Fallen in Love (15 page)

She sniffed at her shoulder: It still smelled like smoke from the fire that had burned down the Globe.

From above her came a set of loud bangs: shutters being thrown wide. Two women poked their heads out of adjacent second-story casement windows. Startled, Luce pressed herself against a shadowed wall to listen, watching as the women fussed about with a shared clothesline.

“Will you let Laura watch the festivities?” said one, a matronly woman in a simple gray cowl as she pinned an enormous pair of damp trousers to the line.

“I see no harm in
watching
,” said the other, a younger woman. She shook out a dry linen shirt and folded it with swift efficiency. “So long as she doesn’t partake of those bawdy displays. Cupid’s Urn! Hah! Laura’s only seen twelve years; she’s far too young to fetch a broken heart!”

“Ah, Sally”—the other woman sighed through a thin smile—“you’re too strict. Saint Valentine’s is a day for all hearts, young
and
old. It might do you and the mister a bit of good to be swept up in its romance yourselves, eh?”

A lone peddler, a short man dressed in a blue tunic and blue tights, turned down the alley, pushing a wooden cart. The women eyed him with suspicion and lowered their voices.

“Pears,” he sang up to the open casements, from which the women’s heads and hands had disappeared. “Rotund fruit of love! A pear for your Valentine will make this next year a sweet one.”

Luce edged along the wall toward the alley’s exit. Where was Bill? She hadn’t realized just how much she’d come to rely on the little gargoyle. She needed different clothes. An idea of where and when she was. And a briefing on what she was doing here.

Medieval city of some sort. A Valentine’s Day festival. Who knew it was such an old tradition?

“Bill!” she whispered. But there was still no answer.

She reached the corner and edged her head around.

The sight of a soaring castle made her halt. It was massive and majestic. Ivory towers rose into the blue sky. Golden banners, each emblazoned with a lion, billowed gently from high poles. She half expected to hear a blare of trumpets. It was like stumbling accidentally upon a fairy tale.

Instinctively, Luce wished Daniel were there. This was the kind of beauty that didn’t seem real until you shared it with someone you loved.

But there was no sign of Daniel. Just a girl.

A girl Luce recognized instantly.

One of her past selves.

Luce watched as the girl strolled across the cobble-stoned bridge that led to the tall doors of the castle. She moved past them, to the entrance of a fantastic rose garden, where the blossomless bushes were sculpted into tall, wall-like hedges. Her hair was loose and long and messy, trailing halfway down the back of her white linen gown. The old Luce—Lucinda—gazed longingly at the garden gate.

Then Lucinda stood on tiptoe, reached a pale hand over the gate, and from the middle of a bare-branched bush, bent the stem of a single unlikely red rose toward her nose.

Was it possible to smell a rose sadly? Luce couldn’t say; all she knew was that something about this girl—herself—felt
sad
. But why? Did it have something to do with Daniel?

Luce was about to step fully from the shadowed alley when she heard a voice and saw a figure approach her past self.

“There you are.”

Lucinda released the rose, which snapped back into the garden, losing its blossom on the thorns as it crossed. The red teardrop-shaped petals showered down on her shoulders as she turned to face the voice.

Luce watched Lucinda’s posture change, a smile stretching across her face at the sight of Daniel. And
Luce felt that same smile on her
own
face. Their bodies might be different, their daily lives looked nothing alike, but when it came to Daniel, their shared soul aligned completely.

He wore a full suit of armor, though his helmet was off and his golden hair was lank with sweat and dirt. He’d clearly come from the road; the speckled white mare beside him looked weary. Luce had to fight every urge in her body not to run into his arms. He was breathtaking: a knight in shining armor to outshine any fairy-tale knight.

But this Daniel wasn’t her Daniel. This Daniel belonged to another girl.

“You came back!” Lucinda broke into a run, her tresses streaming in the wind.

Her past self’s arms stretched out, inches from Daniel—

But the image of her valiant knight wavered in the wind.

And then it was gone. Disgust crept into Luce’s stomach as she watched Daniel’s horse and armor vanish into thin air and Lucinda—who could not stop herself in time—crash headfirst into a belching stone gargoyle.

