Passion

THREE FOOLS RUSH IN

Łuce staggered out of the Announcer to the sound of explosions. She ducked and covered her ears.

Violent bursts rocked the ground. One heavy boom after another, each more spectacular and paralyzing than the one before, until the sound and the tremors reverberated so that there seemed to be no break in the assault. No way to escape the din, and no end.

Luce stumbled in the earsplitting darkness, curling into herself, trying to shield her body. The blasts thrummed in her chest, spat dirt into her eyes and mouth.

All this before she’d even had a chance to see where she’d ended up. With each bright explosion, she caught glimpses of rolling fields, crisscrossed with culverts and tumbledown fences. But then the flash would vanish and she’d be blind again.

Bombs. They were still going off.

Something was wrong. Luce had meant to step through time, to get away from Moscow and the war. But she must have ended up right back where she’d started. Roland had warned her about this—about the dangers of Announcer travel. But she’d been too stubborn to listen.

In the pitch-dark, Luce tripped over something and landed hard, facedown in the dirt.

Someone grunted. Someone Luce had landed on top of.

She gasped and squirmed away, feeling a sharp stab in her hip from where she’d fallen. But when she saw the man lying on the ground, she forgot her own pain.

He was young, about her age. Small, with delicate features and timid brown eyes. His face was pale. His breath came in shallow gasps. The hand cupped over his stomach was caked with black grime. And beneath that hand, his fatigues were soaked with dark red blood.

Luce couldn’t look away from the wound. “I’m not supposed to be here,” she whispered to herself.

The boy’s lips trembled. His bloody hand shook when he made the sign of the cross over his chest. “Oh, I’ve died,” he said, staring at her wide-eyed. “You are an angel. I’ve died and gone to—Am I in Heaven?”

He reached for her, his hand quaking. She wanted to scream or vomit, but all she could do was cover his hands and press them back over the gaping hole in his gut. Another boom rattled the ground and the boy lying on it. Fresh blood seeped through the web of Luce’s fingers.

“I am Giovanni,” he whispered, closing his eyes. “Please. Help me. Please.”

Only then did Luce realize she wasn’t in Moscow anymore. The ground below her was warmer. Not snow-covered, but a grassy plain that was torn up in places, exposing rich black soil. The air was dry and dusty. This boy had spoken to her in Italian, and just as she had in Moscow, she understood.

Her eyes had adjusted. She could see searchlights in the distance, roaming over purple-hued hills. And beyond the hills, an evening sky was flecked with bright white stars. Luce turned away. She couldn’t see stars without thinking of Daniel, and she couldn’t think about Daniel right now. Not with her hands pressed into this boy’s belly, not with him about to die.

At least he hadn’t died yet.

He only thought he had.

She couldn’t blame him. After he’d been hit, he’d probably gone into shock. And then maybe he’d seen her come through the Announcer, a black tunnel appearing out of thin air. He must have been terrified.

“You’re going to be fine,” she said, using the perfect Italian she’d always wanted to learn. It felt astonishingly natural on her tongue. Her voice, too, came out softer and smoother than she expected; it made her wonder what she’d been like in this lifetime.

A barrage of deafening shots made her jump. Gunfire. Endless, in quick succession, bright zipping tracers arcing through the sky, burning lines of white into her vision, followed by a lot of shouting in Italian. Then the thump of footsteps in the dirt. Coming closer.

“We’re retreating,” the boy mumbled. “That’s not good.”

Luce looked toward the sound of soldiers running in their direction and noticed for the first time that she and the injured soldier were not alone. At least ten other men lay wounded around them, moaning and trembling and bleeding into the black earth. Their clothes were singed and shredded from the land mine that must have taken them by surprise. The rich stink of rot and sweat and blood sat heavy in the air, coating everything. It was so horrific—Luce had to bite down on her lip to keep from screaming.

A man in an officer’s uniform ran past her, then stopped. “What’s she doing here? This is a war zone, not a place for nurses. You’ll be no help to us dead, girl. At least make yourself useful. We need the casualties loaded up.”

