bare palms being rubbed together. The air seemed to slightly warp, making everything—the brown house, the row of Viennese townhouses surrounding it, even the blue wings of the Scale above—waver. Colors bent, melted. It was like standing inside the cloudy haze over flowing gaso-line.
As before, Luce could both see and not see the Patina. Its amorphous boundary was visible one moment—
with the iridescent transparency of a soap bubble—then it disappeared. But she could
No one spoke, silenced by the wonderment of Dee.
Luce studied the old woman, who was humming so intensely she almost seemed to buzz. Luce was surprised when she sensed the inner Patina was complete. Something that hadn’t felt whole a moment before now did.
Dee nodded, her hands at her heart as if in prayer. “We are in the Patina within the Patina. We are in the heart of safety and security. When I open the outer rim to the Scale, trust that security and remain calm. No harm can come to you.”
She whispered the words again—
Then there was a hole, like a gust of cold air entering a warm room. They shuffled closer together, wings pressing up against each other, Luce in the center. They watched the shifting sky.
A savage shriek came from high above, and a thousand others joined in. The Scale could see it now.
They swarmed toward the hole.
The opening was mostly invisible to Luce, but it must have been directly over the chimney of the brown house.
That was where the Scale headed, like winged ants at-tacking a drop of fallen jam. They thudded to the roof, to the grass, to the eaves of the house. Their cloaks rippled with the impact of rough landings. Their eyes trolled the property—both sensing and not sensing Luce, Dee, and the angels.
Luce held her breath, did not make a sound.
The Scale kept coming. Soon the yard bristled with their stiff blue wings. They surrounded Dee’s inner Patina, casting glances hungry as wolves’ directly at the place where the prey they sought were hiding. But the Scale could not see the angels, the girl, and the transeternal safe inside.
“Where are they?” one of them snarled, his cloak tangling in a sea of blue wings as he pushed through the crowd of his brethren. “They’re here somewhere.”
“Prepare to fly fast and hard to Avignon,” Dee whispered, standing stiffly as a Scale angel with a birthmark splashed across his face leaned in near the limits of their Patina and sniffed like a pig seeking slop.
Arriane’s wings were trembling and Luce knew she was thinking of what the Scale had done to her. Luce reached for her friend’s hand.
“Roland, how about that mighty conflagration?” Daniel said through pursed lips.
“You got it.” Roland interlaced his fingers and furrowed his brow, then gave one hard glance at the brown house. There was a great blast, like a detonating bomb, and the Foundation Library exploded. Scale were sent shrieking into the Patina sky, their cloaks engulfed in fin-gerlike flames.
Roland waved his hand, and the hole where the library had stood became a volcano spewing flames and lava rivers through the lawn. The oak tree caught fire.
Flames spread through its branches as if they were matches in a box. Luce was sweating and dizzy from the heat searing through the Patina, but even as the Scale were blown back by repercussive shock waves, the group inside Dee’s small Patina did not burn.
Dee shouted, “Let’s fly!” just as a tornado of hot, flame-laden air swirled through the yard, swallowing a hundred Scale and lifting them into its blazing core, car-ouseling them across the lawn.
“Ready, Luce?” Daniel’s arms wrapped around her just as Roland’s wrapped tight around Dee. Smoke ricocheted off the walls on the outside of the Patina, but Luce was having a hard time breathing through her sore, bruised neck.
Then Daniel had lifted her off the ground. They flew straight up. Out of the corners of her eyes, Luce saw Roland’s marbled wings on the right, Annabelle and Arriane on the left. All the angels’ wings were beating so fast and hard that they wove a pure blinding brightness, straight up out of the fire and into clear blue air.
But the Patina was still open. The Scale who could still fly had some sense that they were being tricked, trapped. They tried to rise out of the blaze, but Roland sent another wave of flame washing down onto them, thrusting them back into the burning earth, singeing off their crinkled skin until they were skeletons with wings.
“Just another moment . . .” Dee’s fingertips and steady gaze manipulated the boundaries of the Patina.
Luce studied Dee, then the mess of burning Scale. She imagined the Patina cinching at the top like a cloak around a neck, sealing the Scale inside, choking them out.
“All done,” Dee shouted as Roland took her higher through the air.
Luce looked down, beneath her and Daniel’s feet, as the ground sped away from them. She saw the ugly fire blink, then shiver, and then disappear, swallowed into a smoking hidden elsewhere. The street they left below was white, and modern, and full of people who had never sensed anything at all.
The ground was miles beneath them when Luce stopped envisioning Scale wings cooking in red flames.
There was no use looking back. She could only look ahead toward the next relic, toward Cam, Gabbe, and Molly, toward Avignon.
Through gaps in the thin sheets of clouds, the terrain became rocky, dark gray, and mountainous. The winter air grew colder, sharper, and the ceaseless beat of angel wings shattered the quiet at the edges of the atmosphere.
About an hour into the flight, Roland’s marbled wings came into view a few feet below Luce and Daniel.
He carried Dee the same way Daniel carried Luce: shoulders lined up with hers, one arm wrapped over her chest, the other around her waist. Like Luce, Dee crossed her legs at the ankles, and her stiletto heels dangled precari-ously so high above the ground. Roland’s dark muscles casing Dee’s frail, older frame made the pair look almost comical as they came into and out of focus, rippling through the clouds. But the thrilled sparkle in Dee’s eyes made her seem much younger than she was. Strands of her red hair whipped across her cheek, and her scent—cold cream and roses—perfumed the air through which they flew.
“Well, I think the coast is clear,” Dee said.
Luce felt the air around her warble. Her body tensed in preparation for another timequake. But this time, it wasn’t Lucifer’s encroaching Fall causing the ripple. It was Dee, withdrawing the second Patina. A hazy boundary moved closer to Luce’s skin, then passed through her, making her shiver with an untraceable pleasure.
Then it retracted until it was a tiny orb of light around Dee. She closed her eyes and, a moment later, ab- sorbed the Patina into her skin. It was mostly invisible—
and was one of the most beautiful things Luce had ever seen.
Dee smiled and beckoned Luce nearer with a little wave. The two angels carrying them tilted their wings upward so that the ladies could talk.
Dee cupped a hand over her mouth and called to Luce over the wind. “So tell me, dear, how did you two meet?”
Luce felt Daniel’s shoulder shudder behind her with a chuckle. It was a normal question to ask two people in a happy relationship; why did it make Luce miserable?
Because the answer was needlessly complicated.
Because she didn’t even know the answer.
She pressed a hand to the locket at her neck. It bobbed against her skin as Daniel’s wings beat another strong beat. “Well, we went to the same school, and I . . .”
“Oh, Lucinda!” Dee was laughing. “I was teasing. I merely wondered whether you had uncovered the story behind your
“No, Dee,” Daniel said firmly. “She has not learned that yet—”
“I’ve asked, but he won’t tell me.” Luce eyed the ver-tiginous drop below, feeling as far away from the truth of that first meeting as she was from the towns lining the Adriatic Sea over which they were flying. “It drives me crazy that I don’t know.”
