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Her hair beca her like mummy wrap, then like a caterpillar’s cocoonuntil the body beca blood

Through the s sharpened in the space between Luce’s feet and the speck of land she had been watching

"Is this it?" Cah the wind

"I don’t know," Daniel said

"Hoe know?"

"We just will"

"Daniel The tiet her to the right place"

"Is she asleep?"

"She’s feverish I don’t know Shhh"

A grunt of frustration accolow back into the mist

Luce’s eyelids flickered Was she asleep? The sky did seeht in the light reflected froer, and her pearl bracelets rattled as she brought the knife into Luce’s heart

Her words-- Trust is a careless pursuit--echoed again and again in Luce’s mind until she wanted to scream

Then the vision of Miss Sophia flickered and swirled, darkening into the gargoyle who Luce had trusted, so carelessly

Little Bill, who’d posed as a friend, all the while hiding so Maybe that hat friendship was to the devil: love always tinged with evil

The gargoyle’s body was a husk for forces darkly powerful inside

In her vision, Bill bared rotten black fangs and exhaled clouds of rust He roared, but silently, a silence that orse than anything he ever could have said, because her iination filled the void He consumed her plane of vision as Lucifer, as Evil, as the End

She snapped open her eyes She clasped her hands over Daniel’s arh the endless storm

You’re not afraid, she vowed silently in the rain It was the hardest of the things she’d had to convince herself of on this journey

When you face hiain, you will not be afraid

"Guys," Arriane said, appearing on the right side of Daniel’s wings "Look"

The clouds thinned as they drove onward Below them was a valley, a broad stretch of rocky fare wooden horse stood absurdly in the barren landscape, a monument to a shadowed past Luce could make out stony ruins near the horse, a Roels flew on The valley spread out below, dark but for a single light in the distance: an electric lah theof a tiny hut in the center of the slope

"Fly toward the house," Daniel called to the others

Luce had been watching a line of goats drift across the sodden fields, gathering in a grove of apricot trees

Her stomach lurched as Daniel swooped suddenly down

When they touched the ground, Luce and the angels were about a quarter of a o inside" Daniel took her hand "They’ll be waiting for us"

Luce walked next to Daniel through the rain, her dark hair splayed across her face, her borrowed coat drenched hat felt like a thousand pounds of raindrops

They were trudging up a windingto Luce’s eyelashes and dripped inside her eye When she rubbed it away and blinked, the Earth had utterly changed

An iotten round beneath her feet had gone froray in another

The valley surrounding thee, roasted flesh and rot so thick and sharp it burned her nostrils and clung to the roof of herlike rattlesnakes, as she walked past Dust--angel dust--was everywhere It floated through the air, coated the ground and rocks, fell like snowflakes on her face

So silver was in her peripheral vision It looked like broken pieces of a , almost alive Luce dropped Daniel’s hand, fell to her knees, and crawled along the lass

She didn’t knohy she did this She only knew she had to touch it

She reached for a large piece, groaning with the effort She had her hand firmly around it--

And then she blinked and ca but a fistful of soft mud

She looked up at Daniel, her eyes filled with tears

"What’s happening?"

He glanced at Arriane "Get Luce inside" She felt her ar lifted "You’ll be okay, kiddo," Arriane said "Promise"

The dark wood door of the hut opened and a warels was the calm, collected face of Steven Filmore, Lu-ce’s favorite teacher from Shoreline

"Glad you could make it," Daniel said