Passion

expanse of a gray stone floor beneath her feet. A stone wall stretched up behind her, water trickling down its face. And something more:

There on the floor in front of her stood a small gargoyle.

“Ta-da!” he said.

He was about a foot tall, crouched low with his arms crossed and his elbows resting on his knees. His skin was the color of stone—he was stone—but when he waved at her, she could see he was limber enough to be made of flesh and muscle. He looked like the sort of statue you’d find capping the roof of a Catholic church. His fingernails and toenails were long and pointed, like little claws. His ears were pointed, too—and pierced with small stone hoops. He had two little hornlike nubs protruding from the top of a forehead that was fleshy and wrinkled. His large lips were pursed in a grimace that made him look like a very old baby.

“So you’re Bill?”

“That’s right,” he said. “I’m Bill.”

Bill was an odd-looking thing, but certainly not someone to be afraid of. Luce circled him and noticed the ridged vertebrae protruding from his spine. And the small pair of gray wings tucked behind his back so that the two tips were twined together.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“Great,” she said flatly. One look at any other pair of wings—even Bill’s—made her miss Daniel so much her stomach hurt.

Bill stood up; it was strange to see the arms and legs that were made of stone move like muscle.

“You don’t like the way I look. I can do better,” he said, disappearing in another flash of light. “Hold on.”

Flash.

Daniel stood before her, cloaked in a shining aura of violet light. His unfurled wings were glorious and massive, beckoning her to step inside them. He held out a hand and she sucked in her breath. She knew something was strange about his being there, that she’d been in the middle of doing something else—only she couldn’t recall what or with whom. Her mind felt hazy, her memory obscured. But none of that mattered. Daniel was here. She wanted to cry with happiness. She stepped toward him and put her hand in his.

“There,” he said softly. “Now, that’s the reaction I was after.”

“What?” Luce whispered, confused. Something was rising to the forefront of her mind, telling her to pull away. But Daniel’s eyes overrode that hesitation and she let herself be pulled in, forgetting everything but the taste of his lips.

“Kiss me.” His voice was a raspy croak. Bill’s.

Luce screamed and jumped back. Her mind felt jolted as if from a deep sleep. What had happened? How had she thought she’d seen Daniel in—

Bill. He’d tricked her. She jerked her hand away from his, or maybe he dropped hers during the flash when he changed into a large, warty toad. He croaked out two ribbits, then hopped over to the spring of water dripping down the cave wall. His tongue shot out into the stream.

Luce was breathing hard and trying not to show how devastated she felt. “Stop it,” she said sharply. “Just go back to the gargoyle. Please.”

“As you wish.”

Flash.

Bill was back, crouched low with his arms crossed over his knees. Still as stone.

“I thought you’d come around,” he said.

Luce looked away, embarrassed that he had gotten a rise out of her, angry that he seemed to have enjoyed it.

“Now that that’s all settled,” he said, scurrying around so he was standing where she could see him again, “what would you like to learn first?”

“From you? Nothing. I have no idea what you’re even doing here.”

“I’ve upset you,” Bill said, snapping his stone fingers. “I’m sorry. I was just trying to learn your tastes. You know—likes: Daniel Grigori and cute little gargoyles.” He listed on his fingers. “Dislikes: frogs. I think I’ve got it now. No more of that funny business from me.” He spread his wings and flitted up to sit on her shoulder. He was heavy. “Just the tricks of the trade,” he whispered.

“I don’t need any tricks.”

“Come now. You don’t even know how to lock an Announcer to keep out the bad guys. Don’t you want to at least know that?”

Luce raised an eyebrow at him. “Why would you help me?”

“You’re not the first to skip around the past, you know, and everybody needs a guide. Lucky you, you chanced upon me. You could have gotten stuck with Virgil—”

“Virgil?” Luce asked, having a flashback to sophomore English. “As in the guy who led Dante through the nine circles of Hell?”

“That’s the one. He’s so by the book, it’s a snooze. Anyway, you and I aren’t sojourning through Hell right now,” he explained with a shrug. “Tourist season.”

Luce thought back to the moment she’d seen Luschka burst into flames in Moscow, to the raw pain she’d felt when Lucia had told her Daniel had disappeared from the hospital in Milan.

“Sometimes it feels like Hell,” she said.

“That’s only because it took us this long to be introduced.” Bill extended his stony little hand toward hers.

Luce stalled. “So what, um, side are you on?”

Bill whistled. “Hasn’t anyone told you it’s more complicated than that? That the boundaries between ‘good’ and ‘evil’ have been blurred by millennia of free will?”

“I know all that, but—”

“Look, if it makes you feel any better, have you ever heard of the Scale?”

Luce shook her head.

“Sorta like hall monitors within Announcers who make sure travelers get where they’re going. Members of the Scale are impartial, so there’s no siding with Heaven or with Hell. Okay?”

“Okay.” Luce nodded. “So you’re in the Scale?”

Bill winked. “Now, we’re almost there, so—”

“Almost where?”

“To the next life you’re traveling to, the one that cast this shadow we’re in.”

Luce ran her hand through the water running down the wall. “This shadow—this Announcer—is different.”

“If it is, it’s only because that’s what you want it to be. If you want a rest-stop–type cave inside an Announcer, it appears for you.”

“I didn’t want a rest stop.”

“No, but you needed one. Announcers can pick up on that. Also, I was here helping out, wanting it on your behalf.” The little gargoyle shrugged, and Luce heard a sound like boulders knocking against each other. “The inside of an Announcer isn’t anyplace at all. It’s a neverwhere, the dark echo cast by something in the past. Each one is different, adapting to the needs of its travelers, so long as they’re inside.”

There was something wild about the idea of this echo of Luce’s past knowing what she wanted or needed better than she did. “So how long do people stay inside?” she asked. “Days? Weeks?”

“No time. Not the way you’re thinking. Within Announcers, real time doesn’t pass at all. But still, you don’t want to hang around here too long. You could forget where you’re going, get lost forever. Become a hoverer. And that’s ugly business. These are portals, remember, not destinations.”

Luce rested her head against the damp stone wall. She didn’t know what to make of Bill. “This is your job. Serving as a guide to, uh, travelers like me?”

“Sure, exactly.” Bill snapped his fingers, the friction sending up a spark. “You nailed it.”

“How’d a gargoyle like you get stuck doing this?”

“Excuse me, I take pride in my work.”

“I mean, who hired you?”

Bill thought for a moment, his marble eyes rolling back and forth in their sockets. “Think of it as a volunteer