He stormed off before Luce could respond. Below her, the boy’s eyes were beginning to droop and his whole body was shaking. She looked around desperately for help.

About a half mile away was a narrow dirt road with two ancient-looking trucks and two small, squat ambulances parked at its side.

“I’ll be right back,” Luce told the boy, pressing his hands more firmly against his stomach to control the bleeding. He whimpered when she pulled away.

She ran toward the trucks, stumbling over her feet when another shell came down behind her, making the earth buck.

A cluster of women in white uniforms stood gathered around the back of one of the trucks. Nurses. They would know what to do, how to help. But when Luce got close enough to see their faces, her heart sank. They were girls. Some of them couldn’t have been older than fourteen. Their uniforms looked like costumes.

She scanned their faces, looking for herself in one of them. There must have been a reason why she’d stepped into this Hell. But no one looked familiar. It was hard to fathom the girls’ calm, clear expressions. Not one of them showed the terror that Luce knew was clear on her own face. Maybe they had already seen enough of the war to grow used to what it did.

“Water.” An older woman’s voice came from inside the truck. “Bandages. Gauze.”

She was distributing supplies to the girls, who loaded up, then set to work putting together a makeshift clinic on the side of the road. A row of injured men had already been moved behind the truck for treatment. More were on the way. Luce joined the line for supplies. It was dark and no one said a word to her. She could feel it now—the stress of the young nurses. They must have been trained to keep a poised, calm façade for the soldiers, but when the girl in front of Luce reached up to take her ration of supplies, her hands were shaking.

Around them, soldiers moved quickly in pairs, carrying the wounded under the arms and by the feet. Some of the men being carried mumbled questions about the battle, asking how badly they’d been hit. Then there were the ones more seriously injured, whose lips could form no questions because they were too busy biting off screams, who had to be hoisted by the waist because one or both of their legs had been blown off by a land mine.

“Water.” A jug landed in Luce’s arms. “Bandages. Gauze.” The head nurse dumped the ration of supplies mechanically, ready to move on to the next girl, but then she didn’t. She fixed her gaze on Luce. Her eyes traveled downward, and Luce realized she was still wearing the heavy wool coat from Luschka’s grandmother in Moscow. Which was a good thing, because underneath the coat were her jeans and button-down shirt from her current life.

“Uniform,” the woman finally said in the same monotone, tossing down a white dress and a nurse’s cap like the other girls were wearing.

Luce nodded gratefully, then ducked behind a truck to change. It was a billowing white gown that reached her ankles and smelled strongly of bleach. She tried to wipe the soldier’s blood off her hands, using the wool coat, then tossed it behind a tree. But by the time she’d buttoned the nurse’s uniform, rolled up the sleeves, and tied the belt around her waist, it was completely covered with rusty red streaks.

She grabbed the supplies and ran back across the road. The scene before her was gruesome. The officer hadn’t been lying. There were at least a hundred men who needed help. She looked at the bandages in her arms and wondered what it was she should be doing.

“Nurse!” a man called out. He was sliding a stretcher into the back of an ambulance. “Nurse! This one needs a nurse.”

Luce realized that he was talking to her. “Oh,” she said faintly. “Me?” She peered into the ambulance. It was cramped and dark inside. A space that looked like it had been made for two people now held six. The wounded soldiers were laid out on stretchers slid into three-tiered slings on either side. There was no place for Luce except on the floor.

Someone was shoving her to the side: a man, sliding another stretcher onto the small empty space on the floor. The soldier laid out on it was unconscious, his black hair plastered across his face.

“Go on,” the soldier said to Luce. “It’s leaving now.”

When she didn’t move, he pointed to a wooden stool affixed to the inside of the ambulance’s back door with a crisscrossed rope. He bent down and made a stirrup with his hands to help Luce up onto the stool. Another shell shook the ground, and Luce couldn’t hold back the scream that escaped her lips.

She glanced apologetically at the soldier, took a deep breath, and hopped up.

