Free Passion by Lauren Kate Page B

something about him. He knew her. He had cal ed her by name. “I just wanted to know who you were.”
    “Oh, hel ,” he said, a lit le giddy. “You can cal me … Bil .”
    “Bil ,” she repeated, squinting to see more than the dim cave wal s around her. “Are you invisible?”
    “Sometimes. Not always. Certainly don’t have to be. Why? You’d prefer to see me?”
    “It might make things a lit le bit less weird.”
    “Doesn’t that depend on what I look like?”
    “Wel —” Luce started to say.
    “So”—his voice sounded as if he were smiling—“what do you want me to look like?”
    “I don’t know.” Luce shifted her weight. Her left side was damp from the spray of the waterfal . “Is it real y up to me? What do you look like when you’re just being yourself?”
    “I have a range. You’d probably want me to start with something cute. Am I right?”
    “I guess.…”
    “Okay,” the voice mut ered. “Huminah huminah huminah hummm.”
    “What are you doing?” Luce asked.
    “Put ing on my face.”
    There was a ash of light. A blast that would have sent Luce tumbling backward if the wal hadn’t been right behind her. The ash died down into a tiny bal of cool white light. By its il umination she could see the rough expanse of a gray stone oor beneath her feet. A stone wal stretched up behind her, water trickling down its face. And something more: There on the floor in front of her stood a smal gargoyle.
    “Ta-da!” he said.
    He was about a foot tal , crouched low with his arms crossed and his elbows resting on his knees. His skin was the color of stone—he was stone—but when he waved at her, she could see he was limber enough to be made of esh and muscle. He looked like the sort of statue you’d nd capping the roof of a Catholic church. His ngernails and toenails were long and pointed, like lit le claws. His ears were pointed, too—and pierced with smal stone hoops. He had two lit le hornlike nubs protruding from the top of a forehead that was eshy and wrinkled. His large lips were pursed in a grimace that made him look like a very old baby.
    “So you’re Bil ?”
    “That’s right,” he said. “I’m Bil .”
    Bil was an odd-looking thing, but certainly not someone to be afraid of. Luce circled him and noticed the ridged vertebrae protruding from his spine. And the smal pair of gray wings tucked behind his back so that the two tips were twined together.
    “What do you think?” he asked.
    “Great,” she said flatly. One look at any other pair of wings—even Bil ’s—made her miss Daniel so much her stomach hurt.
    Bil stood up; it was strange to see the arms and legs that were made of stone move like muscle.
    “You don’t like the way I look. I can do bet er,” he said, disappearing in another flash of light. “Hold on.” Flash.
    Daniel stood before her, cloaked in a shining aura of violet light. His unfurled wings were glorious and massive, beckoning her to step inside them. He held out a hand and she sucked in her breath. She knew something was strange about his being there, that she’d been in the middle of doing something else—only she couldn’t recal what or with whom. Her mind felt hazy, her memory obscured. But none of that mat ered. Daniel was here. She wanted to cry with happiness. She stepped toward him and put her hand in his.
    “There,” he said softly. “Now, that’s the reaction I was after.”
    “What?” Luce whispered, confused. Something was rising to the forefront of her mind, tel ing her to pul away. But Daniel’s eyes overrode that hesitation and she let herself be pul ed in, forget ing everything but the taste of his lips.
    “Kiss me.” His voice was a raspy croak. Bil ’s.
    Luce screamed and jumped back. Her mind felt jolted as if from a deep sleep. What had happened? How had she thought she’d seen Daniel in—
    Bil . He’d tricked her. She jerked her hand away from his, or maybe he dropped hers during the ash when he changed into a