pg. 2:
Her mere proximity gave him the most peculiar sensation, like the kind of heat sent out when a log shatters to ash in a fire. He knew without turning around: She was there.
xxx
pg. 20:
"...And don't forget," she said pointing up at the cameras one last time. "The reds are watching you."
xxx
pg. 38:
She took in his deep golden hair and matching tan. His high cheekbones, the dark sunglasses that covered his eyes, the soft shape of his lips.In all the movies Luce had seen, and in all the books she'd read, the love interest was mind-blowingly good-looking - except for the one little flaw. The chipped tooth, the charming cowlick,the beauty mark on his left cheek. She knew why - if the hero was too unblemished, he'd risk being unapproachable.But unapproachable or not, Luce had always had a weakness for the sublimely gorgeous. Like this guy."
xxx
pg. 70:
Looking down the empty hallway, Luce wondered about following the cryptic arrow. Then she glanced back at her giant duffel bag, her pity party waiting to be unpacked. She shrugged, pulled her door shut, put her room key in her pocket, and started walking.
xxx
pg. 72:
Yours psychotically,
A
and
But standing there in the hallway, Luce was even more uncertain how to process the day's events. A quiet panic filled her when it finally registered that she was alone, after dark, at Sword & Cross.
xxx
pg. 74:
A warm feeling came over Luce as she looked around the library. She'd always loved the faintly sweet musty way only a roomful of books books smelled. She didn't realize she'd been holding her breath until she pushed through the wood-grained library doors and exhaled.
xxx
pg. 109:
"A dance with death by boredom. The term 'social' is typically a Sword & Cross doublespeak. See, they're required to schedule social events for us, but they are also terrified of scheduling social events for us. Sticky predicky."
xxx
pg. 111:
She thought about her abbreviated dish session on the phone with Callie, and how her friend always said that watching a movie with a guy was the best way to get to know things about him,things that might not come out in conversation. Looking at Cam, Luce thought she knew what Callie meant: There would be something sort of thrilling about glancing out of ther corner of her eye to see what jokes Cam thought were funny, to join his laughter with his own.
xxx
pg. 142:
Holding up his index finger, he said, "Allow me to share my motto about Sword & Cross classes: Better never than late."
xxx
pg. 154:
"If any of you have ever traced your own family tree," she called over the din of the crowd, "then you'll know what sorts of treasures lie buried in the roots."
"Oh, jeez, please kill that metaphor," Penn whispered. "Or kill me. One or the other."
xxx
pg. 160:
"I'm only saying," she continued, "assuming hypothetically you did want to know more about a certain unnamed person, you could conceivably bark up a more fruitful tree." Penn shrugged one shoulder. "You know, if you had help."
xxx
pg. 160/161
Besides, what else are you going to do on a perfectly sunny Saturday morning?"
It was a nice day - precisely the kind of nice day that made you feel lonely if you didn't have anything fun and outdoorsy planned.
xxx
pg. 161:
"Okay." Luce tried not to laugh when she said, "Take me to your secret lair."
xxx
pg. 195:
She saw the Warning: Stalker Alert flash in Daniel's alarmed eyes.
xxx
pg. 210:
Luce knew she'd only made the joke to try to downplay her disappointment.
xxx
pg. 212:
The acrid smell of the smoke dropped her instantly back into the blaze that night with Trevor. Images and sounds flooded her mind, things she'd stuffed so deep inside her memory they might as well have been obliterated. Until now.
xxx
pg. 215:
She looked up into a maelstrom of shadows. A spectrum of shades of gray and deepest black. She should only be able to see as far as the ceiling overhead, bu the shadows seemed somehow to extend beyond its limits. Into a strange and hidden sky. They were all tangled up in each other, and yet they were distinct.
xxx
pg. 230:
"Maybe we're all too numb to understand," Luce said.
xxx
pg. 241:
As if the whole school weren't already dressed for a funeral all the time.
xxx
pg. 242:
Even from the back, Daniel managed to look devastatingly somber.
xxx
pg. 243:
"In the sweat of they face shalt thou eat bread,"..."Till thou return unto the ground. For out of it wast thou taken, for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."
xxx
pg. 243:
No one was paying Todd any respect by being here. The whole memorial seemed more like an attempt to teacher the students how unfair life could be. That Todd's body wasn't even present said so much about the school's relationship - or utter lack thereof - with the departed boy. None of them had known him; none of them ever would. There was something false about standing here today in this crowd, something made worse by the few people who were crying. It made Luce feel like Todd was even more of a stranger to her than he actually had been.