When she was seated on the tiny stool, he handed up the jug of water and the box of gauze and bandages. He started to shut the door.

“Wait,” Luce whispered. “What do I do?”

The man paused. “You know how long the ride to Milan is. Dress their wounds and keep them comfortable. Do the best you can.”

The door slammed with Luce on it. She had to grip the stool to keep from falling off and landing on the soldier at her feet. The ambulance was stifling hot. It smelled terrible. The only light came from a small lantern hanging from a nail in the corner. The only window was directly behind her head on the inside of the door. She didn’t know what had happened to Giovanni, the boy with the bullet in his stomach. Whether she’d ever see him again. Whether he’d live through the night.

The engine started up. The ambulance shifted into gear and lurched forward. The soldier on one of the top slings began to moan.

After they’d reached a steady speed, Luce heard the pattering sound of a leak. Something was dripping. She leaned forward on the stool, squinting in the dim lantern light.

It was the blood of the soldier on the top bunk dripping through the woven sling onto the soldier in the middle bunk. The middle soldier’s eyes were open. He was watching the blood fall on his chest, but he was injured so badly that he couldn’t move away. He didn’t make a sound. Not until the trickle of blood turned into a stream.

Luce whimpered along with the soldier. She started to rise from her stool, but there was no place for her to stand unless she straddled the soldier on the floor. Carefully, she wedged her feet around his chest. As the ambulance shuddered along the bumpy dirt road, she gripped the taut canvas of the top sling and held a fistful of gauze against its bottom. The blood soaked through onto her fingers within seconds.

“Help!” she called to the ambulance driver. She didn’t know if he’d even be able to hear her.

“What is it?” The driver had a thick regional accent.

“This man back here—he’s hemorrhaging. I think he’s dying.”

“We’re all dying, gorgeous,” the driver said. Really, he was flirting with her now? A second later, he turned around, glancing at her through the opening behind the driver’s seat. “Look, I’m sorry. But there’s nothing to do. I’ve gotta get the rest of these guys to the hospital.”

He was right. It was already too late. When Luce took her hand away from under the stretcher, the blood began to gush again. So heavily it didn’t seem possible.

Luce had no words of comfort for the boy in the middle sling, whose eyes were wide and petrified and whose lips whispered a furious Ave Maria. The stream of the other boy’s blood dripped down his sides, pooling in the space where his hips met the sling.

Luce wanted to close her eyes and disappear. She wanted to sift through the shadows cast by the lantern, to find an Announcer that would take her somewhere else. Anywhere else.

Like the beach on the rocks below Shoreline’s campus. Where Daniel had taken her dancing on the ocean, under the stars. Or the pristine swimming hole she’d glimpsed the two of them diving into, when she’d worn the yellow bathing suit. She would have taken Sword & Cross over this ambulance, even the roughest moments, like the night she’d gone to meet Cam at that bar. Like when she’d kissed him. She would even have taken Moscow. This was worse. She’d never faced anything like this before.

Except—

Of course she had. She must already have lived through something almost exactly like this. It was why she’d ended up here. Somewhere in this war-torn world was the girl who died and came back to life and went on to become her. She was certain of it. She must have dressed wounds and carried water and suppressed the urge to vomit. It gave Luce strength to think about the girl who’d lived through this before.

The stream of blood began to trickle, then became a very slow drip. The boy beneath had fainted, so Luce watched silently by herself for a long time. Until the dripping stopped completely.

Then she reached for a towel and the water and began to wash the soldier in the middle bunk. It had been a while since he’d had a bath. Luce washed him gently and changed the bandage around his head. When he came to, she gave him sips of water. His breathing evened, and he stopped staring up at the sling above him in terror. He seemed to grow more comfortable.

All of the soldiers seemed to find some comfort as she tended to them, even the one in the middle of the floor, who never opened his eyes. She cleaned the face of the boy in the top bunk who had died. She couldn’t explain why. She wanted him to be more at peace, too.

It was impossible to tell how much time had passed. All Luce knew was that it was dark and rank and her back ached and her throat was parched and she was exhausted—and she was better off than any of the men surrounding her.

