She should have been thrilled by the prospect of a full night’s rest—with Daniel at her side!—but something was nagging at her.

  “I need to tell you something.” She faced him on the path. An owl hooted from the pine tree and the water lapped along the shore, but otherwise the dark island was quiet.

  “I know.”

  “You know?”

  “I saw.” Daniel’s eyes went stormy gray. “He tricked you, didn’t he?”

  “Yes!” Luce cried, burning with the shame of it.

  “How long was he with you?” Daniel fidgeted, almost as if he were trying to suppress jealousy.

  “A long time.” Luce winced. “But it gets worse—he’s planning something terrible.”

  “He is always planning something terrible,” Daniel muttered.

  “No, this was big.” She stepped into Daniel’s arms and pressed her hands to his chest. “He told me—he said he wanted to wipe the slate clean.”

  Daniel’s grip tightened around her waist. “He said what?”

  “I didn’t understand everything. He said he was going back to the Fall to open up an Announcer and take all the angels with him from that moment straight into the present. He said he was going to—”

  “Wipe clean the time between. Wipe clean our existence,” Daniel said hoarsely.

  “Yes.”

  “No.” He grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the cabin. “They could be spying on us. Sophia. The Outcasts. Anyone. Come inside where it’s safe. You must tell me everything he said, Luce, everything.”

  Daniel practically ripped open the red wooden door of the cabin, bolting it behind them. An instant later, before they could do anything else, a pair of arms engulfed both Luce and Daniel in a giant hug.

  “You’re safe.” The voice broke with relief.

  Cam. Luce turned her head to see the demon dressed all in black, like the “uniform” they’d worn at Sword & Cross. His massive golden wings were pulled back behind his shoulders. They sent sparkles of light reflecting off the walls. His skin was pale and he looked gaunt; his eyes stood out like emeralds.

  “We’re back,” Daniel said warily, clapping Cam on the shoulder. “I’m not sure I would say safe.”

  Cam’s gaze swept carefully over Luce. Why was he here? Why did Daniel seem happy to see him?

  Daniel led Luce to the worn wicker rocking chair near the crackling hearth and gestured for her to sit. She collapsed into the chair, and he sat on the arm, resting his hand on her back.

  The cabin was as she remembered it: warm and dry and smelling like cinnamon. The narrow canvas cot in the corner where she had slept was neatly made. There was the narrow wooden ladder leading up to the small loft that overlooked the main room. The green lamp still hung from a rafter.

  “How did you know to come here?” Daniel asked Cam.

  “Roland read something in the Announcers this morning. He thought you might be coming back—and that something else might be developing.” Cam eyed Daniel. “Something that affects us all.”

  “If what Luce says is true, this is not something any of us can take on alone.”

  Cam tilted his head at Luce. “I know. The others are on their way. I took the liberty of spreading the word.”

  Just then, in the loft, a window shattered. Daniel and Cam shot to their feet.

  “Just us!” Arriane’s voice sang down. “We’ve got Nephilim in tow, so we travel with the grace of a college hockey team.”

  A great burst of light—gold and silver—from above made the walls of the cabin shudder. Luce jumped to her feet just in time to see Arriane, Roland, Gabbe, Molly, and Annabelle—the girl Luce had realized in Helston was an angel—slowly floating down from the rafters, all with their wings extended. Together they were a myriad of colors: black and gold, white and silver. The colors stood for different sides, but here they were. Together.

  A moment later, Shelby and Miles thundered down the wooden ladder. They were still dressed in the clothes—Shelby’s green sweater and Miles’s jeans and baseball cap—that they’d worn to Thanksgiving dinner, which seemed like an eternity ago.

  Luce felt like she was dreaming. It was so wonderful to see these familiar faces right now—faces that she’d truly wondered if she would ever see again. The only people missing were her parents, of course, and Callie, but she would see them soon enough.

  Starting with Arriane, the angels and Nephilim all circled Luce and Daniel in another massive hug. Even Annabelle, whom Luce barely knew. Even Molly.

