But it was just Shelby and Miles.
Together. Alone.
They turned to face the black stone walls around the city, which surrounded a high central keep. Marigold-colored flags hung from iron poles in the tall stone tower. The air smelled like coal and moldy hay. Music came from inside the walls—a lyre maybe, some soft-skinned drums. And somewhere in there, Shelby hoped, was an angel whose Announcer could take the two of them back to the present, where they belonged.
Miles was still holding out his hand, gazing at her like he had no idea how deep blue his eyes were. She took a deep breath and slipped her palm inside his. He gave her hand a little squeeze and the two of them strolled into town.
TWO
BIZARRE BAZAAR
Gone was the peaceful countryside. Instead, just outside the city gates, there was a great bustling, with makeshift tents set up along the green—which was more a grayish brown now, in winter—on both sides of the road leading to the tall black city walls. The tents were clearly part of a temporary setup, like a weekend-long festival or something. The happy chaos of the people milling around reminded Shelby a little of Bonnaroo, which she had seen pictures of on the Internet. She studied what people were wearing—apparently the wimple look was in. She didn’t think she and Miles stuck out too badly.
They joined the crowd passing through the gates and followed the flow of people, which seemed to move in only one direction: toward the market in the central square. Turrets rose before them, part of a grand castle near the far limits of the city walls. The square’s cornerstone was a modest but attractive early-Gothic church (Shelby recognized the spindly towers). A maze of narrow gray streets and alleys sliced off from the market square, which was crowded, chaotic, stinking, and vibrant, the kind of place where you went to find anything and anyone.
“Linen! Two bolts for tenpence!”
“Candlesticks! One of a kind!”
“Barley beer! Fresh barley beer!”
Shelby and Miles had to leap out of the way to avoid the stocky friar pushing a cart with earthenware jugs of barley beer. They watched his broad, gray-robed back as he cut a path through the crowded market. Shelby started to follow him, just to get a little space, but a moment later, the smelly mass of chattering citizens filled the gap.
It was nearly impossible to take a step without bumping into someone.
There were so many people in the square—haggling, gossiping, swatting children’s thieving hands away from the apples for sale—that no one paid attention to Miles and Shelby at all.
“How are we ever going to find anyone we know in this cesspool?” Shelby held tight to Miles’s hand as the tenth person stepped on her foot. This was worse than that Green Day concert in Oakland where Shelby bruised two ribs in the mosh pit.
Miles craned his neck. “I don’t know. Maybe everyone knows everyone else?” He was taller than most of the citizens, so it wasn’t as bad for him.
He had fresh air and a clear sight line, but she was feeling a claustrophobic fit coming on: She felt the telltale flush creep across her cheeks. Frantically, she tugged at the high collar of her dress, hearing a few stitches snap. “How do people breathe in these things?”
“In through your nose, out through your mouth,” Miles instructed, demonstrating his own advice for a second before the stench forced him to wrinkle his nose. “Er. Look, there’s a well over there. How about a drink?”
“We’ll probably get cholera,” Shelby muttered, but he was already moving away, pulling her behind him.
They dipped under a sagging clothesline damp with homespun clothes, stepped over a small parade of scraggly, clucking black roosters, and angled past a pair of redheaded brothers peddling pears before they ended up at the well. It was an archaic thing—a ring of stones around a hole, with a wooden tripod set up over the opening. A mossy bucket dangled from a primitive pulley.
After a few seconds, Shelby could breathe again. “People drink from that thing?”
Now she could see that though the market took up most of the open square, it wasn’t the only show in town. A group of medieval mannequins robed in burlap had been set up on one side of the well. Young boys practiced wielding wooden swords, tilting at the ancestors of crash-test dummies like knights in training. Wandering minstrels strolled the edges of the market, singing strangely pretty songs. Even the well was its own little destination.
She saw now that there was a wooden crank to raise the bucket. A boy in skintight buckskin leggings had dipped a ladle of water from the bucket and was holding it out to a girl with enormous wide-set eyes and a holly branch tucked behind her ear. She drained the ladle in a few thirsty gulps, gazing lovingly at the boy the whole time, oblivious to the water dripping down her chin and onto her beautiful cream gown.
When she was finished, the boy passed the ladle to Miles with a wink. Shelby wasn’t sure she liked what that wink insinuated, but she was too thirsty to make a scene.
“Here for the St. Valentine’s Faire, are you?” the girl asked Shelby in a voice as placid as a lake.
“I, uh, we—”
“Indeed,” Miles jumped in, adopting a horrible fake British accent. “When do the celebrations commence?”
He sounded ridiculous. But Shelby swallowed her laugh to avoid giving him away. She wasn’t sure what would happen if they were found out, but she’d read of impalings, of torture devices like the wheel and the rack. Lip balm, Shelby. Stay positive. Hot cocoa and sun salutations and reality TV. Focus on that. They were going to get out of here. They had to.
