“Sorta like hall monitors within Announcers who make sure travelers get where they’re going. Members of the Scale are impartial, so there’s no siding with Heaven or with Hell. Okay?”
“Okay.” Luce nodded. “So you’re in the Scale?”
Bill winked. “Now, we’re almost there, so—”
“Almost where?”
“To the next life you’re traveling to, the one that cast this shadow we’re in.”
Luce ran her hand through the water running down the wall. “This shadow—this Announcer—is different.”
“If it is, it’s only because that’s what you want it to be. If you want a rest-stop–type cave inside an Announcer, it appears for you.”
“I didn’t want a rest stop.”
“No, but you needed one. Announcers can pick up on that. Also, I was here helping out, wanting it on your behalf.” The little gargoyle shrugged, and Luce heard a sound like boulders knocking against each other. “The inside of an Announcer isn’t anyplace at all. It’s a neverwhere, the dark echo cast by something in the past. Each one is different, adapting to the needs of its travelers, so long as they’re inside.”
There was something wild about the idea of this echo of Luce’s past knowing what she wanted or needed better than she did. “So how long do people stay inside?” she asked. “Days? Weeks?”
“No time. Not the way you’re thinking. Within Announcers, real time doesn’t pass at all. But still, you don’t want to hang around here too long. You could forget where you’re going, get lost forever. Become a hoverer. And that’s ugly business. These are portals, remember, not destinations.”
Luce rested her head against the damp stone wall. She didn’t know what to make of Bill. “This is your job. Serving as a guide to, uh, travelers like me?”
“Sure, exactly.” Bill snapped his fingers, the friction sending up a spark. “You nailed it.”
“How’d a gargoyle like you get stuck doing this?”
“Excuse me, I take pride in my work.”
“I mean, who hired you?”
Bill thought for a moment, his marble eyes rolling back and forth in their sockets. “Think of it as a volunteer position. I’m good at Announcer travel, is all. No reason not to spread my expertise around.” He turned to her with his palm cupping his stony chin. “When are we going to, anyway?”
“When are we …?” Luce stared at him, confused.
“You have no idea, do you?” He slapped his forehead. “You’re telling me that you dove out of the present without any fundamental knowledge about stepping through? That how you end up when you end up is a complete mystery to you?”
“How was I supposed to learn?” Luce said. “No one told me anything!”
Bill fluttered down from her shoulder and paced along the ledge. “You’re right, you’re right. We’ll just go back to basics.” He stopped in front of Luce, tiny hands on his thick hips. “So. Here we go: What is it that you want?”
“I want … to be with Daniel,” she said slowly. There was more, but she wasn’t sure how to explain it.
“Huh!” Bill looked even more dubious than his heavy brow, stone lips, and hooked nose made him look naturally. “The hole in your argument there, Counselor, is that Daniel was already right there beside you when you skipped out of your own time. Was he not?”
Luce slid down the wall and sat, feeling another strong rush of regret. “I had to leave. He wouldn’t tell me anything about our past, so I had to go find out for myself.”
She expected Bill to argue with her more, but he simply said, “So, you’re telling me you’re on a quest.”
Luce felt a faint smile cross her lips. A quest. She liked the sound of that.
“So you do want something. See?” Bill clapped. “Okay, first thing you ought to know is that the Announcers are summoned to you based upon what’s going on in here.” He thumped his stony fist against his chest. “They’re kind of like little sharks, drawn by your deepest desires.”
“Right.” Luce remembered the shadows at Shoreline, how it was almost as though the specific Announcers had chosen her and not the other way around.
“So when you step through, the Announcers that seem to quiver before you, begging you to pick them up? They funnel you to the place your soul longs to be.”
“So the girl I was in Moscow, and in Milan—and all the other lives I glimpsed before I knew how to step through—I wanted to visit them?”
“Precisely,” Bill said. “You just didn’t know it. The Announcers knew it for you. You’ll get better at this, too. Soon you should begin to feel yourself sharing their knowledge. As strange as it may feel, they’re a part of you.”
Each one of those cold, dark shadows, a part of her? It made sudden, unexpected sense. It explained how even from the beginning, even when it scared her, Luce hadn’t been able to stop herself from stepping through them. Even when Roland warned her they were dangerous. Even when Daniel gaped at her like she’d committed some horrible crime. The Announcers always felt like a door opening. Was it possible that they really were?
Her past, once so unknowable, was out there, and all she had to do was step through into the right doorways? She could see who she’d been, what had drawn Daniel to her, why their love had been damned, how it had grown and changed over time. And, most importantly, what they could be in the future.
“We’re already well on our way somewhere,” Bill said, “but now that you know what you and your Announcers are capable of, the next time you go stepping through, you need to think about what you want. And don’t think place or time, think overall quest.”
“Okay.” Luce was working to tidy the jumble of emotions inside her into words that might make any sense out loud.
“Why not try it out now?” Bill said. “Just for practice. Might give us a heads-up about what we’re going to walk into. Think about what it is you’re after.”
“Understanding,” she said slowly.
“Good,” Bill said. “What else?”
A nervous energy was coursing through her, as if she was on the brink of something important. “I want to find out why Daniel and I were cursed. And I want to break that curse. I want to stop love from killing me so that we can finally be together—for real.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Bill started waving his hands like a man stranded on the side of a dark road. “Let’s not get crazy. This is a very long-standing damnation you’re up against here. You and Daniel, it’s like … I don’t know, you can’t just snap your pretty little fingers and break out of that. You gotta start small.”
“Right,” Luce said. “Okay. Then I should start by getting to know one of my past selves. Get up close and see her relationship with Daniel unfold. See if she feels the same things I feel.”
Bill was nodding, a wacky smile spreading across his full lips. He led her to the edge of the ledge. “I think you’re ready. Let’s go.”
Let’s go? The gargoyle was coming with her? Out of the Announcer and into another past? Yes, Luce could use some company, but she barely knew this guy.