She’d left the soldier on the bottom left-hand stretcher until last. He’d been hit badly in the neck, and Luce was worried that he would lose even more blood if she tried to re-dress the wound. She did the best she could, sitting on the side of his sling and sponging down his grimy face, washing some of the blood out of his blond hair. He was handsome under all the mud. Very handsome. But she was distracted by his neck, which was still bleeding through the gauze. Every time she even got near it, he cried out in pain.

“Don’t worry,” she whispered. “You’re going to make it.”

“I know.” His whisper came so quietly, and sounded so impossibly sad, that Luce wasn’t sure she’d heard him right. Until then, she’d thought he was unconscious, but something in her voice seemed to reach him.

His eyelids fluttered. Then, slowly, they opened.

They were violet.

The jug of water fell from her hands.

Daniel.

Her instinct was to crawl in next to him and cover his lips with kisses, to pretend he wasn’t as badly wounded as he was.

At the sight of her, Daniel’s eyes widened and he started to sit up. But then the blood began to flow from his neck again and his face drained of all its color. Luce had no choice but to restrain him.

“Shhh.” She pressed his shoulders back against the stretcher, trying to get him to relax.

He squirmed under her grip. Every time he did, bright new blood bloomed through the bandage.

“Daniel, you have to stop fighting,” she begged. “Please stop fighting. For me.”

They locked eyes for a long, intense moment—and then the ambulance came to an abrupt stop. The back door swung open. A shocking breath of fresh air flowed in. The streets outside were quiet, but the place had the feel of a big city, even in the middle of the night.

Milan. That was where the soldier had said they were going when he assigned her to this ambulance. They must be at a hospital in Milan.

Two men in army uniforms appeared at the doors and began sliding the stretchers out with quick precision. Within minutes, the wounded were placed on rolling carts and wheeled off. The men pushed Luce out of the way so they could ease out Daniel’s stretcher. His eyelids were fluttering again, and she thought he reached out his hand for her. She watched from the back of the ambulance until he disappeared from sight. Then she began to tremble.

“Are you all right?” A girl popped her head inside. She was fresh and pretty, with a small red mouth and long dark hair pulled into a low twist. Her nurse’s dress was more fitted than the one Luce was wearing and so white and clean it made Luce aware of how bloody and muddy she was.

Luce hopped to her feet. She felt like she’d been caught doing something embarrassing.

“I’m fine,” she said quickly. “I just—”

“You don’t have to explain,” the girl said. Her face fell as she looked around the inside of the ambulance. “I can tell, it was a bad one.”

Luce stared as the girl heaved a bucket of water into the ambulance, then hoisted herself inside. She got to work immediately, scrubbing down the bloodied slings, mopping the floor, sending waves of red-tinged water out the back door. She replaced the soiled linens in the cabinet with clean ones and added more gas to the lantern. She couldn’t have been older than thirteen.

Luce stood up to help, but the girl waved her off. “Sit down. Rest. You just got transferred here, didn’t you?”

Hesitantly, Luce nodded.

“Were you all alone coming from the front?” The girl stopped cleaning for a moment, and when she looked at Luce, her hazel eyes brimmed with compassion.

Luce started to reply, but her mouth was so dry she couldn’t speak. How had it taken her this long to recognize that she was looking at herself?

“I was,” she managed to whisper. “I was all alone.”

The girl smiled. “Well, you’re not anymore. There’s a bunch of us here at the hospital. We’ve got all the nicest nurses. And the handsomest patients. You won’t mind it, I don’t think.” She started to extend her hand but then looked down and realized how dirty it was. She giggled and picked up her mop again. “I’m Lucia.”

I know, Luce stopped herself from saying. “I’m—”

Her mind went blank. She tried to think of one name, any name that would work. “I’m Doree—Doria,” she finally said. Almost her mother’s name. “Do you know—where do they take the soldiers who were in here?”

“Uh-oh. You’re not already in love with one of them, are you?” Lucia teased. “New patients get taken to the east ward for vitals.”

