Roland was back—but blood pooled from the place Barach had ripped that false pennon from his wings.

  Daniel reached for Luce’s hand, pulling her toward the other two bound angels. He had watched and learned from Luce. He went to work on Annabelle, while Luce knelt before Arriane. Arriane could not stay still. The cloak was cinched so tightly around her that Luce almost cringed to look at her.

  Their eyes locked. Arriane made a noise that Luce took to mean she was glad to see Luce’s face. Luce’s eyes watered as she remembered her first day at Sword & Cross, when she’d seen Arriane endure electroshock therapy. The ultra-cool angel had seemed so fragile then, and though Luce had barely known the girl, she’d felt an urge to protect Arriane, they way you did with old friends. That urge had only strengthened over time.

  A hot tear slipped down her cheek and landed in the center of Arriane’s chest. Luce whispered the Aramaic words, hearing Daniel whisper them to Annabelle at the same time. She glanced at him. His cheeks were wet.

  All at once the knots loosened, then unraveled completely. The angels were free by Luce’s and Daniel’s hands—and hearts.

  A gust was generated by the release of Arriane’s awe-some iridescent wings, followed by a gentler breeze from Annabelle’s lustrous silver ones. The room was almost silent in the moments before both girls’ gags came off.

  Arriane also had a piece of duct tape over her mouth; she’d probably been the reason the others had been gagged in the first place. Daniel grabbed a corner of the tape and ripped it off quickly with a cricccck.

  “Hot damn! It’s good to be free!” Arriane shouted, dabbing the swollen red square of skin around her mouth with her fingers. “Three cheers for the knot master, Lucinda!” Her voice had its sparkle, but her eyes were dotted with tears. She noticed Luce notice, and wiped them quickly away.

  She paced around the wing-strewn floor, making different taunting faces at each of the unconscious Scale, lunging like she was about to hit them. Her denim overalls were torn almost to shreds, her hair was wild and greasy, and she had a bruise the shape of Australia on her left cheekbone. The bottom tips of her iridescent wings were bent and dragging on the littered floor.

  “Arriane,” Luce whispered. “You’re hurt.”

  “Aw shucks, kid, don’t worry ’bout me.” Arriane offered a lopsided grin. “I’m feeling sprightly enough to kick some scaly old Scale ass!” She looked around the room. “’Cept it looks like the Outcasts beat me to it.” Annabelle rose more slowly than Arriane, spreading, then flexing her muscular silver wings, stretching her long limbs like a ballerina. But when she looked up at Luce and Arriane, she smiled and cocked her head. “There must be something we can do to pay them back.”

  Arriane’s wings fluttered and she lifted a few feet off the ground, flying around the museum wing in great circles, scanning the wreckage. “I’ll think of something—”

  “Arriane,” Roland warned, looking up from a whispered conversation he’d been having with Daniel.

  “Whaa?” Arriane pouted. “You never let me have any fun anymore, Ro.”

  “We don’t have time for fun,” Daniel told her.

  “These fossils tortured us for hours,” Annabelle called from the top of the lion’s head. “We might as well return the favor.”

  “No,” Roland said. “Enough priceless damage has been done. We should spend our energy finding the second relic.”

  “At least let us make sure they stay down while we do that,” Annabelle said.

  Roland looked at Daniel, who nodded.

  With a smile, Annabelle flitted to a table against the back wall of the warehouse. She turned on a faucet, humming to herself. She poured what Luce assumed must be plaster of Paris or some other casting agent into a bucket and started adding water.

  “Arriane,” she said with bravado. “A hand, please.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Arriane took the first bucket from Annabelle and flew over the semiconscious Scale, smiling sweetly. Slowly, she began to pour the wet slurry over their heads. It slopped down their sides and gathered in a pool between their bodies. A few of them struggled against the thickening mixture, which was hardening quickly into a kind of artificial quicksand. Luce recognized the genius of the plan. In a few moments, when it dried, they would be stuck in their sprawled positions in rocklike plaster.

  “This is not wise!” one of the Scale burbled through the wet plaster.

  “We’re making you monuments to Justice!” Annabelle shouted.