The boy draped an arm adoringly around the girl’s waist. “Anon. Tomorrow is the holiday.”
The girl swept her hand across the marketplace. “But as you can see, most of the sweethearts have already arrived.” She touched Shelby’s shoulder playfully. “Don’t forget to drop your name in Cupid’s Urn before the sun sets!”
“Oh, right. You too,” Shelby muttered awkwardly, like she always did when the people at the airport check-in counter told her to have a good trip. She bit the inside of her cheek as the girl and boy waved goodbye, arms still linked as they sauntered down the street.
Miles gripped her arm. “Isn’t that great? A Valentine’s fair!”
This, coming from a baseball-playing boy-next-door whom Shelby once watched eat nine hot dogs in a single sitting. Since when did Miles get jazzed about a sappy Valentine’s Day party?
She was about to say something sarcastic when she saw that Miles looked—well … hopeful. Like he actually wanted to go. With her? For some reason, she didn’t want to crush him.
“Sure. Great.” Shelby shrugged nonchalantly. “Sounds like fun.”
“No.” Miles shook his head. “I meant … the fallen angels are bound to be there, if they’re going to be anywhere. That’s where we’ll find someone who will help us get home.”
“Oh.” Shelby cleared her throat. Of course that was what he meant. “Yeah, good point.”
“What’s wrong?” Miles dipped the ladle into the well and held the cool cup of water up to Shelby’s lips. He stopped and wiped the edge clean with his sleeve, then held it out again.
Shelby felt herself blushing for no reason, so she closed her eyes and drank deeply, hoping she wouldn’t catch some sort of withering sickness and die. After she’d finished, she said, “Nothing.”
Miles dipped the ladle again and drank a big gulp, his eyes scanning the crowd.
“Look—” he said, dropping the ladle back into the bucket. He pointed behind Shelby to a raised platform at the edge of the market stalls where three girls were huddled together, doubled over in fits of giggles. Between them was a tall pewter pot with a fluted rim. It looked old as dirt and pretty ugly, the kind of expensive “artwork” Francesca might have in her office at Shoreline.
“That must be Cupid’s Urn,” Miles said.
“Oh, yes, obviously. Cupid’s Urn.” Shelby nodded sarcastically. “What the heck does that mean? Wouldn’t Cupid have better taste?”
“It’s a tradition carried over from the classical days of Rome,” Miles said, going into scholarly mode as usual. Traveling with him was like carrying around an encyclopedia.
“Before Valentine’s Day was Valentine’s Day,” he went on, his voice tinged with excitement, “it was called Lupercalia—”
“Looper—” She waved a hand, working out a bad pun. Then she saw Miles’s expression. So earnest and sincere.
Registering her eyes on his face, he reached up instinctively to tug his baseball cap down over his eyes. His nervous habit. But his hands met only air.
He flinched as if embarrassed and tried to stuff his hand in his jeans pocket, but the coarse blue cloak covered his pants, so all he could do was cross his arms over his chest.
“You miss it, don’t you?” Shelby asked.
“What?”
“Your hat.”
“That old thing?” He shrugged too quickly. “Nah. Haven’t even thought about it.” He looked away, casting his eyes emptily around the square.
Shelby put her hand on his arm. “What were you saying about Looper … um, you know?”
His eyes flicked back to hers, dubious. “You really want to know?”
“Does the pope wear Prada?”
Now he smiled. “Lupercalia was really just a pagan celebration of fertility and the coming of spring. All the eligible women in the town would write their names on strips of parchment and drop them into the urn—like that one there. When the bachelors drew from the urn, whoever’s name they pulled out would be their sweetheart for the year.”
“That’s barbaric!” Shelby cried. No way was some urn going to tell her who to go out with. She could make her own mistakes, thank you.
“I think it’s sweet.” Miles shrugged, looking away.
“You do?” Shelby’s head swiveled back to him. “I mean, I guess it could be cool. But this urn tradition comes before the festival had anything to do with Saint Valentine, right?”
“Right,” Miles said. “Eventually the church got involved. They wanted to bring the pagan celebration under their control, so they attached a patron saint. They did that a lot with old holidays and traditions. Like it wasn’t a threat if they owned it.”
“Typical males.”
“Now, in his life, the real Valentine was known as a defender of romance. People who couldn’t legally get married—soldiers, for instance—came to him from all over and he’d perform the ceremony in secret.”
Shelby shook her head. “How do you know all this stuff? Or rather, why?”
“Luce,” Miles said, not meeting Shelby’s eyes.
“Oh.” Shelby felt like someone had just stuffed a stiff fist into her gut. “You learned about the history of Valentine’s Day to impress Luce?” She kicked the dirt. “I guess some girls dig nerds.”
“No, Shelby. I mean”—Miles gripped her shoulders and pivoted her to face the platform with the urn. “It’s Luce. Right over there.”
