Fallen - By Lauren Kate Page 0,67

herself slide into emotion, which seemed like exactly what everyone was expecting. And - leaving out the appearance of the shadows - the story made a lot of sense.

They'd run for the back door. They'd found the exit at the end of a long corridor. The stairs dropped quickly, steeply off the ledge, and she and Todd had both been running with such force, they couldn't stop themselves from tumbling down the stairs. She lost track of him, hit her head hard enough to wake up here twelve hours later. That was all she remembered.

She left them very little to argue over. There was only her true memory of the night for her to grapple with - on her own.

When it was over, Mr. Schultz gave the police officers an are-you-satisfied tilt of his head, and Miss Sophia beamed at Luce, as if together they'd succeeded at something impossible. Luce's mother let out a long sigh.

"Well mull this over at the station," the thin officer said, closing Luce's file with such resignation, he seemed to want to be thanked for his services.

Then the four of them left the room and she was alone with her parents.

She gave them her very best take-me-home look. Her mom's lip trembled, but her dad only swallowed.

"Randy's going to take you back to Sword & Cross this afternoon," he said. "Don't look so shocked, honey. The doctor said you're fine,"

"More than fine," her mom added, but she sounded uncertain.

Her dad patted her arm. "We'll see you on Saturday. Just a few more days."

Saturday. She closed her eyes. Parents' Day. She'd been looking forward to it from the moment she'd arrived at Sword & Cross, but now everything was tainted by Todd's death. Her parents seemed almost eager to leave her. They had a way of not really wanting to deal with the realities of having a reform school daughter. They were so normal. She couldn't really blame them.

"Get some rest now, Luce," her dad said, bending down to kiss her forehead. "You've had a long, hard night."

"But - "

She was exhausted. She briefly closed her eyes and when she opened them, her parents were already waving from the doorway.

She plucked a plump white flower from the vase and brought it slowly to her face, admiring the deeply lobed leaves and fragile petals, the still-moist drops of nectar inside its center. She breathed in the flower's soft, spicy scent.

She tried to imagine the way they would have looked in Daniel's hands. She tried to imagine where he'd gotten them, and what had been on his mind.

It was such a strange choice of flower. Wild peonies didn't grow in Georgia wetlands. They wouldn't even take to the soil in her father's garden in Thunderbolt. What was more, these didn't look like any peonies Luce had ever seen before. The blooms were as large as cupped palms, and the smell reminded her of something she couldn't quite put her finger on.
Chapter Twelve
INTO DUST

in the hazy dusk over the cemetery, a vulture circled. Two days had passed since Todd's death, and Luce hadn't been able to eat or sleep. She was standing in a sleeveless black dress in the basin of the graveyard, where the whole of Sword & Cross had gathered to pay its respects to Todd. As if one unenthusiastic hourlong ceremony were enough. Especially since the campus's only chapel had been turned into the natatorium, and the ceremony had to be held in the grim swampland of the cemetery.

Since the accident, the school had been on lockdown, and the faculty had been the definition of tight-lipped. Luce had spent the past two days avoiding the stares of the other students, who all eyed her with varying degrees of suspicion. The ones she didn't know very well seemed to look at her with a faint hint of fear. Others, like Roland and Molly, ogled her in a different, much more shameless manner, as if there were something darkly fascinating about her survival. She endured the probing eyes as best she could during class, and was glad at night when Penn dropped by to bring her a steaming mug of ginger tea, or Arriane slipped a dirty Mad Libs under her door.

She was desperate for anything to take her mind off that uneasy, waiting-for-the-other-shoe-to-drop feeling. Because she knew it was coming. In the form of a second visit either from the police, or from the shadows - or both.

That morning, a PA announcement had informed them that the