  “You know, I think I prefer the Scale when they’re plastered.” Arriane laughed, betraying more than a tinge of vengeful glee.

  The girls kept pouring, bucket after bucket, a full bucket over the threatening angels’ heads, until their voices did not carry anymore, until the Outcasts had no need to stand over the Scale with their starshots.

  Daniel and Roland stood apart from the group, arguing in hushed voices. Luce stared at Arriane’s purple bruise, at the blood on Roland’s wings, at the gash in Annabelle’s shoulder.

  Then she had an idea.

  She reached inside the satchel and pulled out three small bottles of diet soda and a handful of starshots in their silver sheath. She twisted off the caps.

  Quickly, she dipped a starshot into each one, holding the bottles as they boiled and steamed, letting the brown liquid inside turn to silver. Finally, she rose from the corner where she’d been crouched, and was pleased to find a Chinese porcelain tray that had somehow survived the battle.

  “Here, everyone,” she said.

  Daniel and Roland stopped talking.

  Arriane stopped dousing the Scale with wet plaster.

  Annabelle alighted on the lion statue’s mane again.

  None of them said anything, but all of them looked impressed as they claimed their bottles, clinked each other’s in celebration, and drank.

  Unlike the Outcast Daedalus, the angels didn’t have to close their eyes and go to sleep after they’d downed the transformed soda. Maybe because they weren’t as badly beaten, or maybe because this higher form of angel had a higher tolerance. Nonetheless, the drink calmed them.

  As a final gesture, Roland clapped his hands, igniting a powerful flame between them. He threw waves of heat toward the plastered Scale, glazing their plaster coating, making it harder to escape than their cloaks.

  When he was finished, Roland, Arriane, Annabelle, and Luce sat down on one of the tall tables facing Daniel.

  Daniel reached for the satchel and unzipped it to show the others the halo.

  Arriane gasped in awe and reached out to touch it.

  “You found it.” Annabelle winked at Luce. “Proper!”

  “What about the second relic?” Daniel asked. “Did you get it? Did the Scale take it from you?” Annabelle shook her head. “We never found it.”

  “We sure fooled them,” Arriane said, narrowing her eyes in the direction of the Scale. “They thought they could beat it out of us.”

  “Your book is too vague, Daniel,” Roland said. “We came to Vienna looking for a list.”

  “The desideratum,” Daniel said. “I know.”

  “But that was all we knew. In the hours between our arrival and our capture by the Scale, we went to seven different city archives and found nothing. It was foolish.

  We attracted too much attention.”

  “It’s my fault,” Daniel muttered. “I should have uncovered more when I wrote that book centuries ago. I was too impulsive and impatient in that era. Now I can’t recall what led me to the desideratum, or precisely what it says.”

  Roland shrugged. “It might not have mattered anyway. The city was a minefield by the time we arrived. If we’d had the desideratum, they would have only taken it away. They would have destroyed it, the way they’ve caused the destruction of this art.”

  “Most of these pieces were forgeries anyway,” Daniel said, making Luce feel a little less guilty about what they’d done to the museum. “And for now the Outcasts can handle the Scale. The rest of us must hurry to find the desideratum. You say you went inside the Hofburg Library?”

  Roland nodded.

  “What about the university library?”

  “Um, yeah,” Annabelle said, “and we probably shouldn’t show our faces there anytime soon. Arriane destroyed several very valuable parchment scrolls in their Special Collections—”

  “Hey,” Arriane snapped, indignant. “I glued them back together!”

  A thunder of footfalls sounded in the hallway and all heads shot toward the open archway. At least twenty more Scale were attempting to fly into the room, but the Outcasts held them at the doorway with their starshots.

  One of them spotted the halo in Daniel’s hand and gasped. “They have stolen the first relic.”

  “And they are working together! Angels and demons and”—narrowed eyes fell on Luce—“those who do not know their place, all working together for an impure cause. The Throne does not endorse this. You will never find the desiderata!”

  “Desiderata,” Luce said, faintly recalling a long boring lesson in her Latin class at Dover. “That’s . . . singular.” She spun around to face Daniel. “You said desideratum a moment ago. That’s plural.”

