Passion

eighteenth century. You live in a small village on the banks of the river Handel. Very nice.” He cleared his throat and hacked up a large wad of phlegm before he went on. “I should say, er, that you lived. You’ve actually, just—well—”

“Bill?” She craned her neck to look at him sitting hunched forward on her shoulder. “It’s okay,” she said softly. “You don’t have to explain. Let me just, you know, feel it.”

“That’s probably best.”

As Luce walked quietly through the cemetery gates, Bill hung back. He sat cross-legged on top of a lichen- swathed shrine, picking at the grit under his claws. Luce lowered her shawl over her head to obscure more of her face.

Up ahead were mourners, black-clad and somber, pressed so tightly together for warmth that they looked like a single mass of grief. Except for one person who stood behind the group and off to one side. He hung his bare blond head.

No one spoke to or even looked at Daniel. Luce couldn’t tell whether he was bothered by being left out or whether he preferred it.

By the time she reached the back of the small crowd, the burial was drawing to a close. A name was carved into a flat gray tombstone: Lucinda Müller. A boy, no older than twelve, with dark hair and pale skin and tears streaming down his face, helped his father—her father from this other life?—shovel the first mound of dirt over the grave.

These men must have been related to her past self. They must have loved her. There were women and children crying behind them; Lucinda Müller must have meant something to them as well. Maybe she’d meant everything to them.

But Luce Price didn’t know these people. She felt callous and strange to realize that they meant nothing to her, even as she saw the pain mar their faces. Daniel was the only one here who really mattered to her, the one she wanted to run to, the one she had to hold herself back from.

He wasn’t crying. He wasn’t even staring at the grave like everyone else. His hands were clasped in front of him and he was looking far away—not at the sky, but far into the distance. His eyes were violet one moment, gray the next.

When the family members had cast a few shovelfuls of dirt over the casket and the plot had been scattered with flowers, the funeral-goers split apart and walked shakily back to the main road. It was over.

Only Daniel remained. As immobile as the dead.

Luce hung back, too, dodging behind a squat mausoleum a few plots away, watching to see what he would do.

It was dusk. They had the graveyard to themselves. Daniel lowered himself to his knees next to Lucinda’s grave. Snow thrummed down on the cemetery, coating Luce’s shoulders, fat flakes getting tangled in her eyelashes, wetting the tip of her nose. She edged around the corner of the mausoleum, her entire body tensed.

Would he lose it? Would he claw at the frozen dirt and pound on the gravestone and bawl until there were no more tears he could shed? He couldn’t feel as calm as he looked. It was impossible, a front. But Daniel barely looked at the grave. He lay down on his side in the snow and closed his eyes.

Luce stared. He was so still and gorgeous. With his eyelids closed, he looked at absolute peace. She was half in love, half confused, and stayed that way for several minutes—until she was so frozen, she had to rub her arms and stamp her feet to warm up.

“What is he doing?” she finally whispered.

Bill appeared behind her and flitted around her shoulders. “Looks like he’s sleeping.”

“But why? I didn’t even know angels needed to sleep—”

“Need isn’t the right word. They can sleep if they feel like it. Daniel always sleeps for days after you die.” Bill tossed his head, seeming to recall something unpleasant. “Okay, not always. Most of the time. Must be pretty taxing, to lose the one thing you love. Can you blame him?”

“S-sort of,” Luce stammered. “I’m the one who bursts into flames.”

“And he’s the one who’s left alone. The age-old question: Which is worse?”

“But he doesn’t even look sad. He looked bored the entire funeral. If it were me, I’d … I’d …”

“You’d what?”

Luce moved toward the grave and stopped short at the loose earth where her plot began. A coffin lay beneath this.

Her coffin.

The thought sent shivers up her spine. She sank to her knees and put her palms down in the dirt. It was damp and dark and freezing cold. She buried her hands inside it, feeling frostbitten almost instantly and not caring, welcoming the burn. She’d wanted Daniel to do this, to feel for her body in the earth. To go mad with wanting her back—alive and in his arms.

But he was just sleeping, so dead asleep that he didn’t even sense her kneeling right beside him. She wanted to touch him, to wake him, but she didn’t even know what she’d say when he opened his eyes.

Instead, she pawed at the muddy earth, until the flowers laid so neatly on it were scattered and broken, until the beautiful mink coat was soiled and her arms and face were covered in mud. She dug and dug and tossed the earth aside, reaching deeper for her dead self. She ached for some connection.

At last her fingers hit something hard: the wooden lid of the coffin. She closed her eyes and waited for the kind of flash she’d felt in Moscow, the bolt of memories that had flooded through her when she’d touched the abandoned church gate and felt Luschka’s life.

Nothing.

Just emptiness. Loneliness. A howling white wind.

And Daniel, asleep and unreachable.

She sat back on her heels and sobbed. She didn’t know a thing about the girl who had died. She felt she never would.

“Yoo-hoo,” Bill said quietly from her shoulder. “You’re not in there, you know?”

“What?”

“Think about it. You’re not in there. You’re a fleck of ash by now if you’re anything. You didn’t have a body to bury, Luce.”

“Because of the fire. Oh. But then why …?” she asked, then stopped herself. “My family wanted this.”

“They’re strict Lutherans.” Bill nodded. “Every Müller for a hundred years has a tombstone in this cemetery. So your past self does, too. There’s just nothing under it. Or not quite nothing. Your favorite dress. A childhood doll. Your copy of the Bible. That sort of thing.”

Luce swallowed. No wonder she felt so empty inside. “So Daniel—that’s why he wasn’t looking at the grave.”

“He’s the only one who accepts that your soul is someplace else. He stayed because this is the closest place he can go to hold on to your memory.” Bill swooped down so close to Daniel that the buzz of his stony wings rustled Daniel’s hair. Luce almost pushed Bill away. “He’ll try to sleep until your soul is settled somewhere else. Until you’ve found your next incarnation.”

“How long does that take?”

“Sometimes seconds, sometimes years. But he won’t sleep for years. As much as he’d probably like to.”

Daniel’s movement on the ground made Luce jump.

He stirred in his blanket of snow. An agonized groan escaped his lips.

“What’s happening?” Luce said, dropping to her knees and reaching for him.

“Don’t wake him!” Bill said quickly. “His sleep is riddled with nightmares, but it’s better for him than being awake. Until your soul is settled in a new life, Daniel’s whole existence is a kind of torture.”

Luce was torn between wanting to ease Daniel’s pain and trying to understand that waking him up might only worsen it.

“Like I said, on occasion, he sort of has insomnia … and that’s when it gets really interesting. But you wouldn’t want to see that. Nah.”

“I would,” she said, sitting up. “What happens?”