Passion - By Lauren Kate Page 0,7

Daniil's shadow was thrown far ahead of his body. She focused on summoning it to her. Would it work? Her eyes narrowed, and every muscle in her body tensed. She was still so clumsy at this, never knowing what it took to get the shadow into her hands.

When the dark lines began to quiver, she pounced. She gripped the shadow with both hands and started twirling the dark mass into a ball, just as she'd seen her teachers, Steven and Francesca, do on one of her first days at Shoreline. Just-summoned Announcers were always messy and amorphous. They needed first to be spun into a distinct contour. Only then could they be pulled and stretched into a larger flat surface. Then the Announcer would transform: into a screen through which to glimpse the past--or into a portal through which to step.

This Announcer was sticky, but she soon pulled it apart, guided it into shape. She reached inside and opened the portal.

She couldn't stay here any longer. She had a mission now: to find herself alive in another time and learn what price the Outcasts had referred to, and eventually, to trace the origin of the curse between Daniel and her.

Then to break it.

The others gasped as she manipulated the Announcer.

When did you learn how to do that? Daniil whispered.

Luce shook her head. Her explanation would only baffle Daniil.

Lucinda! The last thing she heard was his voice calling out her true name.

Strange, she'd been looking right at his stricken face but hadn't seen his lips move. Her mind was playing tricks.

Lucinda! he shouted once more, his voice rising in panic, just before Luce dove headfirst into the beckoning darkness.
Chapter One
UNDER FIRE

MOSCOW OCTOBER 15, 1941

Lucinda!

The voices reached her in the murky darkness.

Come back!

Wait!

She ignored them, pressing further. Echoes of her name bounced off the shadowy walls of the Announcer, sending licks of heat rippling across her skin. Was that Daniel's voice or Cam's? Arriane's or Gabbe's? Was it Roland pleading that she come back now, or was that Miles?

The calls grew harder to discern, until Luce couldn't tell them apart at all: good or evil. Enemy or friend. They should have been easier to separate, but nothing was easy anymore. Everything that had once been black and white now blended into gray.

Of course, both sides agreed on one thing: Everyone wanted to pull her out of the Announcer. For her protection, they would claim.

No, thanks.

Not now.

Not after they'd wrecked her parents' backyard, made it into another one of their dusty battlefields. She couldn't think about her parents' faces without wanting to turn back--not like she'd even know how to turn back inside an Announcer, anyway. Besides, it was too late. Cam had tried to kill her. Or what he thought was her. And Miles had saved her, but even that wasn't simple. He'd only been able to throw her reflection because he cared about her too much.

And Daniel? Did he care enough? She couldn't tell.

In the end, when the Outcast had approached her, Daniel and the others had stared at Luce like she was the one who owed them something.

You are our entrance into Heaven, the Outcast had told her. The price. What had that meant? Until a couple of weeks ago she hadn't even known the Outcasts existed. And yet, they wanted something from her--badly enough to battle Daniel for it. It must have had to do with the curse, the one that kept Luce reincarnated lifetime after lifetime. But what did they think Luce could do?

Was the answer buried somewhere here?

Her stomach lurched as she tumbled senselessly through the cold shadow, deep inside the chasm of the dark Announcer.

Luce--

The voices began to fade and grow dimmer. Soon they were barely whispers. Almost like they had given up. Until--

They started to grow louder again. Louder and clearer.

Luce--

No. She clamped her eyes shut to try to block them out.

Lucinda--

Lucy--

Lucia--

Luschka--

She was cold and she was tired and she didn't want to hear them. For once, she wanted to be left alone.

Luschka! Luschka! Luschka!

Her feet hit something with a thwump.

Something very, very cold.

She was standing on solid ground. She knew she wasn't tumbling anymore, though she couldn't see anything in front of her except for the blanket of blackness. Then she looked down at her Converse sneakers.

And gulped.

They were planted in a blanket of snow that reached midway up her calves. The dank coolness that she was used to--the shadowy tunnel she'd been traveling through, out of her backyard, into the past--was giving way