Fallen - By Lauren Kate Page 0,83

no-rain window outside and I don't have an umbrella."

Mostly dry and back in her school uniform, Luce followed Penn to the library. Part of the front portion had been blocked off by yellow police tape, so the girls had to slip through the narrow space between the card catalog and the reference section. It still smelled like a bonfire, and now, thanks to the sprinklers and the rain, possessed an added mildewy quality.

Luce took her first look at where Miss Sophia's desk had sat, now a charred, nearly perfect circle on the old tile floor in the library's center. Everything in a fifteen-foot radius had been removed.

Everything beyond that was strangely undamaged.

The librarian wasn't at her station, but a folding card table had been set up for her next to the burned spot. The table was depressingly bare, save for a new lamp, a pencil jar, and a gray pad of sticky notes.

Luce and Penn gave each other a that-sucks grimace before they continued to the computer stations at the back. When they passed the study section where they'd last seen Todd, Luce glanced over at her friend. Penn kept her face forward, but when Luce reached over and squeezed her hand, Penn squeezed back pretty hard.

They pulled two chairs up to one computer terminal, and Penn typed in her user name. Luce glanced around just to make sure no one else was nearby. A red error box popped up on the screen.

Penn groaned.

"What?" Luce asked.

"After four, you need special permission to access the Web."

"That's why this place is always so empty at night."

Penn was rooting through her backpack. "Where did I put that encrypted password?" she mumbled.

"There's Miss Sophia," Luce said, flagging down the librarian, who was crossing the aisle in a black fitted blouse and bright green cropped pants. Her shimmery earrings dusted her shoulders, and she had a pencil poked into the side of her hair. "Over here," Luce whispered loudly.

Miss Sophia squinted at them. Her bifocals had slipped down her nose, and with a stack of books under each arm, she didn't have a free hand to push them up. "Who's that?" she called, walking over.

"Oh, Lucinda. Pennyweather," she said, sounding tired. "Hello."

"We were wondering if you could give us the password to use the computer," Luce asked, pointing at the error message on the screen.

"You're not doing social networking, are you? Those sites are the devil's work."

"No, no, this is serious research," Penn said. "You'd approve."

Miss Sophia leaned over the girls to unlock the computer. Fingers flying, she typed in the longest password Luce had ever seen. "You have twenty minutes," she said flatly, walking away.

"That should be enough," Penn whispered. "I found a critical essay on the Watchers, so until we track down the book, we can at least read up on what it's about."

Luce sensed someone standing behind her and turned around to see that Miss Sophia had returned. Luce jumped. "I'm sorry," she said. "I don't know why you scared me."

"No, I'm the one who's sorry," Miss Sophia said. Her smile practically made her eyes disappear. "It's just been so hard recently, since the fire. But there's no reason for me to take my sorrow out on two of my most promising students."

Neither Luce nor Penn really knew what to say. It was one thing to comfort each other after the fire.

Reassuring the school librarian seemed a little bit out of their league.

"I've been trying to keep busy, but ..." Miss Sophia trailed off.

Penn glanced nervously at Luce. "Well, we might be able to use some help with our research, if, that is, you - "

"I can help!" Miss Sophia tugged over a third chair, "I see you're looking into the Watchers," she said, reading over their shoulders. "The Grigoris were a very influential clan. And I just happen to know of a papal database. Let me see what I can pull up."

Luce nearly choked on the pencil she'd been chewing. "I'm sorry, did you say Grigoris?"

"Oh yes, historians have traced them back to the Middle Ages. They were ..." She paused, searching for the words. "A sort of research cluster, to put it in modern layperson's terms. They specialized in a certain type of fallen-angel folklore."

She reached between the girls again and Luce marveled as her fingers raced across the keyboard. The search engine struggled to keep up, pulling up article after article, primary source after primary source, all on the Grigoris. Daniel's family name was everywhere, filling up the screen.