  Suddenly, everyone was shouting over everyone else—

  Annabelle, batting shimmering pink eyelids: “When did you get back? We have so much to catch up on!” And Gabbe, kissing Luce on the cheek: “I hope you were careful … and I hope you saw what you needed to see.” And Arriane: “Did you bring us back anything good?” And Shelby, out of breath: “We were searching for you for, like, ever. Weren’t we, Miles?” And Roland: “Pretty cool to see you made it home in one piece, kid.” And Daniel, silencing them all with the gravity of his tone: “Who brought the Nephilim?”

  “I did.” Molly draped an arm around Shelby and Miles. “You got something to say about it?”

  Daniel cast his eyes over Luce’s Shoreline friends. Before she had a chance to stick up for them, the corners of his lips pulled upward into a smile, and he said, “Good. We’re going to need all the help we can get. Everyone sit down.”

  “Lucifer can’t mean it,” Cam said, shaking his head, stunned. “This is just a desperate last resort. He wouldn’t—He was probably just trying to get Luce to—”

  “He would,” Roland said.

  They were spread out in a circle near the fire, facing Luce and Daniel on the rocking chair. Gabbe had found hot dogs and marshmallows and packets of powdered hot chocolate in the kitchen cupboard and had set up a little cook station in front of the fire.

  “He would rather start again than to lose his pride,” Molly added. “Besides, he has nothing to lose by erasing the past.”

  Miles dropped his hot dog and the plate clattered on the hardwood floor. “Wouldn’t that mean Shelby and I—wouldn’t exist anymore? And what about Luce, where would she be?”

  No one answered. Luce felt embarrassingly aware of her nonangelic status. A hot flush spread across the tops of her shoulders.

  “How are we still here if time has been rewritten?” Shelby asked.

  “Because they haven’t finished their fall yet,” Daniel said. “When they do, the act is done and can’t be stopped.”

  “So we have—” Arriane counted under her breath. “Nine days.”

  “Daniel?” Gabbe looked up at him. “Tell us what we can do.”

  “There is only one thing to do,” Daniel said. All the glowing wings in the cabin pulled toward him in expectation. “We must draw everyone to the place where the angels first fell.”

  “Which is where?” Miles asked.

  No one spoke for a very long time.

  “It’s hard to say,” Daniel finally answered. “It happened long ago, and we were all new to Earth. But”—he glanced at Cam—“we do have means of figuring it out.”

  Cam whistled lowly. Was he afraid?

  “Nine days isn’t a lot of time to locate the site of the Fall,” Gabbe said. “Let alone figure out how to stop Lucifer if and when we do arrive.”

  “We have to try.” Luce answered without thinking, surprised by her own certainty.

  Daniel scanned the gathering of angels, the so-called demons, and the Nephilim. His gaze encompassed them all, his family. “We’re in this together, then? All of us?” At last, his eyes rested on Luce.

  And though she couldn’t imagine tomorrow, Luce stepped into Daniel’s arms and said, “Always.”

  PROLOGUE

  NEVER TEAR US APART

  Cam’s boots touched down on the eaves of the old church beneath a cold and starry sky. He drew his wings close and gazed out at the landscape. Spanish moss, white in the moonlight, hung like icicles from antebellum trees. Cinder-block buildings framed a weedy field and a pair of splintery bleachers. Wind rustled in from the sea.

  Winter break at Sword & Cross Reform School. Not a soul on campus. What was he doing here?

  It was minutes after midnight, and he’d just flown in from Troy. He’d made the journey in a haze, an unknown force guiding his wings. He found himself humming a tune he hadn’t let himself remember for several thousand years. Maybe he’d come back here because this was where the fallen angels had met Luce in her last, cursed life. It had been her three hundred and twenty-fourth incarnation—and the three hundred and twenty-fourth time the fallen angels had flocked together to see how the curse would play out.

  The curse was broken now. Luce and Daniel were free.

  And dammit if Cam wasn’t jealous.

  His gaze swept across the cemetery. He would never have guessed he’d feel nostalgic for this junkyard, but there had been something thrilling about those early days at Sword & Cross. Lucinda’s spark had been brighter, keeping the angels guessing when they’d once believed they knew what to expect.

