by Lauren Kate
Page 21
Unlike the Outcast Daedalus, the angels didn’t have to close their eyes and go to sleep after they’d downed the transformed soda. Maybe because they weren’t as badly beaten, or maybe because this higher form of angel had a higher tolerance. Nonetheless, the drink calmed them.
As a final gesture, Roland clapped his hands, igniting a powerful flame between them. He threw waves of heat toward the plastered Scale, glazing their plaster coating, making it harder to escape than their cloaks.
When he was finished, Roland, Arriane, Annabelle, and Luce sat down on one of the tall tables facing Daniel.
Daniel reached for the satchel and unzipped it to show the others the halo.
Arriane gasped in awe and reached out to touch it.
“You found it. ” Annabelle winked at Luce. “Proper!”
“What about the second relic?” Daniel asked. “Did you get it? Did the Scale take it from you?” Annabelle shook her head. “We never found it. ”
“We sure fooled them,” Arriane said, narrowing her eyes in the direction of the Scale. “They thought they could beat it out of us. ”
“Your book is too vague, Daniel,” Roland said. “We came to Vienna looking for a list. ”
“The desideratum,” Daniel said. “I know. ”
“But that was all we knew. In the hours between our arrival and our capture by the Scale, we went to seven different city archives and found nothing. It was foolish.
We attracted too much attention. ”
“It’s my fault,” Daniel muttered. “I should have uncovered more when I wrote that book centuries ago. I was too impulsive and impatient in that era. Now I can’t recall what led me to the desideratum, or precisely what it says. ”
Roland shrugged. “It might not have mattered anyway. The city was a minefield by the time we arrived. If we’d had the desideratum, they would have only taken it away. They would have destroyed it, the way they’ve caused the destruction of this art. ”
“Most of these pieces were forgeries anyway,” Daniel said, making Luce feel a little less guilty about what they’d done to the museum. “And for now the Outcasts can handle the Scale. The rest of us must hurry to find the desideratum. You say you went inside the Hofburg Library?”
Roland nodded.
“What about the university library?”
“Um, yeah,” Annabelle said, “and we probably shouldn’t show our faces there anytime soon. Arriane destroyed several very valuable parchment scrolls in their Special Collections—”
“Hey,” Arriane snapped, indignant. “I glued them back together!”
A thunder of footfalls sounded in the hallway and all heads shot toward the open archway. At least twenty more Scale were attempting to fly into the room, but the Outcasts held them at the doorway with their starshots.
One of them spotted the halo in Daniel’s hand and gasped. “They have stolen the first relic. ”
“And they are working together! Angels and demons and”—narrowed eyes fell on Luce—“those who do not know their place, all working together for an impure cause. The Throne does not endorse this. You will never find the desiderata!”
“Desiderata,” Luce said, faintly recalling a long boring lesson in her Latin class at Dover. “That’s . . . singular. ” She spun around to face Daniel. “You said desideratum a moment ago. That’s plural. ”
“Desired thing,” Daniel whispered. His violet eyes began to pulse, and soon his entire being seemed to be glowing—a smile of recognition spread across his face.
“It’s just one thing. That’s right. ”
Then the deep gong of a church tower clock sounded somewhere in the distance.
It was midnight.
Lucifer was another day closer. Six days to go.
“Daniel Grigori,” Phil shouted over the bells, “we cannot hold them forever. You and your angels must go. ”
“We’re leaving,” Daniel called back. “Thank you. ” He faced the angels. “We will visit every library, every archive in this city until—”
Roland looked doubtful. “There must be hundreds of libraries in Vienna. ”
“And maybe let’s try not to be so destructive in them?” Annabelle suggested, tilting her head at Arriane.
“Mortals care about their pasts, too. ” Yes, Luce thought, mortals cared very much about their pasts. Memories of her past lives were coming to her more frequently. She couldn’t stop or slow them. As the angels readied their wings to fly, Luce stood still, de-bilitated by the most intense flashback.
Crimson hair ribbons. Daniel and the Christmas market. A slushy rainstorm and she hadn’t had a coat. The last time she’d been in Vienna . . . there had been more to that story . . . something else . . . a doorbell—
“Daniel. ” Luce gripped his shoulder. “What about the library you took me to? Remember?” She closed her eyes. She wasn’t thinking so much as feeling through a memory buried shallowly in her brain. “We came to Vienna for the weekend . . . I don’t remember when, but we went to see Mozart conduct The Magic Flute . . . at the Theater an der Wien? You wanted to see this friend of yours who worked at some old library, his name was—”
She broke off, because when she opened her eyes, the others were staring at her, incredulous. No one, least of all Luce, had expected her to be the one to remember where they would find the desiderata.
Daniel recovered first. He flashed her a funny smile Luce knew was full of pride. But Arriane, Roland, and Annabelle continued to gape at her as if they’d suddenly learned she spoke Chinese. Which, come to think of it, she did.