  “Desired thing,” Daniel whispered. His violet eyes began to pulse, and soon his entire being seemed to be glowing—a smile of recognition spread across his face.

  “It’s just one thing. That’s right.”

  Then the deep gong of a church tower clock sounded somewhere in the distance.

  It was midnight.

  Lucifer was another day closer. Six days to go.

  “Daniel Grigori,” Phil shouted over the bells, “we cannot hold them forever. You and your angels must go.”

  “We’re leaving,” Daniel called back. “Thank you.” He faced the angels. “We will visit every library, every archive in this city until—”

  Roland looked doubtful. “There must be hundreds of libraries in Vienna.”

  “And maybe let’s try not to be so destructive in them?” Annabelle suggested, tilting her head at Arriane.

  “Mortals care about their pasts, too.” Yes, Luce thought, mortals cared very much about their pasts. Memories of her past lives were coming to her more frequently. She couldn’t stop or slow them. As the angels readied their wings to fly, Luce stood still, de-bilitated by the most intense flashback.

  Crimson hair ribbons. Daniel and the Christmas market. A slushy rainstorm and she hadn’t had a coat. The last time she’d been in Vienna . . . there had been more to that story . . . something else . . . a doorbell—

  “Daniel.” Luce gripped his shoulder. “What about the library you took me to? Remember?” She closed her eyes. She wasn’t thinking so much as feeling through a memory buried shallowly in her brain. “We came to Vienna for the weekend . . . I don’t remember when, but we went to see Mozart conduct The Magic Flute . . . at the Theater an der Wien? You wanted to see this friend of yours who worked at some old library, his name was—”

  She broke off, because when she opened her eyes, the others were staring at her, incredulous. No one, least of all Luce, had expected her to be the one to remember where they would find the desiderata.

  Daniel recovered first. He flashed her a funny smile Luce knew was full of pride. But Arriane, Roland, and Annabelle continued to gape at her as if they’d suddenly learned she spoke Chinese. Which, come to think of it, she did.

  Arriane wiggled a finger around inside her ear. “Do I need to ease up on the psychedelics, or did LP just recall one of her past lives unprompted at the most crucial juncture ever?”

  “You’re a genius,” Daniel said, leaning forward and kissing her deeply.

  Luce blushed and leaned in to extend the kiss a little longer, but then heard a cough.

  “Seriously, you two,” Annabelle said. “There will be time enough for snogs if we pull this off.”

  “I’d say ‘get a room’ but I’m afraid we’d never see you again,” Arriane added, which caused them all to laugh.

  When Luce opened her eyes, Daniel had spread his wings wide. The tips brushed away broken bits of plaster and blocked the Scale angels from view. Slung over his shoulder was the black leather satchel with the halo.

  The Outcasts gathered the scattered starshots back into their silver sheaths. “Wingspeed, Daniel Grigori.”

  “To you as well.” Daniel nodded at Phil. He spun Luce around so her back was pressed to his chest and his arms fit snugly around her waist. They clasped hands over her heart.

  “The Foundation Library,” Daniel said to the other angels. “Follow me, I know exactly where it is.”

  NINE

  THE DESIDERATA

  Fog engulfed the angels. They flew back over the river, four pairs of wings making a tremendous throosh each time they beat. They stayed low enough to the ground that the muted orange glow of sodium lampposts looked like airport runway lights. But this flight did not land.

  Daniel was tense. Luce could feel it running all through his body: in both his arms around her waist, in his shoulders aligned with hers, even in the manner his broad wings beat above them. She knew how he felt; she was as anxious to get to the Foundation Library as Daniel’s grip suggested he was.

  Only a few landmarks cut through the fog. There was the towering spire of the massive Gothic church, and there the darkened Ferris wheel, its empty red cabins swaying in the night. There was the green copper dome of the palace where they’d landed when they first arrived in Vienna.

  But wait—they’d passed the palace already. Maybe half an hour earlier. Luce had tried to look for Olianna, who the Scale angel had knocked unconscious. She hadn’t seen her on the roof then, and she didn’t see her now.