  For six millennia, each time she turned seventeen, they’d staged a variation of the same performance: the demons—Cam, Roland, and Molly—tried everything to sway Luce’s alliances to Lucifer, while the angels—Arriane and Gabbe and sometimes Annabelle—worked to usher Luce back into Heaven’s fold. Neither side had ever come close to winning her over.

  For every time Luce met Daniel—and she always met Daniel—nothing mattered as much as their love. Time and again, they fell for each other, and time and again, Luce died in a blaze of fire.

  Then, one night at Sword & Cross, everything changed. Daniel kissed Lucinda, and she lived. They all knew it then. Luce was finally going to be allowed to choose.

  A few weeks later they all flew to the site of their original fall, to Troy, where Lucinda chose her destiny. She and Daniel again refused to side with Heaven or with Hell. Instead, they chose each other. They gave up their immortality to spend one mortal lifetime together.

  Luce and Daniel were gone now, but they were still on Cam’s mind. Their triumphant love made him yearn for something he dared not put into words.

  He was humming again. That song. Even after all this time, he remembered it… .

  He closed his eyes and saw its singer: the back of her red hair woven loosely in a braid, her long fingers caressing the strings of a lyre as she leaned against a tree.

  He hadn’t let himself think of her in thousands of years. Why now?

  “This can’s busted,” a familiar voice said. “Toss me another?”

  Cam spun around. No one was there.

  He noticed a flicker of movement through the shattered stained-glass window on the roof. He edged forward and peered down through it, into the chapel Sophia Bliss had used as her office when she was the Sword & Cross librarian.

  Inside the chapel, Arriane’s iridescent wings flexed as she shook a can of spray paint and rose off the ground, aiming the nozzle at the wall.

  Her mural featured a girl in a glowing blue forest. She wore a tiered black dress and looked up at a blond boy who held out a white peony. Luce and Daniel 4ever Arriane sprayed in gothic silver letters over the bell of the girl’s skirt.

  Behind Arriane, a dark-skinned demon with dreadlocks was lighting a tall glass candle showing Santa Muerte, the goddess of death. Roland was making a shrine at the site where Sophia had murdered Luce’s friend Penn.

  Fallen angels couldn’t enter sanctuaries of God. As soon as they crossed the threshold, the whole place would go up in flames, incinerating every mortal inside. But this chapel had been desanctified when Miss Sophia had moved in.

  Cam spread his wings and dropped through the broken window, landing behind Arriane.

  “Cam.” Roland embraced his friend.

  “Take it easy,” Cam said, but he didn’t pull away.

  Roland tilted his head. “Quite a coincidence, finding you here.”

  “Is it?” Cam asked.

  “Not if you like carnitas,” Arriane said, tossing Cam a small foil-wrapped package. “Remember the taco truck on Lovington? I’ve been craving these ever since we fled this swamp.” She opened her own foil package and devoured her taco in two bites. “Delish.”

  “What are you doing here?” Roland asked Cam.

  Cam leaned against a cold marble pillar and shrugged. “I left my Les Paul in the dorm.”

  “All this way for a guitar?” Roland nodded. “I suppose we’ve all got to find new ways to fill our endless days, now that Luce and Daniel are gone.”

  Cam had always hated the force that pulled the fallen angels to the cursed lovers every seventeen years. He’d left battlefields and coronations. He’d left the arms of exquisite girls. Once he’d walked off a movie set. He’d dropped everything for Luce and Daniel. But now that the irresistible pull was gone, he missed it.

  His eternity was open wide. What was he going to do with it?

  “Did what happened in Troy give you, I don’t know …” Roland trailed off.

  “Hope?” Arriane grabbed Cam’s uneaten taco and downed it. “If, after all these thousands of years, Luce and Daniel can stand up to the Throne and seize a happy ending, why can’t anyone? Why can’t we?”

  Cam gazed through the shattered window. “Maybe I’m not that kind of guy.”