“The east ward,” Luce repeated to herself.

“But you should go see Miss Fiero at the nurses’ station. She does the registration and the scheduling”—Lucia giggled again and lowered her voice, leaning toward Luce—“and the doctor, on Tuesday afternoons!”

All Luce could do was stare at Lucia. Up close, her past self was so real, so alive, so very much the kind of girl Luce would have befriended instantly if the circumstances had been any shade of normal. She wanted to reach out and hug Lucia, but she was overcome by an indescribable fear. She’d cleaned the wounds of seven half-dead soldiers—including the love of her life—but she was unsure what to do when it came to Lucia. The girl seemed too young to know any of the secrets Luce was searching for—about the curse, about the Outcasts. Luce feared she’d only frighten Lucia if she started talking about reincarnation and Heaven. There was something about Lucia’s eyes, something about her innocence—Luce realized that Lucia knew even less than she did.

She stepped down from the ambulance and backed away.

“It was nice to meet you, Doria,” Lucia called.

But Luce was already gone.

It took six wrong rooms, three startled soldiers, and one toppled-over medicine cabinet before Luce found him.

Daniel was sharing a room in the east ward with two other soldiers. One was a silent man whose entire face had been bandaged. The other was snoring loudly, a bottle of whiskey not very well hidden under his pillow, two broken legs raised in a sling.

The room itself was bare and sterile, but it had a window that looked out onto a broad city avenue lined with orange trees.

Standing over his bed, watching him sleep, Luce could see it. The way their love would have bloomed here. She could see Lucia coming in to bring Daniel his meals, him opening up to her slowly. The pair being inseparable by the time Daniel recovered. And it made her feel jealous and guilty and confused because she couldn’t tell right now whether their love was a beautiful thing, or whether this was yet another instance of how very wrong it was.

If she was so young when they met, they must have had a long relationship in this life. She would have gotten to spend years with him before it happened. Before she died and was reincarnated into another life completely. She must have thought they’d spend forever together—and must not even have known how long forever meant.

But Daniel knew. He always knew.

Luce sank down at the side of his bed, careful not to wake him. Maybe he hadn’t always been so closed off and hard to reach. She’d just seen him in their Moscow life whispering something to her at the critical moment before she died. Maybe if she could just talk to him in this life, he’d treat her differently than the Daniel she knew did. He might not hide so much from her. He might help her understand. Might tell her the truth, for a change.

Then she could go back to the present and there wouldn’t have to be any more secrets. It was all she really wanted: for the two of them to love each other openly. And for her not to die.

She reached out and touched his cheek. She loved his cheek. He was beat-up and injured and probably concussed, but his cheek was warm and smooth and, mostly, it was Daniel’s. He was as gorgeous as ever. His face was so peaceful in his sleep that Luce could have stared at him from every angle for hours without ever getting bored. He was perfect to her. His perfect lips were just the same. When she touched them with her finger, they were so soft she had to lean down for a kiss. He didn’t stir.

She traced his jawline with her lips, kissed down the side of his neck that wasn’t bruised and across his collarbone. At the top of his right shoulder, her lips paused over a small white scar.

It would have been almost indiscernible to anyone else, but Luce knew that this was the place from which Daniel’s wings extended. She kissed the scar tissue. It was so hard to see him lying helpless on that hospital bed when she knew what he was capable of. With his wings wrapped around her, Luce always lost track of everything else. What she wouldn’t give to see them unfurl now, into the vast white splendor that seemed to steal all the light from a room! She laid her head on his shoulder, the scar hot against her skin.

Her head shot up. She hadn’t realized she’d drifted off until the stretcher wheeling squeakily down the uneven wood floor in the hallway startled her awake.

What time was it? Sunlight streamed through the window onto the white sheets on the beds. She rotated her shoulder, trying to loosen a crick. Daniel was still asleep.

The scar above his shoulder looked whiter in the morning light. Luce wanted to see the other side, the matching scar, but it was wrapped in gauze. At least, the wound seemed to have stopped bleeding.