  Why were they circling? Were they lost?

  “Daniel?”

  He didn’t answer.

  Church bells rang in the distance. It was their fourth ringing since Luce, Daniel, and the others had taken off through the shattered skylight at the museum. They’d been flying for a long time. Could it really be three o’clock in the morning?

  “Where is it?” Daniel muttered under his breath, banking to the left, following the groove of the river, then breaking from it to trace a broad avenue lined with darkened department stores. Luce had seen this street already, too. They were flying in circles.

  “I thought you said you knew exactly where it was!”

  Arriane dipped out of the formation they’d been flying in—Daniel and Luce at the front, with Roland, Arriane, and Annabelle forming a tight triangle behind them—

  and swooped down about ten feet below Daniel and Luce, close enough to talk. Her hair was wild and frizzy and her iridescent wings flickered in and out of the fog.

  “I do know where it is,” Daniel said. “At least, I know where it was. ”

  “You’ve got an circuitous sense of direction, Daniel.”

  “Arriane.” Roland used the warning tone he reserved for those too frequent occasions when Arriane went too far. “Let him concentrate.”

  “Yeah yeah yeah.” Arriane rolled her eyes. “Better return to ‘formation.’” Arriane beat her wings the way some girls batted their eyelashes, flashed a peace sign with her fingers, and fell back.

  “Okay, so where was the library?” Luce asked.

  Daniel sighed, drew in his wings slightly, and dropped fifty feet straight down. Cold wind blasted Luce in the face. Her stomach surged up as they plummeted, then settled when Daniel stopped abruptly, as if he’d landed on an invisible tightrope, over a residential street.

  It was quiet and empty and dark, just two long stretches of stone townhouses spanning either side. Shut-ters were drawn for the night. Tiny cars rested in narrow angled spaces on the street. Young urban oak trees punctuated the cobbled sidewalk that ran along the small well-maintained front yards.

  The other angels hovered on either side of Daniel and Luce, about twenty feet above street level.

  “This is where it was,” Daniel said. “It was here. Six blocks from the river, just west of Türkenschanzpark. I swear it was. None of this”—he waved his hand at the stretch of indistinguishable stone townhouses below—

  “was here.”

  Annabelle frowned and hugged her knees to her chest, her silver wings beating softly to keep her aloft.

  Her crossed ankles revealed hot-pink striped socks peeking out from her jeans. “Do you think it was destroyed?”

  “If it was,” Daniel said, “I have no idea how to recover it.”

  “We’re screwed,” Arriane said, kicking a cloud in frustration. She glared at its wispy tendrils, which ambled eastward, unaffected. “That’s never as satisfying as I think it’s going to be.”

  “Maybe we go to Avalon,” Roland suggested. “See if Cam’s group has had any more luck.”

  “We need all three relics,” Daniel said.

  Luce pivoted slightly in Daniel’s arms to face him.

  “It’s just a hitch. Think about what we had to go through in Venice. But we got the halo. We’ll get the desiderata, too. That’s all that matters. When was the last time any of us were at this library, two hundred years ago? Of course things are going to change. It doesn’t mean we give up. We’ll just have to . . . just have to—” Everyone was looking at her. But Luce didn’t know what to do. She only knew that they couldn’t give up.

  “The kid’s right,” Arriane said. “We don’t give up.

  We—”

  Arriane broke off when her wings began to rattle.

  Then Annabelle yelped. Her body tossed in the air as her wings shuddered, too. Daniel’s hands shook against Luce as the foggy night sky morphed into that peculiar gray—the color of a rainstorm on the horizon—that Luce now recognized as the color of a timequake.

  Lucifer.

  She could almost hear the hiss of his voice, feel his breath against her neck.

  Luce’s teeth chattered, but she felt it deeper, too, in her core, raw and turbulent, as if everything inside her were being wound up like a chain.

  The buildings below shimmered. Lampposts doubled. The very atoms of the air seemed to fracture. Luce wondered what the quake was doing to the townspeople below, dreaming in their beds. Could they feel this? If not, she envied them.