Arriane wiggled a finger around inside her ear. “Do I need to ease up on the psychedelics, or did LP just recall one of her past lives unprompted at the most crucial juncture ever?”
“You’re a genius,” Daniel said, leaning forward and kissing her deeply.
Luce blushed and leaned in to extend the kiss a little longer, but then heard a cough.
“Seriously, you two,” Annabelle said. “There will be time enough for snogs if we pull this off. ”
“I’d say ‘get a room’ but I’m afraid we’d never see you again,” Arriane added, which caused them all to laugh.
When Luce opened her eyes, Daniel had spread his wings wide. The tips brushed away broken bits of plaster and blocked the Scale angels from view. Slung over his shoulder was the black leather satchel with the halo.
The Outcasts gathered the scattered starshots back into their silver sheaths. “Wingspeed, Daniel Grigori. ”
“To you as well. ” Daniel nodded at Phil. He spun Luce around so her back was pressed to his chest and his arms fit snugly around her waist. They clasped hands over her heart.
“The Foundation Library,” Daniel said to the other angels. “Follow me, I know exactly where it is. ”
NINE
THE DESIDERATA
Fog engulfed the angels. They flew back over the river, four pairs of wings making a tremendous throosh each time they beat. They stayed low enough to the ground that the muted orange glow of sodium lampposts looked like airport runway lights. But this flight did not land.
Daniel was tense. Luce could feel it running all through his body: in both his arms around her waist, in his shoulders aligned with hers, even in the manner his broad wings beat above them. She knew how he felt; she was as anxious to get to the Foundation Library as Daniel’s grip suggested he was.
Only a few landmarks cut through the fog. There was the towering spire of the massive Gothic church, and there the darkened Ferris wheel, its empty red cabins swaying in the night. There was the green copper dome of the palace where they’d landed when they first arrived in Vienna.
But wait—they’d passed the palace already. Maybe half an hour earlier. Luce had tried to look for Olianna, who the Scale angel had knocked unconscious. She hadn’t seen her on the roof then, and she didn’t see her now.
Why were they circling? Were they lost?
“Daniel?”
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He didn’t answer.
Church bells rang in the distance. It was their fourth ringing since Luce, Daniel, and the others had taken off through the shattered skylight at the museum. They’d been flying for a long time. Could it really be three o’clock in the morning?
“Where is it?” Daniel muttered under his breath, banking to the left, following the groove of the river, then breaking from it to trace a broad avenue lined with darkened department stores. Luce had seen this street already, too. They were flying in circles.
“I thought you said you knew exactly where it was!”
Arriane dipped out of the formation they’d been flying in—Daniel and Luce at the front, with Roland, Arriane, and Annabelle forming a tight triangle behind them—
and swooped down about ten feet below Daniel and Luce, close enough to talk. Her hair was wild and frizzy and her iridescent wings flickered in and out of the fog.
“I do know where it is,” Daniel said. “At least, I know where it was. ”
“You’ve got an circuitous sense of direction, Daniel. ”
“Arriane. ” Roland used the warning tone he reserved for those too frequent occasions when Arriane went too far. “Let him concentrate. ”
“Yeah yeah yeah. ” Arriane rolled her eyes. “Better return to ‘formation. ’” Arriane beat her wings the way some girls batted their eyelashes, flashed a peace sign with her fingers, and fell back.
“Okay, so where was the library?” Luce asked.
Daniel sighed, drew in his wings slightly, and dropped fifty feet straight down. Cold wind blasted Luce in the face. Her stomach surged up as they plummeted, then settled when Daniel stopped abruptly, as if he’d landed on an invisible tightrope, over a residential street.
It was quiet and empty and dark, just two long stretches of stone townhouses spanning either side. Shut-ters were drawn for the night. Tiny cars rested in narrow angled spaces on the street. Young urban oak trees punctuated the cobbled sidewalk that ran along the small well-maintained front yards.
The other angels hovered on either side of Daniel and Luce, about twenty feet above street level.
“This is where it was,” Daniel said. “It was here. Six blocks from the river, just west of Türkenschanzpark. I swear it was. None of this”—he waved his hand at the stretch of indistinguishable stone townhouses below—
“was here. ”
Annabelle frowned and hugged her knees to her chest, her silver wings beating softly to keep her aloft.
Her crossed ankles revealed hot-pink striped socks peeking out from her jeans. “Do you think it was destroyed?”
“If it was,” Daniel said, “I have no idea how to recover it. ”
“We’re screwed,” Arriane said, kicking a cloud in frustration. She glared at its wispy tendrils, which ambled eastward, unaffected. “That’s never as satisfying as I think it’s going to be. ”
“Maybe we go to Avalon,” Roland suggested. “See if Cam’s group has had any more luck. ”
“We need all three relics,” Daniel said.