“She gasped again,this time from fear of heights."Breathe," Bill coached her. "More people pass out up here from panicking over not getting enough oxygen than from actually not getting enough oxygen.”

“Here," he said,holding out a dark mink coat. "Thought you might be cold.""Where did you-""I yoinked it off a broad coming home from the market back there.Don't worry,she had enough natural padding already.""Bill!""Hey,you needed it!" He shrugged. "Wear it in good health.”

“She saw Daniel hovering over her in his simple peasant's clothes...but then, a moment later, he was bare-chested, with long blond hair...and suddenly he wore a knight's helmet, whose visor he lifted to kiss her lips...but before he did,he shifted into his present self, the Daniel she'd left in her parents' backyard in Thunderbolt when she stepped through into time.This was the Daniel, she realized, she'd been looking for all along. She reached for him,she called his name, but then he changed again. And again. She saw more Daniels than she'd ever thought possible,each one more gorgeous than the last.They folded into each other like a vast accordion, each image of him tilting and altering in the light of the sky behind him.The cut of his nose,the line of his jawbone, the tone of his skin,the shape of his lips, all whirled in and out of focus,morphing all the time. Everything changed except his eyes.His violet eyes always stayed the same. They haunted her,hiding something terrible,something she didn't understand. Something she didn't want to understand.Fear?In the visions,the terror in Daniel's eyes was so intense Luce actually wanted to look away from their beauty. What could someone as powerful as Daniel fear?There was only one thing: Luce's dying.She was experiencing a montage of her death over and over and over again. This was what Daniel's eyes looked like, throughout time,just before her life went up in flames. She had seen this fear in him before.She hated it because it always meant their time was over.She saw it now in every one of his faces. The fear flashed from infinite times and places. Suddenly,she knew there was more:He wasn't afraid for her,not because she was walking into the darkness of another death.He didn't fear that it might cause her pain.Daniel was afraid of her."Lu Xin!" his voice cried out to her from the battlefield. She could see him through the haze of visions.He was the only thing coming in clearly-because everything else around her was lit up startingly white.Everything inside her was,too.Was her love of Daniel burning her up? Was it her own passion,not his,that destroyed her every time?"No!" His hand reached out for hers. But it was too late.”

“As soon as Roland was gone,the cupboard door swung open, banging the back of her leg.Bill popped out,gasping for air loudly as if he'd been holding his breath the whole time."I could wring your neck right now!" he said,his chest heaving."I don't know why you're all out of breath. It's not like you even breathe.""It's for effect! All the trouble I go through to camoflage you here and you go and out yourself to the first guy who walks the through the door."Luce rolled her eyes. "Roland's not going to make a big deal out of seeing me here.He's cool.""Oh,he's so cool," Bill said. "He's so smart. If he's so great,why didn't he tell you what I know about not keeping one's distance from one's past? About getting"-he paused dramatically, widening his stone eyes-"inside?"Now she leaned down toward him. "What are you talking about?"He crossed his arms over his chest and wagged his stone tongue. "I'm not telling.""Bill!" Luce pleaded."Not yet, anyway.First let's see how you do tonight.”

“I don't get it?" she asked "I don't get it? Let me tell you something about what I get. You think you're so smart? I spent three years on a full academic scholarship at the best college-prep school in the country. And when they kicked me out I had to petition-petition!-to keep them from wiping out my four-point-oh transcript."Daniel moved away, but Luce pursued him, taking a step forward for every wide-eyed step he took back. Probably freaking him out, but so what? He'd been asking for it every time he condescended to her."I know Latin and French, and in middle school, I won the science fair three years in a row."She had backed him up against the railing of the boardwalk and was trying to restrain herself from poking him in the chest with her finger. She wasn't finished."I also do the Sunday crossword puzzle, sometimes in under an hour. I have an unerringly good sense of direction... though not always when it comes to guys."She swallowed and took a moment to catch her breath."And someday, I'm going to be a psychiatrist who actually listens to her patients and helps people. Okay? So don't keep talking to me like I'm stupid and don't tell me I don't understand just because I can't decode your erratic, flaky, hot-one-minute-cold-the-next, frankly"-she looked up at him, letting out her breath-"really hurtful behavior." She brushed a tear away, angry with herself for getting so worked up.”

“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 againat 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 out small.”

“We're at the opening of the Globe." She thought back to Daniel's words under the peach trees at Sword & Cross. "Daniel told me we were here.""Sure,you were here," Bill said. "About fourteen years ago.Perched on your older brother's shoulder. You came with your family to see Julius Caesar."Bill hovered in the air a foot in front of her. It was unappetizing, but the high collar around her neck actually seemed to hold its shape. She almost resembled the sumptuously dressed women in the higher boxes."And Daniel?" she asked."Daniel was a player-""Hey!""That's whay they called the actors." Bill rolled his eyes. "He was just starting out then. To everyone else in the audience, his debut was utterly forgettable. But to little three-year-old Lucinda"-Bill shrugged-"it put the fire in you. You've been quote-unquote dying to get onstage ever since.Tonight's your night.""I'm an actor?”