Then Luce saw that one structure stayed still, as if it were invulnerable to the fluctuations of the cosmos. It was a small brown building, a house, in the center of the shuddering white street.
It hadn’t been there a second before. It appeared as though through a waterfall and was visible only for a moment, before it doubled and shimmered and disappeared back into the expansive row of modern, monochrome townhouses.
But for a moment, the house had been there, one fixed thing in all-consuming chaos, both apart from and a part of the Viennese street.
The timequake shuddered to a stop and the world around Luce and the angels stilled. It was never quieter than in those moments right after a quake in time.
“Did you see that?” Roland shouted, gleeful.
Annabelle shook out her wings, smoothing the tips with her fingers. “I’m still recovering from that latest violation. I
“Me too.” Luce shuddered. “I saw something, Roland. A brown house. Was that it? The Foundation Library?”
“Yes.” Daniel flew in a tight circle over the place where Luce had seen the house, zeroing in.
“Maybe those booty-quakes
“Where did the house go?” Luce asked.
“It’s still there. It’s just not here,” Daniel said.
“I’ve heard legends about these things.” Roland ran fingers through his thick gold-black dreads. “But I never really thought they were possible.”
“What things?” Luce squinted to try to see the brown building again. But the row of modern townhouses stayed put. The only movement on the street was bare tree branches leaning in the wind.
“It’s called a Patina,” Daniel said. “It’s a way of bending reality around a unit of time and space—”
“It’s a rearrangement of reality in order to secret something away,” Roland added, flying to Daniel’s side and peering down as if he could still see the house.
“So while this street exists in a continuous line through one reality”—Annabelle waved at the townhouses —“beneath it lays another, independent realm, where this road leads to our Foundation Library.”
“Patinas are the boundary between realities,” Arriane said, thumbs tucked into her overall suspenders. “A laser light show only
“You guys seem to know a lot about these things,” Luce said.
“Yeah,” Arriane scoffed, looking as if she’d like to kick another cloud. “’Cept how to get through one.”
Daniel nodded. “Very few entities are powerful enough to create Patinas, and those that can guard them closely. The library is here. But Arriane’s right. We’ll need to figure out the way in.”
“I heard you need an Announcer to get through one,” Arriane said.
“Cosmic legend.” Annabelle shook her head. “Every Patina is different. Access is entirely up to the creator.
They program the code.”
“I once heard Cam tell a story at a party about how he accessed a Patina,” Roland said. “Or was that a story about a party that he threw in a Patina?”
“Luce!” Daniel said suddenly, making all of them startle in midair. “It’s you. It was always you.” Luce shrugged. “Always me what?”
“You’re the one who always rang the bell. You’re the one who had entry to the library. You just need to ring the bell.”
Luce looked at the empty street, the fog tinting everything around them brown. “What are you talking about? What bell?”
“Close your eyes,” Daniel said. “Remember it. Pass into the past and find the bellpull—”
Luce was already there, back at the library the last time she’d been in Vienna with Daniel. Her feet were firmly on the ground. It was raining and her hair splayed all across her face. Her crimson hair ribbons were soaked, but she didn’t care. She was looking for something.
There was a short path up the courtyard, then a dark alcove outside the library. It had been cold outside, and a fire blazed within. There, in the musty corner near the door, was a woven cord embroidered with white peonies hanging from a substantial silver bell.
She reached into the air and pulled.
The angels gasped. Luce opened her eyes.
There, in the center of the north side of the street, the row of contemporary townhouses was interrupted at its midpoint by a single small brown house. A curl of smoke rose from its chimney. The only light—aside from the angels’ wings—was the dim yellow glow of a lamp on the sill of the house’s front window.
The angels landed softly on the empty street and Daniel’s grip around Luce softened. He kissed her hand.
“You remembered. Well done.”
The brown house was only one story high, and the surrounding townhouses had three levels, so you could see behind the house to parallel streets, more modern white stone townhouses. The house was an anomaly: Luce studied its thatched roof, the gabled gate at the edge of a weed-ridden lawn, the arched wooden asym-metrical front door, all of which made the house look as if it belonged in the Middle Ages.
Luce took a step toward the house and found herself on a sidewalk. Her eyes fell on the large bronze placard pressed into the packed-mud walls. It was a historical marker, which read in big carved letters THE FOUNDATION
LIBRARY, EXT. 1233.
Luce looked around at the otherwise mundane street.
There were recycling bins filled with plastic water bottles, tiny European cars parallel parked so closely that their bumpers were touching, shallow potholes in the road. “So we’re on a real street in Vienna—”
“Exactly,” Daniel said. “If it were daytime, you would see the neighbors, but they wouldn’t see you.”
“Are Patinas common?” Luce asked. “Was there one over the cabin I slept in on the island back in Georgia?”
“They are highly uncommon. Precious, really.” Daniel shook his head. “That cabin was just the most se- cluded safe haven we could find on such short notice.”
“A poor man’s Patina,” Arriane said.
“I.e., Mr. Cole’s summerhouse,” Roland added. Mr. Cole was a teacher at Sword & Cross. He was mortal, but he’d been a friend to the angels since they’d arrived at the school, and was covering for Luce now that she’d left. It was thanks to Mr. Cole that her parents weren’t more worried than usual about her.
“How are they made?” Luce asked.
Daniel shook his head. “No one knows that except the Patina’s artist. And there are very few of those. You remember my friend Dr. Otto?”
She nodded. The doctor’s name had been on the tip of her tongue.
“He lived here for several hundred years—and even he didn’t know how this Patina got here.” Daniel studied the building. “I don’t know who the librarian is now.”
“Let’s go,” Roland said. “If the desideratum is here, we need to find it and get out of Vienna before the Scale regroup and track us down.”
He slid open the latch on the gate and held it aside for the others to pass. The pebble path leading to the brown house was overgrown with wild purple freesia and tangled white orchids filling the air with their sweet scent.
The group reached the heavy wooden door with its arched top and flat iron knocker, and Luce grabbed Daniel’s hand. Annabelle rapped on the door.
No answer.
Then Luce looked up and saw a bellpull, woven with the same stitches as the one she’d rung in the air. She glanced at Daniel. He nodded.
She pulled and the door creaked slowly open, as if the house itself had been expecting them. They peered into a candlelit hallway so long Luce couldn’t see where it ended. The interior was far bigger than its exterior suggested; its ceilings were low and curved, like a rail-road tunnel through a mountain. Everything was made of a