  “We all carry pieces of our journeys within us,” Roland said. “We all learn from our mistakes. Who’s to say we don’t deserve happiness?”

  “Listen to us.” Arriane touched the scars on her neck. “What do we three jaded birds of prey know about love?” She looked from Cam to Roland. “Right?”

  “Love’s not the exclusive property of Luce and Daniel,” Roland said. “We’ve all tasted it. Maybe we will again.”

  Roland’s optimism struck a dissonant chord with Cam. “Not me,” he said.

  Arriane sighed, arching her back to spread her wings and rise a few feet off the ground. A fluttering sound filled the empty church. With deft slashes of her can of white spray paint, she added the subtlest hint of wings above Lucinda’s shoulders.

  Before the Fall, angels’ wings were made of empyreal light, all of them perfect, one pair indistinguishable from the next. In the era since, their wings had become expressive of their personalities, their mistakes and impulses. The fallen angels who had given their allegiance to Lucifer bore golden wings. Those who had returned to the fold of Heaven bore the Throne’s hint of silver throughout their fibers.

  Lucinda’s wings had been special. They had been purely, stunningly white. Unspoiled. Innocent of the choices the rest of them had made. The only other fallen angel who had preserved his white wings was Daniel.

  Arriane crumpled the second taco wrapper. “Sometimes I wonder …”

  “What?” Roland asked.

  “If you guys could go back and not screw up so epically in the love department, would you?”

  “What’s the point of wondering?” Cam asked. “Rosaline is dead.” He saw Roland wince at the mention of his lost beloved. “Tess will never forgive you,” he added, looking at Arriane. “And Lilith—”

  There. He’d said her name.

  Lilith was the only girl Cam had ever loved. He’d asked her to marry him.

  It hadn’t worked out.

  He heard her song again, throbbing in his soul, blinding him with regret.

  “Are you humming?” Arriane narrowed her eyes at Cam. “Since when do you hum?”

  “What about Lilith?” Roland said.

  Lilith was dead, too. Though Cam had never known how she had lived out her days on earth after they parted, he knew she would have left this world and ascended to Heaven long ago. If Cam were a different kind of guy, it might have brought him peace to imagine her enfolded in joy and light. But Heaven was so painfully distant, he found it best not to think of her at all.

  Roland seemed to be reading his mind. “You could do it your own way.”

  “I do everything my own way,” Cam said. His wings pulsed silently behind him.

  “It’s one of your best traits,” Roland said, looking up at the stars through the ruined ceiling, then back at Cam again.

  “What?” Cam asked.

  Roland laughed softly. “I didn’t say anything.”

  “Allow me,” Arriane said. “Cam, this is totally when everyone expects you to make one of your dramatic exits into that pocket in the clouds.” She pointed to a rope of fog dangling from Orion’s Belt.

  “Cam.” Roland stared at Cam, alarmed. “Your wings.”

  Near the tip of Cam’s left wing was a single, tiny white filament.

  Arriane gaped. “What does it mean?”

  It was one white fleck amid a field of gold, but it forced Cam to remember the moment his wings had changed from white to gold. He had long ago accepted his destiny, but now, for the first time in millennia, he imagined something else.

  Thanks to Luce and Daniel, Cam had a fresh start. And only one regret.

  “I have to go.” He fully extended his wings, and brilliant golden light flooded the chapel as Roland and Arriane leaped out of the way. The candle tipped and shattered, its flame dwindling on the cold stone floor.

  Cam shot into the sky, piercing the night, and headed toward the darkness that had been awaiting him since the moment he’d flown away from Lilith’s love.

  ONE

  WASTELAND

  LILITH

  Lilith woke up coughing.

  It was wildfire season—it was always wildfire season—and her lungs were thick with smoke and ash from the red blaze in the hills.

  Her bedside clock flashed midnight, but her thin white curtains glowed gray with dawn. The power must be out again. She thought of the biology test awaiting her in fourth period, followed immediately by the sucky fact that last night she’d brought home her American history book by mistake. Whose idea of a cruel joke was it to assign her two textbooks with precisely the same color spine? She was going to have to wing the test and pray for a C.