Fallen Series 04 - Rapture

Fallen Series 04 - Rapture Read Free

Book: Fallen Series 04 - Rapture Read Free
Author: Lauren Kate
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window. In the summer, there would be tomato vines creeping out of the black soil, but in winter, the side yard looked barren and dreary and not very much like home. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d stood out here. She’d sneaked out of three different boarding schools before, but never out of her own parents’ house. Now she was sneaking in and she didn’t know how her window worked. Luce looked around at her sleepy neighborhood, at the morning paper sitting in its dewy plastic bag at the edge of her parents’ lawn, at the old, netless basketball hoop in the Johnsons’ driveway across the street. Nothing had changed since she’d been gone. Nothing had changed except Luce. If Bill succeeded, would this neighborhood vanish, too?
    She gave one last wave to Daniel, watching from the car, took a deep breath, and used her thumbs to pry the lower panel from the cracking blue paint of the sill.
    It slid right up. Someone inside had already popped out the screen. Luce paused, stunned as the white muslin curtains parted and the half-blond, half-black head of her onetime enemy Molly Zane filled the open space.
    “’Sup, Meatloaf.”
    Luce bristled at the nickname she’d earned on her first day of Sword & Cross. This was what Daniel and Roland meant when they said they’d taken care of things at home?
    “What are you doing here, Molly?”
    “Come on. I won’t bite.” Molly extended a hand.
    Her nails were chipped emerald green.
    She sank her hand into Molly’s, ducked, and sidled, one leg at a time, through the window.
    Her bedroom looked small and outdated, like a time capsule of some long-ago Luce. There was the framed poster of the Eiffel Tower on the back of her door. There was her bulletin board of swim team ribbons from Thunder bolt Elementary. And there, under the green-and-yellow Hawaiian-print duvet, was her best friend, Callie.
    Callie scrambled from under the covers, dashed around the bed, and flung herself into Luce’s arms.
    “They kept telling me you were going to be okay, but in that lying, we’re-also-completely-terrified-we’re-just-not-going-to-explain-a-word-to-you kind of way. Do you even realize how thoroughly spooky that was? It was like you physically dropped off the face of the Earth—”
    Luce hugged her back tightly. As far as Callie knew, Luce had been gone only since the night before.
    “Okay, you two,” Molly growled, pulling Luce away from Callie, “you can OMG your faces off later. I didn’t lie in your bed in that cheap polyester wig all night enacting Luce-with-stomach-flu so you guys could blow our cover now.” She rolled her eyes. “Amateurs.”
    “Hold on. You did what?” Luce asked.
    “After you . . . disappeared,” Callie said breathlessly,
    “we knew we could never explain it to your parents. I mean, I could barely fathom it after seeing it with my own eyes. When Gabbe fixed up the backyard, I told your parents you felt sick and had gone to bed, and Molly pretended to be you and—”
    “Lucky I found this in your closet.” Molly twirled a short wavy black wig around one finger. “Halloween remnant?”
    “Wonder Woman.” Luce winced, regretting her middle school Halloween costume, and not for the first time.
    “Well, it worked.”
    It was strange to see Molly—who’d once sided with Lucifer—helping her. But even Molly, like Cam and Roland, didn’t want to fall again. So here they were, a team, strange bedfellows.
    “You covered for me? I don’t know what to say.
    Thank you.”
    “Whatever.” Molly jerked her head at Callie, anything to deflect Luce’s gratitude. “She was the real silver-tongued devil. Thank her.” She stuck one leg out the open window and turned to call back, “Think you guys can handle it from here? I have a Waffle House summit meeting to attend.”
    Luce gave Molly the thumbs-up and flopped down on her bed.
    “Oh, Luce,” Callie whispered. “When you left, your whole backyard was covered in this gray dust. And

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