The door opened and Luce jerked up.

Lucia was standing in the doorway, holding three covered trays stacked in her arms. “Oh! You’re here.” She sounded surprised. “So they’ve already had breakfast, then?”

Luce blushed and shook her head. “I—uh—”

“Ah.” Lucia’s eyes lit up. “I know that look. You’ve got it bad for someone.” She put the breakfast trays on a cart and came to stand at Luce’s side. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell—so long as I approve.” She tilted her head to look at Daniel, and stared at him hard for a long time. She didn’t move or breathe.

Sensing the girl’s eyes widening at the sight of Daniel for the first time, Luce didn’t know what to feel. Empathy. Envy. Grief. All of it was there.

“He’s heavenly.” Lucia sounded as if she might cry. “What’s his name?”

“His name is Daniel.”

“Daniel,” the younger girl repeated, making the word sound holy as it left her lips. “Someday, I’ll meet a man like that. Someday, I’ll drive all of them crazy. Just like you do, Doria.”

“What do you mean?” Luce asked.

“There’s that other soldier, two doors down?” Lucia addressed Luce without ever taking her eyes off Daniel. “You know, Giovanni?”

Luce shook her head. She didn’t.

“The one who’s about to go in for surgery—he keeps asking about you.”

“Giovanni.” The boy who’d been shot in the stomach. “He’s okay?”

“Sure.” Lucia smiled. “I won’t tell him you have a boyfriend.” She winked at Luce and pointed down at the breakfast trays. “I’ll let you do the meals,” she said on her way out. “Find me later? I want to hear everything about you and Daniel. The whole story, all right?”

“Sure,” Luce lied, her heart sinking a little.

Alone with Daniel again, Luce was nervous. In her parents’ backyard, after the battle with the Outcasts, Daniel had seemed so horrified when he saw her step through the Announcer. In Moscow, too. Who knew what this Daniel would do when he opened his eyes and found out where she’d come from?

If he ever opened his eyes.

She leaned down over his bed again. He had to open his eyes, didn’t he? Angels couldn’t die. Logically, she thought it was impossible, but what if—what if by coming back in time she’d messed something up? She’d seen the Back to the Future movies and she’d once passed a test in science class on quantum physics. What she was doing here was probably messing up the space-time continuum. And Steven Filmore, the demon who cotaught humanities at Shoreline, had said something about altering time.

She didn’t really know what any of that meant, but she did know it could be very bad. Like erase-your-whole-existence bad. Or maybe kill-your-angel-boyfriend bad.

That was when Luce panicked. Grabbing hold of Daniel’s shoulders, she began to shake. Lightly, gently—he’d been through a war, after all. But enough to let him know that she needed a sign. Right now.

“Daniel,” she whispered. “Daniel?”

There. His eyelids began to flutter. She let out her breath. His eyes opened slowly, like they had last night. And like last night, when they registered the girl in front of them, they bulged. His lips parted. “You’re … old.”

Luce blushed. “I am not,” she said, laughing. No one had ever called her old before.

“Yes, you are. You’re really old.” He looked almost disappointed. He rubbed his forehead. “I mean—How long have I been—?”

Then she remembered: Lucia was several years younger. But Daniel hadn’t even met Lucia yet. How would he have known how old she was?

“Don’t worry about that,” she said. “I need to tell you something, Daniel. I’m—I’m not who you think I am. I mean, I am, I guess, I always am, but this time, I came from … uh …”

Daniel’s face contorted. “Of course. You stepped through to get here.”

She nodded. “I had to.”

“I’d forgotten,” he whispered, confusing Luce even more. “From how far away? No. Don’t tell me.” He waved her off, inching back in his bed as if she had some sort of disease. “How is that even possible? There were no loopholes in the curse. You shouldn’t be able to be here.”

“Loopholes?” Luce asked. “What kind of loopholes? I need to know—”

“I can’t help you,” he said, and coughed. “You have to learn on your own. Those are the rules.”