Let Todd rest in peace. Let the rest of them just move on.
xxx
pg. 245:
"I do like it," she said, thinking of the box lying on her desk. It had ended up right next to Daniel's flowers, and she'd spent half the night before looking back and forth between them, weighing the gifts and the intentions behind them.
xxx
pg. 247:
It felt so good just to be held.
and
Gabbe roller her eyes at Luce. "Do a man a favor and he'll start treating you like a slave."
xxx
pg. 251:
"If you come to a place more than once with the same person," Daniel said, almost to himself, "I guess it isn't yours alone anymore."
xxx
pg. 253:
"You wouldn't know-"
"I would." He sighed. "There's always another stop, Luce."
"That's very prophetic, Daniel," she said.
xxx
pg. 257:
Her heart was pounding impossibly fast. Then she realized: She was feeling both of their hearts, racing each other. A kind of desperate conversation, one they couldn't have with words.
xxx
pg. 278:
"We love you," he called out so loudly that Luce would have been embarrassed if she hadn't been so sad to see them go.
Luce waved back. "Thank you," she whispered. For the pralines and the okra. For spending all day here. For taking Penn under your wing, no questions asked. For still loving me despite the fact that I scare you.
xxx
pg. 280:
All this time Luce had been searching for explanations about why Daniel's file was so sparse, what secrets his ancestor's missing book held in the library, where his mind had traveled to that day she'd asked him about his family. Why he'd been so hot and cold with her... always.
After such an emotional day with her own parents, the thought nearly brought Luce to her knees with sadness. Daniel was alone in the world.
xxx
pg. 283:
He'd had his own black hood pulled over his head and his earbuds blaring in his ears. He probably hadn't seen her coming, either. They'd both been in their own worlds.
xxx
pg. 284:
"Well, now that we've knocked over one another's books, isn't the next step for our hands to accidentally touch while we're picking them up?"
xxx
pg. 286:
September 18: D accuses me of stalking him.
Followed two days later by:
September 20: Penn convinces me to really begin stalking him. I consent.
She was in a black hole of self-loathing. And yet she couldn't stop herself.
xxx
pg. 288:
Luce rubbed her rain-soaked sleeves to warm up. Of course. The dream had left her with a fire in her heart and a chill in her bones she'd been unable to reconcile all day.
xxx
pg. 299:
Luce looked over at Penn, who was blatantly staring at them with a front-row moviegoer's captivation.
xxx
pg. 306:
But it was her fault they'd fought in the first place. She'd led Cam on - and whether she'd done it because she'd been confused or flattered or the tiniest bit interested didn't matter anymore. What mattered today was that she'd be direct with him today: There was nothing between them.
xxx
pg. 328:
And the look in his eyes was so alluring. It was almost as if he wanted her to how him first.
xxx
pg. 338:
"Oh no." He covered his face with his hand. "Not the let-him-down-easy speech. I hope you're not going to say we should be friends."
"You don't want to be my friend?"
"You know I want to be much more than your friend," he said, spitting out the "friend" as if it were a dirty word. "It's Grigori, isn't it?"
She felt her stomach constrict. She guessed it wasn't too hard to figure out, but she'd been so wrapped up in her own feelings, she'd barely had time to consider what Cam thought about the two of them.
"You don't really know either of us," Cam said, standing and stepping away, "but you're prepared to choose right now, huh?"
It was presumptuous of him to assume he was even still in the running. Especially after last night. That he could think there was some contest between him and Daniel.
xxx
pg. 350:
"I fall in love," he explained, taking her hands and holding them tightly. "Over and over again. And each time, it ends catastrophically."
"Over and over again." The words made her ill. Luce closed her eyes and withdrew her hands. He'd already told her this. That day at the lake. He'd had breakups. He'd been burned. Why bring up those other girls now? It had hurt then and it hurt even more now, like a sharp pain in her ribs. He squeezed her fingers.
"Look at me," he pleaded. "Here's where it gets hard."
She opened her eyes.
"The person I fall in love with each time is you."