“Fumble!” Bill cackled, spinning in a loop-the-loop.

Lucinda screamed, tripped over her gown, and landed in the mud on her hands and knees. Bill’s craggy
laughter echoed off the façade of the castle. He flitted higher in the air and then eyed Luce glaring at him from across the street.

“There you are!” he said, cartwheeling toward her.

“I told you never to do that again!”

“My acrobatics?” Bill hopped onto her shoulder. “But if I do not practice, I win no medals,” he said in a Russian accent.

She swatted him off. “I meant changing into Daniel.”

“I didn’t do it to you, I did it to her. Maybe your past self thinks it’s funny.”

“She doesn’t.”

“That’s not my fault. Besides, I’m not a mind reader. You expect me to realize you’re speaking on behalf of all Lucindas ever, every time you talk. You never said anything about not razzing your past lives. It’s all in good fun. For me, anyway.”

“It’s
cruel
.”

“If you insist on splitting hairs, fine, she’s all yours. I suppose you don’t need me pointing out that what
you
do with ’em ain’t exactly humane!”

“You’re the one who taught me how to go three-D.”

“My point exactly,” he said with an eerie cackle that sent goose bumps running up Luce’s arms.

Bill’s eyes fell on a diminutive stone gargoyle capping one of the columns of the garden gates. He banked in the air, circled back to the column, and slung his arm
around the gargoyle’s shoulder as if he’d finally found a true companion. “Mortals! Can’t live with ’em, can’t consign them to the fiery depths of Hell. Am I right or am I right?” He looked back at Luce. “Not a big talker.”

Luce could no longer stand it. She ran forward, hurrying to help Lucinda up from the ground. Her past self’s dress was torn at the knees and her face was sickly pale.

“Are you all right?” Luce asked. She expected the girl to be thankful, but instead, she recoiled.

“Who—What are you?” Lucinda gaped at Luce. “And what kind of devil is that thing?” She flung her hand in Bill’s direction.

Luce sighed. “He’s just—Don’t worry about him.”

Bill probably did look like a devil to this medieval incarnation. Luce most likely didn’t look much better—some mental girl running up to her dressed in a futuristic ball gown that reeked of smoke?

“I’m sorry,” Luce said, glancing over the girl’s shoulder at Bill, who seemed amused.

“Thinking about going three-D?” Bill asked.

Luce cracked her knuckles. Fine. She knew she had to cleave to this past body if she was going to move forward on her quest, but there was something in her past self’s face—bewilderment and a hint of inexplicable betrayal—that made her hesitate. “This, uh, this will just take a moment.”

Her past self’s eyes widened, but as she was about to pull away, Luce seized her past self’s hand and squeezed.

The solid stones beneath her feet shifted and the world before Luce swirled like a kaleidoscope. Her stomach lurched up toward her throat, and as the world flattened back out, she was left with the distinctive nausea of cleaving. She blinked and, for that one unsettling instant, saw the disembodied view of both girls. There was medieval Lucinda—innocent, captive, and terrified; and there, beside her, was Luce—guilty, exhausted, obsessed.

There was no time to regret it. On the other side of the blink—

A single body, one conflicted soul.

And Bill’s fat-lipped smirk taking it all in.

Luce clutched her heart through the rough linen dress Lucinda had been wearing. It hurt. Her whole body had become a heartache.

She was channeling Lucinda now, feeling what Lucinda had been feeling before Luce inhabited her body. It was a move that had become second nature to her—from Russia to Tahiti to Tibet—but no matter how many times she did it, Luce didn’t think she’d ever get used to suddenly
feeling
so keenly the landscape of her past emotions.

Right now it was the kind of raw pain Luce hadn’t experienced since her early days at Sword & Cross,
when she loved Daniel so much she thought it might split her in two.

“You’re looking a little green around the gills.” Bill floated before her face, sounding more satisfied than concerned.

