Fallen in Love Read Online Free PDF Page B

this was the Roland of their present-day era, their Roland, the one they’d last seen in Lucinda Price’s battle-blasted backyard. Which meant they were in trouble.
    “
What
are you two doing here?”
    Miles was at Shelby’s side instantly, his hands protectively around her shoulders. It was really decent of him, like he wasn’t going to let her get busted alone. “We’re looking for Daniel,” he said. “Can you help us? Do you know where he is?”
    “Help
you
? Find
Daniel
?” Roland gave them a baffled quirk of his dark eyebrows. “Don’t you mean Luce, the mortal girl lost in her own Announcers? You kids are in way over your head.”
    “We know, we know, we don’t belong here.” Shelby put on her most repentant tone. “We got here by accident,” she added, staring up at Roland on his incredible white horse. She’d had no idea horses were so huge. “We’re trying to get home, but we’re having trouble finding an Announcer—”
    “Of course you are.” Roland huffed. “Like I don’t have enough obligations, now I’ve got to babysit, too.” He raised a gloved hand casually. “I’ll summon one for you.”
    “Wait.” Miles stepped forward, interrupting Roland. “We thought, while we were here, we could maybe, um, do one nice thing for Lucinda. You know, the Lucinda of this era. Nothing major, just make her life a little brighter. Daniel ditched her—”
    “You know how he gets sometimes—” Shelby cut in.
    “Hold up. You saw Lucinda?” Roland asked.
    “She was devastated,” Miles said.
    “And tomorrow is Valentine’s Day,” Shelby added.
    The steed neighed, and Roland steadied it with the reins. “Was she cloven?”
    Shelby wrinkled her nose. “Was she
what
?”
    “Was she a union of her past and present selves?”
    “You mean like—” Shelby was thinking of the way Daniel had looked in Jerusalem, lost and out of focus, like a 3-D movie with the glasses off.
    But before she could answer, Miles’s shoe crunched down on her toes. If Roland didn’t like them being here, he sure wasn’t going to like the fact that they’d been traveling around via the Announcers sort of everywhere. “Shhh,” Miles whispered through the side of his mouth.
    “Look, it’s pretty simple: Did she recognize you?” Roland pressed.
    Shelby sighed. “No.”
    “No,” Miles said.
    “Then she’s the Luce of this time and we shouldn’t interfere.” Roland eyed them with frank suspicion but said no more. One of his long golden-black dreadlocks came loose from its elastic and tumbled from the recesses of his helmet. He tucked it away and looked around the city square, at the dogs attacking a snake of cow intestine, at the children kicking a lopsided leather ball through the muddy streets. He was clearly wishing he hadn’t run into them.
    “Please, Roland,” Shelby said, reaching boldly for his chain-mail glove.
Gauntlet
, she thought. They’re called
gauntlets
. “Don’t you believe in love? Don’t you have a heart?”
    Shelby felt the words hanging in the frosty air and wished she could take them back. Surely she’d gone toofar. She didn’t know what Roland’s story was. He’d sided with Lucifer when the angels fell, but he’d never seemed all that bad. Just cryptic and inscrutable.
    He opened his mouth to say something, and Shelby waited to hear yet another lecture about the dangers of Announcer travel, or to be threatened with being turned in to Francesca and Steven at Roland’s whim. She winced and looked away.
    Then she heard the soft clank of a visor being shut.
    When she looked up, Roland’s face was hidden again. The visor’s dark eye slit was unreadable.
    Way to ruin things, Shelby
.
    “I will find Daniel for you.” Roland’s voice boomed from behind the visor, making Shelby jump. “I will see that he arrives in time for tomorrow’s Faire. I have one final errand to attend to, and then I will be back here to provide you both with an Announcer that will spirit you back to