Passion

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Epigraph

Prologue: Dark Horse

One: Under Fire

Two: Heaven Sent

Three: Fools Rush In

Four: Time Wounds Al Heels

Five: Of the Straight Path

Six: The Woman in White

Seven: Solstice

Eight: Watching From the Wings

Nine: So We Beat On

Ten: The Depths

Eleven: Coup De Foudre

Twelve: The Prisoner

Thirteen: Star-Crossed

Fourteen: The Steep Slope

Fifteen: The Sacrifice

Sixteen: Best Man

Seventeen: Writ en in Bone

Eighteen: Bad Directions

Nineteen: The Mortal Coil

Twenty: Journey’s End

Epilogue: No More But This

About the Author

Failing to catch me at first keep encouraged,

Missing me one place search another,

I stop somewhere waiting for you.

—WALT WHITMAN, Song of Myself

PROLOGUE

PROLOGUE

DARK HORSE

LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY • NOVEMBER 27, 2009

A shot rang out. A broad gate banged open. A pounding of horses’ hooves echoed around the track like a massive clap of thunder.

“And they’re of !”

Sophia Bliss adjusted the wide brim of her feathered hat. It was a muted shade of mauve, twenty-seven inches in diameter, with a drop-down chif on veil. Large enough to make her look like a proper horseracing enthusiast, not so gaudy as to at ract undue at ention.

Three hats had been special-ordered from the same mil iner in Hilton Head for the race that day. One—a but er-yel ow bonnet—capped the snow-white head of Lyrica Crisp, who was sit ing to the left of Miss Sophia, enjoying a corned beef sandwich. The other—a sea-foam-green felt hat with a fat polka-dot ed satin ribbon—crowned the jet-black mane of Vivina Sole, who sat looking deceptively demure with her white-gloved hands crossed over her lap to Miss Sophia’s right.

“Glorious day for a race,” Lyrica said. At 136 years old, she was the youngest of the Elders of Zhsmaelim. She wiped a dot of mustard from the corner of her mouth. “Can you believe it’s my first time at the tracks?”

“Shhh,” Sophia hissed. Lyrica was such a twit. Today was not about horses at al , but rather a clandestine meeting of great minds. So what if the other great minds didn’t happen to have shown up yet? They would be here. At this perfectly neutral location set forth in the gold let erpress invitation Sophia had received from an unknown sender. The others would be here to reveal themselves and come up with a plan of at ack together. Any minute now. She hoped.

“Lovely day, lovely sport,” Vivina said dryly. “Pity our horse in this race doesn’t run in easy circles like these l ies. Isn’t it, Sophia? Tough to wager where the thoroughbred Lucinda wil finish.”

“I said shhh,” Sophia whispered. “Bite your cavalier tongue. There are spies everywhere.”

“You’re paranoid,” Vivina said, drawing a high giggle from Lyrica.

“I’m what’s left,” Sophia said.

There used to be so many more—twenty-four Elders at the peak of the Zhsmaelim. A cluster of mortals, immortals, and a few transeternals, like Sophia herself. An axis of knowledge and passion and faith with a single uniting goal: to restore the world to its prelapsarian state, that brief, glorious moment before the angels’ Fal . For bet er or for worse.

It was writ en, plain as day, in the code they’d drawn up together and had each signed: For bet er or for worse.

Because real y, it could go either way.

Every coin had two sides. Heads and tails. Light and dark. Good and—

Wel , the fact that the other Elders hadn’t prepared themselves for both options was not Sophia’s fault. It was, however, her cross to bear when one by one they sent in notices of their withdrawal. Your purposes grow too dark. Or: The organization’s standards have fal en. Or: The Elders have strayed too far from the original code. The rst urry of let ers arrived, predictably, within a week after the incident with the girl Pennyweather. They couldn’t abide it, they’d claimed, the death of one smal insigni cant child. One careless moment with a dagger and suddenly the Elders were running scared, al of them fearing the wrath of the Scale.

Cowards.

Sophia did not fear the Scale. Their charge was to parole the fal en, not the righteous. Groundling angels such as Roland Sparks and Arriane Alter. As long as one did not defect from Heaven, one was free to sway a lit le. Desperate times practical y begged for it. Sophia had nearly gone cross-eyed reading the spongy-hearted excuses of the other Elders. But even if she had wanted the defectors back—which she had not—there was nothing to be done.

Sophia Bliss—the school librarian who had only ever served as secretary on the Zhsmaelim board—was now the highest-ranking o cial among the Elders. There were just twelve of them left. And nine could not be trusted.

So that left the three of them here today in their enormous pastel hats, placing phony bets at the track. And waiting. It was pathetic, the depths to which they’d sunk.

A race came to its end. A staticky loudspeaker announced the winners and the odds for the next race. Wel -heeled people and drunks al around them cheered or slumped lower in their seats.

And a girl, about nineteen, with a white-blond ponytail, brown trench coat, and thick, dark sunglasses, walked slowly up the aluminum steps toward the Elders.

Sophia stif ened. Why would she be here?

It was next to impossible to tel which direction the girl was looking in, and Sophia was trying hard not to stare. Not that it would mat er; the girl wouldn’t be able to see her. She was blind. But then—

The Outcast nodded once at Sophia. Oh yes—these fools could see the burning of a person’s soul. It was dim, but Sophia’s life force must stil have been visible.

The girl took a seat in the empty row in front of the Elders, facing the track and ipping though a ve-dol ar tip sheet her blind eyes wouldn’t be able to read.