“It’s my past. She’s—”

“Panicked? Sick at heart with love for that worthless oaf of a knight? Yeah, the Daniel of this era jerked you around like a slot-machine pull on Seniors’ Day at the casino.” He crossed his arms broodingly over his chest and did something Luce had never seen before: He made his eyes flash violet. “Maybe I’ll be at the Valentine’s Faire,” he said in a husky, affected tone, a grossly oversimplified impersonation of Daniel. “Or maybe I have better things to do, like slash losers with my humungous sword—”

“Don’t do that, Bill.” Luce shook her head, annoyed. “Besides, if Daniel doesn’t show at this Valentine’s thing, he’s got a good reason—I’m sure of it.”

“Yeah.” The croak returned to Bill’s voice. “You always are.”

“He’s trying to protect me,” she argued, but her voice was weak.

“Or himself …”

Luce rolled her eyes. “Okay, Bill, what is it I’m supposed to learn in this lifetime? That you think Daniel’s a jerk? Got it. Can we move on?”

“Not exactly.”

Bill flew to the ground and sat beside her. “Actually, we’re taking a holiday from your education in this life,” he said. “Based on your snippiness and the bags under my eyes”—he stretched out and displayed a wrinkly fold of saggy skin, which made a sound like a shaken bag of marbles—“I’d say we both need a day off.

“So here’s the deal: It’s Valentine’s Day—or an early form of it, anyway. Daniel is a knight, which means he’s got his pick of the parties. He can grace the endless church-sanctioned nobleman’s feast in the castle of his lord.” Bill jerked his head toward the towering white turrets behind them. “Sure, there’ll be a nice roast stag, maybe even a sprinkle of salt, but you’ve got to hang with the
clergy
, and whose idea of a party is that?”

Luce glanced back at the fairy-tale castle. That was where Daniel lived? Was he inside those walls now?

“Or,” Bill continued, “he can slum it at the
real
party out on the green tonight for that less-respectable sort of folk, where the ale flows like wine and the wine flows like ale. There’ll be dancing, dining, and most importantly, wenching.”

“Wenching?”

Bill waved one tiny hand in the air. “Nothing you have to worry about, darlin’. Daniel only has eyes for one wench in all of creation. I mean you.”

“Wench,” Luce said, looking down at her rough-spun cotton garments.

“There’s a certain lost wench”—Bill elbowed Luce—“who will be there at the Faire, scanning the crowd through the eyeholes of her painted mask for her hunky dreamboat.” He patted her cheek. “Doesn’t that sound like a great time, little sister?”

“I’m not here to have fun, Bill.”

“Try it out for one night—who knows, you might enjoy it. Most people do.”

Luce swallowed. “But what will happen when he finds me? What am I supposed to learn before I burn up, before—”

“Whoa there!” Bill cried. “Slow down, hothead. I told you—tonight’s just about fun. A little bit of romance. A night off”—he winked—“for both of us.”

“What about the curse? How can I drop everything and celebrate Valentine’s Day?”

Bill didn’t respond immediately. Instead, he paused thoughtfully, then said, “What if I told you that this—tonight—is the only Valentine’s Day you kids ever got to spend together?”

The words struck Luce immediately. “Ever? We … never got to celebrate Valentine’s Day?”

Bill shook his head. “After today? No.”

Luce thought back to her days at Dover, how she and Callie would watch some of the other girls get chocolate hearts and roses on Valentine’s Day. They’d made a tradition of lamenting how very, very single they were over strawberry milk shakes at the local diner. They’d
spent hours conjecturing on the slim odds of ever having a date on Valentine’s Day.

She laughed. She hadn’t been far off: Luce had never had a Valentine’s Day with Daniel.

Now Bill was telling her that she only ever had tonight.

Luce’s quest through the Announcers, all her efforts to break the curse and discover what lay behind all of her reincarnations, finding an end to this endless cycle—yes, those were important. Of course they were.

But would the world end if she enjoyed this
one
time with Daniel?

She cocked her head at Bill. “Why are you doing this for me?” she asked.

Bill shrugged. “I have a heart, a soft spot for—”

“What?
Valentine’s Day?
Why don’t I buy that?”

“Even I once loved and lost.” And for the briefest of moments, it seemed the gargoyle looked wistful and sad. He stared right at her and sniffled.

Luce gave a laugh. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll stay. Just for tonight.”

“Good.” Bill popped up and pointed a crooked claw down the alley. “Now go, make merry.” He squinted. “Actually, change your dress.
Then
make merry.”