“Doria.” A woman Luce had never seen was standing in the doorway. She was older, blond and severe, with a starched Red Cross cap pinned so that it sat at an angle on her head. At first, Luce didn’t realize that the woman was addressing her. “You are Doria, aren’t you? The new transfer?”

“Yes,” Luce said.

“We’ll need to do your paperwork this morning,” the woman said curtly. “I don’t have any of your records. But first, you’ll do me a favor.”

Luce nodded. She could tell she was in trouble, but she had more important things to worry about than this woman and her paperwork.

“Private Bruno is going into surgery,” the nurse said.

“Okay.” Luce tried to focus on the nurse, but all she wanted was to go back to her conversation with Daniel. She had finally been getting somewhere, finally finding another piece in the puzzle of her lives!

“Private Giovanni Bruno? He’s requested that the on-duty nurse be taken off his surgery. He says he’s sweet on the nurse who saved his life. His angel?” The woman gave Luce a hard look. “The girls tell me that’s you.”

“No,” Luce said. “I’m not—”

“Doesn’t matter. It’s what he believes.” The nurse pointed toward the door. “Let’s go.”

Luce rose from Daniel’s bed. He was looking away from her, out the window. She sighed. “I have to talk to you,” she whispered, though he didn’t meet her gaze. “I’ll be right back.”

The surgery wasn’t as awful as it could have been. All Luce had to do was hold Giovanni’s small, soft hand and whisper things, pass a few instruments to the doctor and try not to look when he reached into the dark red mass of Giovanni’s exposed gut and extracted the bits of blood-sheathed shrapnel. If the doctor wondered about her evident lack of experience, he didn’t say anything. She wasn’t gone more than an hour.

Just long enough to come back to Daniel’s bed and find it empty.

Lucia was changing the sheets. She rushed toward Luce, and Luce thought she was going to hug her. Instead she collapsed at her feet.

“What happened?” Luce asked. “Where did he go?”

“I don’t know.” The girl began to weep. “He left. He just left. I don’t know where.” She looked up at Luce, tears filling her hazel eyes. “He said to tell you goodbye.”

“He can’t be gone,” Luce said under her breath. They hadn’t even had a chance to talk—

Of course they hadn’t. Daniel had known exactly what he was doing when he left. He didn’t want to tell her the whole truth. He was hiding something. What were the rules he’d mentioned? And what loophole?

Lucia’s face was flushed. Her speech was broken up by hiccups. “I know I shouldn’t be crying, but I can’t explain it.… I feel like someone has died.”

Luce recognized the feeling. They had that in common: When Daniel left, both girls were inconsolable. Luce balled up her fists, feeling angry and despondent. “Don’t be childish.”

Luce blinked, thinking at first that the girl was speaking to her, but then she realized Lucia was chiding herself. Luce straightened, holding her trembling shoulders high again, as if she were trying to recover the calm poise the nurses had shown.

“Lucia.” Luce reached for the girl, moving to embrace her.

But the girl inched away, turning from Luce to face Daniel’s empty bed. “I’m fine.” She went back to stripping the sheets. “The only thing we can control is the work we do. Nurse Fiero always says that. The rest is out of our hands.”

No. Lucia was wrong, but Luce couldn’t see how to correct her. Luce didn’t understand much, but she understood that—her life didn’t have to be out of her hands. She could shape her own destiny. Somehow. She didn’t have it all figured out yet, but she could feel a solution drawing nearer. How else would she have found herself here in the first place? How else would she have known now that it was time to move on?

In the late-morning light, a shadow stretched out from the supply closet in the corner. It looked like one she could use, but she wasn’t entirely confident of her abilities to summon. She focused on it for a moment and waited to see the place where it wobbled.

There. She watched it twitch. Fighting the disgust she still felt, she grabbed hold of it.

Across the room, Lucia’s focus was on bundling the bedsheets, on trying hard not to show that she was still crying.

Luce worked fast, drawing the Announcer into a sphere, then working it out with her fingers more quickly than she ever had before.

She held her breath, made a wish, and disappeared.