the sound with her eyes, and her body grew rigid at what she saw.
Another Luce standing behind the Outcast, tapping him on the shoulder.
But this was no glimpse of a former life. This was her, in her skinny black jeans and plaid shirt with the missing button. With her black hair cropped and newly dyed. With her hazel eyes taunting the Outcast. With the burning of her same soul clearly visible to him. Clearly visible to all the other angels, too. This was a mirror image of her. This was--
Miles's doing.
His gift. He had splintered Luce o into a second self, just as he'd told her he could on her very rst day at Shoreline. They say it's easy to do with the people you, like, love, he'd said.
He loved her.
She couldn't think about that right now. While everyone's eyes were drawn to the re ection, the real Luce retreated two steps and hid inside the shed.
"What's happening?" Cam barked at Daniel.
"I don't know!" Daniel whispered hoarsely.
Only Shelby seemed to understand. "He did it," she said under her breath.
The Outcast swung his bow around to aim at this new Luce. Like he didn't quite trust the victory.
"Let's do this," Luce heard her own voice saying in the middle of the yard. "I can't stay here with them. Too many secrets. Too many lies."
A part of her did feel that way. That she couldn't keep going on like this. That something had to change.
"You will come with me, and join my brothers and my sisters?" the Outcast said, sounding hopeful. His eyes made her nauseated. He held out his ghostly white hand.
"I will," Luce's voice projected.
"Luce, no." Daniel sucked in his breath. "You can't."
Now the remaining Outcasts raised their bows at Daniel and Cam and the rest of them, lest they interfere.
Luce's mirror stepped forward. Slipped her hand inside Phil's. "Yes, I can."
The monster Outcast cradled her in his sti white arms. There was a great ap of dirty wings. A stale cloud of dust stormed up from the ground. Inside the shed, Luce held her breath.
She heard Daniel gasp as Luce's mirror and the Outcast soared up and out of the backyard. The rest of them looked incredulous. Except for Shelby and Miles. Shelby and Miles.
"What the hell just happened?" Arriane said. "Did she really--"
"No!" Daniel cried. "No, no, no!"
Luce's heart ached as he tore at his hair, spun in a circle, and let his wings bloom out to their full size.
Immediately, the eet of remaining Outcasts spread their own dingy brown wings and took ight. Their wings were so thin, they had to beat frantically just to stay in the air. They were closing in on Phil. Trying to form a shield around him so he could take Luce wherever he thought he was taking her.
But Cam was faster. The Outcasts were probably twenty feet in the air when Luce heard one nal arrow loose from its bow.
Cam's arrow wasn't meant for Phil. It was meant for Luce.
And his aim was perfect.
Luce froze as her mirror image disappeared in a great bloom of white light. In the sky, Phil's tattered wings shuddered open. Empty. A horrible roar escaped his mouth. He started to swoop back toward Cam, followed by his army of Outcasts. But then he stopped midway. As if he'd realized there was no more reason to go back.
"So it begins again," he called down to Cam. To all of them. "It could have ended peacefully. But tonight you've made a new sect of immortal enemies. Next time we will not negotiate."
Then the Outcasts disappeared into the night.
Back in the yard, Daniel barreled into Cam, throwing him to the ground. "What's wrong with you?" he yelled, his sts wailing down on Cam's face. "How could you?"
Cam strained to stop him. They rolled over each other on the grass. "It was a better end for her, Daniel."
Daniel was seething, tackling Cam, slamming his head into the dirt. Daniel's eyes blazed. "I'll kill you!"
"You know I'm right!" Cam shouted, not ghting back at all.
Daniel froze. He closed his eyes. "I don't know anything now." His voice was ragged. He'd been gripping Cam by the lapel, but now he just slumped to the ground, burying his face in the grass.
Luce wanted to go to him. To fall on him and tell him everything was going to be okay.
Except it wasn't.
What she'd seen tonight was too much. She felt sick from watching herself--Miles's mirror image of her--die from the starshot.
Miles had saved her life. She couldn't get over it.
And the rest of them thought Cam had ended it.
Her head swam as she stepped forward from the shadows of the shed, planning to tell the others not to worry, that she was still alive. But then she sensed the presence of something else.
An Announcer was quivering in the doorway. Luce stepped out of the shed and approached it.
Slowly, it broke free of a shadow cast by the moon. It slithered along the grass toward her for a few feet, picking up a dirty coat of dust left by the battle. When it reached Luce, it shuddered up and rose along her body, until it hovered blackly over her head.
She closed her eyes and felt herself raising her hand to meet it. The darkness fell to rest in her palm. It made a cold sizzling sound.
"What is that?" Daniel's head snapped around at the noise. He raised himself from the ground. "Luce!"
She stayed put as the others gasped at the sight of her standing in front of the shed. She didn't want to glimpse an Announcer. She'd seen enough for one night. She didn't even know why she was doing this--
Until she did. She wasn't looking for a vision, she was looking for a way out. Something far away enough to step through to. It had been too long since she'd had a moment to think on her own. What she needed was a break. From everything.
"Time to go," she said to herself.
The shadow door that presented itself in front of her wasn't perfect--it was jagged around the edges and it stank of sewage. But Luce parted its surface anyway.
"You don't know what you're doing, Luce!" Roland's voice reached her at the edge of the doorway. "It could take you anywhere!"
Daniel was on his feet, jogging toward her. "What are you doing?" She could hear the profound relief in his voice that she was still alive, and the sheer panic that she could manipulate the Announcer. His anxiety only spurred her on.
She wanted to look back to apologize to Callie, to thank Miles for what he'd done, to tell Arriane and Gabbe not to worry the way she knew they were going to anyway, to leave word for her parents. To tell Daniel not to follow her, that she needed to do this for herself. But her chance to break free was closing. So she stepped forward and called over her shoulder to Roland, "Guess I'll just have to gure it out."
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Daniel rushing toward her. Like he hadn't believed until now that she would do it.
She felt the words rising up in her throat. I love you. She did. She did forever. But if she and Daniel had forever, their love could wait until she
gured out a few important things about herself. About her lives and the life she had ahead of her. Tonight there was only time to wave goodbye, take a deep breath, and leap into the dismal shadow.
Into darkness.
Into her past.
Epilogue
PANDEMONIUM
"What just happened?"
"Where'd she go?"
"Who taught her how to do that?"
The frantic voices in the backyard sounded wobbly and distant to Daniel. He knew the other fallen angels were arguing, looking for Announcers in the shadows of the yard. Daniel was an island, closed o to everything but his own agony.
He had failed her. He had failed.
How could it be? For weeks he'd run himself ragged, his only goal to keep her safe until the moment when he could no longer o er her protection. Now that moment had come and gone--and so had Luce.
Anything could happen to her. And she could be anywhere. He had never felt so hollow and ashamed.
"Why can't we just nd the Announcer she stepped through, put it back together, and go after her?"
The Nephilim boy. Miles. He was on his knees, combing the grass with his ngers. Like a moron.
"They don't work that way," Daniel snarled at him. "When you step into time, you take the Announcer with you. That's why you never do it unless ..."
Cam looked at Miles, almost pityingly. "Please tell me Luce knows more about Announcer travel than you do."
"Shut up," Shelby said, standing over Miles protectively. "If he hadn't thrown Luce's re ection, Phil would have taken her."
Shelby looked guarded and afraid, out of place among the fallen angels. Years ago, she'd had a crush on Daniel--one he'd never requited, of course. But until tonight, he'd always thought well of the girl. Now she was just in the way.
"You said yourself Luce would be better o dead than with the Outcasts," she said, still defending Miles.