She'd been holding her breath, and meant to exhale, but it came out as a sharp, cutting laugh.
"Right Daniel," she said, starting to stand up. "Wow, you really are damned. That sounds horrible."
xxx
pg. 356:
"...All I can tell you is this: The only way to survive eternity is to be able to appreciate each moment. That's all I was doing."
"Eternity," Luce repeated. "Yet another thing I wouldn't understand.
xxx
pg. 376:
"He told me...," Luce started. "It sounds crazy."
"These things often do."
"He said the two of us... we're some kind of star-crossed lovers."
xxx
pg. 377:
Across the room, she heard a loud clatter. She looked up to see that Roland had fallen out of his chair. The last time she'd glanced at him, he'd been leaning back on two legs, and now it looked like gravity had finally won.
xxx
pg. 378:
"I study these things. I'm an academic. I don't get tangled up in trivial matters of the heart."
xxx
pg. 381:
Luce wondered at that moment: If she could trade places with this girl - who never had to worry about past lives, or apocalyptic shadows, or the deaths of two innocent boys on her hands - would she do it?
Daniel's face - the way it had been bathed in violet light when he'd carried her home this morning - appeared before her eyes. His gleaming golden hair. His tender, knowing eyes. The way one touch of his lips transported her far away from any darkness. For him, she'd suffer all of this, and more.
xxx
pg. 389:
And while the truth still scared her, being in his arms made her feel like the sea finding its shore, like a traveler returning after a long, hard, distant trip - finally returning home.
xxx
pg. 391:
"I'm in love with an angel."
xxx
pg. 392:
The shadows always came to her just before something awful happened.
"The shadows you see are called Announcers. They look bad, but they can't hurt you. All they do is scope out a situation and report back to someone else. Gossips. The demonic version of a clique of high school girls."
xxx
pg. 394:
The idea of all those past versions of herself existing - it was just too much to take in. But now, in Daniel's arms, she could feel all of them somehow working together, a vast consortium of Luces who'd loved the same Daniel over and over and over again. So much love - it spilled out of her heart and her soul, pouring off her body and filling the space between them.
xxx
pg. 401:
"Get to part B, Daniel," Arriane prompted. "Think fast. Patience is a virtue, and you know how Cam feels about those."
xxx
pg. 409:
Suddenly, she realized why Miss Sophia had bolted all the doors and windows in the foyer. It wasn't to keep anyone out. It was to keep her in.
xxx
pg. 412:
"Trust is a careless pursuit at best. At worst, it's a good way to get yourself killed."
xxx
pg. 415:
"You're the human equivalent of a migraine."
xxx
pg. 416:
"When you did tonight - you die. That's it. Kaput. In this lifetime you're nothing more than you appear to be: a stupid, selfish, ignorant, spoiled little girl who thinks the world lives or dies on whether she gets to go out with some good-looking boy at school. Even if your death wouldn't accomplish something so long-awaited, glorious, and grand, I'd still relish this moment, killing you.
and
... she thought there was some truth in Miss Sophia's maddening speech. To place so much hope in the power of true love - which she felt she was only barely beginning to glimpse herself - was it naive?
xxx
pg. 444:
She would need the memory the way she needed air.
Because what if, when Daniel left her, the whole thing started to feel like just another dream? A partially nightmarish dream, but a dream nonetheless. How could it be that she felt what she thought she felt for someone who wasn't even human?
xxx
pg. 445:
"My wife always tells people not to get me started on my flying days in Nam," he said, easing back on a wide silver gearshift. The plane shuddered into motion. "But we've got a long flight, and I've got a captivated audience."
"You mean a captive audience," she let slip out.
"Good one." Mr. Cole elbowed her side. "I'm kidding," he said, laughing heartily. "I wouldn't subject you to that." The way he turned to her when he laughed reminded her of the way her dad always did when they were watching a funny movie, and it made her feel a little better.
xxx
pg. 448:
It made Luce want to stand up next to him and fight. Fight to stay alive long enough to live out her life next to him. Fight for the only thing she knew that was good enough, noble enough, powerful enough to be worth risking everything.
Love.
xxx
pg. 452:
Slowly, Cam extended his pale right hand.
Daniel extended his.
And while Luce dreamed below of the most glorious wings unfurling - the likes of which she'd never seen before- two angels in the rafters shook hands.
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