Fallen - By Lauren Kate Page 0,44

he whispered her name that day, the near touch of their noses, the way she'd felt his fingertips on her neck - all of it made her feel hot.

And pathetic. She sighed and turned away from the window, realizing Penn had moved on, too.

She was picking things up off Luce's desk, giving each of Luce's possessions careful scrutiny. The Statue of Liberty paperweight her dad had brought back from a conference at NYU, the picture of her mom with a hilariously bad perm when she was around Luce's age, the eponymous Lucinda Williams CD Callie had given her as a going-away present before Luce had ever heard the name Sword & Cross.

"Where are your books?" she asked Penn, wanting to detour around a trip down memory lane. "You said you were coming over to study."

By then, Penn had begun to riffle through her wardrobe. Luce watched as she quickly lost interest in the variations of dress code-style black T-shirts and sweaters. When Penn moved toward her dresser drawers, Luce stepped forward to intercept.

"Okay, that's enough, Snoop," she said. "Isn't there research we should be doing on family trees?"

"Speaking of snooping." Penn's eyes twinkled. "Yes, there is research we should be doing. But not the kind you're thinking."

Luce stared at her blankly. "Huh?"

"Look." Penn put her hand on Luce's shoulder. "If you really want to know about Daniel Grigori - "

"Shhh!" Luce hissed, jumping to close her door. She stuck her head into the hall and scanned the scene.

The coast looked clear - but that didn't mean anything. People at this school had a suspicious way of appearing out of nowhere. Cam in particular. And Luce would die if he - or anyone - found out how enamored of Daniel she was. Or, at this point, anyone but Penn.

Satisfied, Luce closed and locked the door and turned back to her friend. Penn was sitting cross-legged at the edge of Luce's bed. She looked amused.

Luce locked her hands behind her back and dug her toe into the circular red rug near her door. "What makes you think I want to know anything about him?"

"Give me a break," Penn said, laughing. "A, it's totally obvious that you stare at Daniel Grigori all the time."

"Shhh!" Luce said again.

"B," Penn said, not dropping her voice, "I watched you stalk him online for an entire class the other day.

Sue me - but you were being totally shameless. And C, don't get all paranoid. You think I blab to anyone at this school besides you?"

Penn did have a point.

"I'm only saying," she continued, "assuming hypothetically you did want to know more about a certain unnamed person, you could conceivably bark up a more fruitful tree." Penn shrugged one shoulder.

"You know, if you had help."

"I'm listening," Luce said, sinking down on the bed. Her Internet search the other day had only amounted to typing, then deleting, then retyping Daniel's name into the search field.

"I was hoping you'd say that," Penn said. "I didn't bring books with me today because I'm giving you" -

she widened her eyes goofily - "a guided tour of the highly off-limits underground lair of Sword & Cross office records!"

Luce grimaced. "I don't know. Prying into Daniel's files? I'm not sure I need another reason to feel like a crazy stalker girl."

"Ha." Penn snickered. "And yes, you did just say that out loud, Come on, Luce. It'll be fun. Besides, what else are you going to do on a perfectly sunny Saturday morning?"

It was a nice day - precisely the kind of nice that made you feel lonely if you didn't have anything fun and outdoorsy planned. In the middle of the night, Luce had felt a cool front brush through her open window, and when she'd awoken this morning, the heat and humidity had all but disappeared.

She used to spend these golden early-fall days tearing up the neighborhood bike path with her friends.

That was before she started avoiding the woodsy trail because of the shadows none of the other girls ever saw. Before her friends sat her down one day during recess and said their parents didn't want them inviting her over anymore, in case she had an incident.

Truth was, Luce had been a little panicked about how she'd spend this first weekend at Sword & Cross.

No classes, no terrorizing physical fitness tests, no social events on the docket. Just forty-eight endless hours of free time. An eternity. She'd had a queasy homesick feeling all morning - until Penn showed up.

"Okay." Luce tried not