How It All Goes Down
Where There's Smoke
- While Luce might be trying to give the Daniel thing a break, Penn, ever the helpful sleuth, is not.
- As soon as the lecture is over, Penn tries to grab Luce to take her to the library—but not before Cam intercepts, offering Luce a necklace with a snake on it and asking if she wants to sneak out of the school sometime with him.
- Luce, torn between wanting to learn more about Daniel with Penn and wanting to spend time with Cam, who makes her feel like a cooler version of herself, eventually waves Cam off and goes with Penn.
- Penn takes Luce to the library, first showing her a roster of the students who have showed up at Sword & Cross for the past five years, and then showing her that there's record of Daniel's family right in their library, in the form of a book: Grigori, D. The Watchers: Myth and Medieval Europe. Seraphim Press, Rome, 1755. (10.52).
- Well, this proves that Daniel has at least one ancestor. It also seems that his ancestors were really committed to the whole studying angels thing.
- It might also prove that Daniel had another ancestor named Daniel.
- Might this also have any connection to the wings that Luce claims to have maybe seen framing Daniel at the lake? Or is that too on the nose?
- Hold that thought
- While Luce and Penn wander toward the back of the library, Luce has another run-in with one of those terrible shadows and swats it away from Penn. It's the second time she has successfully interacted with one of these things.
- After the run-in with the shadow, the girls discover that the book has been checked out, leaving Luce and Penn with nothing more than a library card and the promise of more information.
- Luce waits for Penn to check in with Miss Sophia about where the book might have gone. Luce sits in the back of the stack to wait for her, having kind of an uneventful time.
- Except for when the library spontaneously catches on fire.
- Because libraries apparently do that.
- Luce, left in the back of the library without a Penn in sight, stumbles toward the exit, picking up Todd, a fellow student, on the way.
- While the two try to escape the smoky building, Luce sees her ever-dependable shadows guarding the back exit, because they're clearly meanies.
- But before Luce can rouse Todd's energy enough to get them both out of the library, something carries them both to safety, something neither Luce nor Todd can explain.
- Luce doesn't have a chance to find out what it is before she faints away, the stress of the shadows and the fire too much for her.
- Sure, sounds like our typical adventure to the library, too.