by Kim Harrison
“It was Dan,” Nakita said, and I rolled my eyes.
“Dan then. But if her brother doesn’t die, she won’t run away, right? Problem solved.”
Nakita, though, didn’t look convinced as she exchanged a worried look with Barnabas. “What?” I asked, thinking they knew something I didn’t.
Josh turned his cookie around to lick the cream squishing out. He looked happy and content, and I shifted my leg until our knees touched. He smiled as he looked up, making me glad he was here with me. “Don’t you ever stop eating?” Nakita asked him.
“No.” Josh turned to look at the vending machine. “You chipped your nail polish.”
Nakita gasped, immediately checking her fingernails, then bending first one sandal up to check her toes, then the other. “I did not!” she exclaimed indignantly.
Barnabas was smiling, and Josh held the last of his cookie up. “Madison, you want one?”
I shook my head, and Nakita glared at him. “She doesn’t eat, mortal.”
“It’s still polite to ask,” Josh said, chewing, and if I was able to blush, I would have. “Barnabas, did they tell you yet that Madison identified Tammy by her aura?”
A jolt of excitement raced through me, and I sat up, having forgotten my success there. “No,” Barnabas said, looking as happy as I suddenly felt. “Madison, that’s fantastic! How long have you been able to see auras?”
“I can’t,” I said, though I was starting to wonder.
Nakita, too, was smiling again. “She looked back through at the time line to where she flashed so I could see Tammy’s aura resonance. She’s a fish.”
“Green with an orange center,” Barnabas said cryptically. “She’s got issues.”
“Fish?” I asked, wondering if it was some kind of code.
“My aura is blue,” Josh said.
Barnabas looked askance at him. “I know,” he said, then turned to me. “So you talked to her. You scared her. You think it was enough?”
I shrugged, glancing at Josh’s cookie. “I don’t know. It’s not like I zap back home when reality realigns itself. I want to talk to her again.”
“There’s a good idea.”
Ignoring Barnabas, I licked my lips, wishing I was hungry. “That looks good, Josh.”
Josh beamed as he stood up. “I’ll get you one.”
“She doesn’t eat . . . Josh,” Nakita said dryly, then took a picture of everyone’s feet and the crumbs he had made.
I shook my head, and Josh sat back down. “Thanks, anyway,” I said softly. “I’ll be glad when I learn how to look between the now and the next and find my body. I’m tired of not being hungry.”
Nakita froze, and I looked up to find her staring at me. Her eyes blinked, and in a sudden motion, she shoved her camera into her purse. “I’ll be outside watching the apartment,” she said, then walked quickly to the door, her back stiff and her pace stilted. The door hit the wall, making a bigger dent, and then she was outside, standing with her arms crossed and her head down in the fading sun.
Bewildered, I looked from Josh, his mouth full and chewing slowly, to Barnabas’s resigned expression. “What did I say?” I asked.
Josh shrugged, but Barnabas winced. “She’s worried that once you get your body back that you’ll dissociate from your amulet and leave her. So am I.”
Worried, I looked out the plate-glass windows.
“Those black wings you put in her left some of your memories in her. She knows you better than anyone on heaven or earth, and she’s afraid. I’ll be okay, but Nakita . . . You taught her what it’s like to fear death, and she thinks that once you’re gone no one will understand her and people will think she’s more of a square peg than they already do.”
Oh, God. How do I get into these messes?
Josh jumped when his phone vibrated. Excusing himself, he went to answer it and give us some privacy at the same time. My gaze dropped, and I ran my fingernail along a groove in the table. Looking up, I gathered my determination. “I don’t want to give up being the dark timekeeper,” I said. “But if I can’t make this work—if I can’t convince the seraphs that the early scythings are unnecessary to save a person’s soul before it goes bad, then I’m not going to stay around to send reapers to kill people who are too scared, or frightened, or just plain stupid to find joy in life.”
Barnabas looked out the window, his hat pulled low over his eyes. “You wanted to know what was bothering her. That’s it.”
He was being unusually callous, and I frowned. “You don’t think I’d rather stay here with you?” I almost growled, crumpling up Josh’s cookie wrapper. “I’m trying to make this work!”
“So is she.” Barnabas leaned forward. “She hasn’t been on earth as long as I have. She doesn’t understand about human choice and the fragility of your dreams and the strength that lies in your hopes and faith. Angels see everything in black and white, and the earth was made to be colorful. Think about what you’re asking her to do. She is all about the soul, Madison. Life is secondary to her. Life is transient, and you’re asking her to risk someone’s soul for an extension of something that to her is a blink of an eye.”
“But all we have is that blink,” I said miserably.
Barnabas leaned back and glanced at Josh, talking with someone on the phone. “I know. It’s one of the reasons I left heaven. I think that Nakita is starting to understand. She’s come a long way.”
My throat was tight, and I watched Josh close his phone, looking as depressed as I felt. “So have you, Barnabas,” I said softly.
Frowning, Barnabas looked away. I knew he wasn’t happy about leaving his light-reaper status. My special talent seemed to be screwing up everyone’s life. Sighing, I watched Nakita standing in the lowering sun looking perfect and worried. She wasn’t a fallen angel like Barnabas, but one in good standing. So far. But I’d scarred her, changed her forever when I had accidentally put two black wings inside her. They had been eating me alive when I’d lost contact with my amulet and had fallen through her like a ghost. The black wings had latched on to her and started to eat her memories, much richer than mine. Eventually the seraphs had gotten them out, but the memories that the black wings had taken from me were forever a part of her. She now knew what it was like to fear, something that most angels have no concept of.
“I don’t want to leave,” I whispered.
Barnabas made a small noise. “Then we’d better make this work.”
Josh shuffled up, his eyes darting from me to Barnabas. “I have to go,” he said in disgust. “My mom found out I wasn’t at The Low D with the guys and wants me home.”
“Oh, no!” I exclaimed, guilt from making him lie for me rising up fast. “Josh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to get you in trouble.”
He shrugged, head down as he zipped his gym bag shut. “I told her I took you to dinner instead, and she’s not mad, but I gotta go put in an appearance. You’d better call your dad. She might have phoned him.”
I hated this. Lying. It made more trouble than it solved, but what were my choices here? Hey, Dad. I’m on the West Coast tonight, trying to stop a boy from dying in an apartment fire. Back after midnight! Love you!
Throwing my head back, I looked at the stained ceiling. Someone had put graffiti up there, and I blinked. Barnabas silently stood and shook out his long duster like it was his wings. “I’ll take you home,” he offered to Josh.
“Puppy presents,” I swore softly, standing as well. “Do you think you can come back?”
Josh hoisted his gym bag to his shoulder and brushed the cookie crumbs from his shirt. “I don’t know. I’ll cover for you best I can, but if anyone asks, I left you at The Low D with a couple of girls.”
I made a face. Yeah, that was likely. I only had one girlfriend, and she was out at the curb, afraid I was going to ditch her.
Josh glanced at his watch, still set for Illinois time. “It’s almost six thirty at home.” Frustrated, he dropped his hand and grimaced. “I might not b
e able to get away until after midnight, which will be ten here. Everything might be done by then.”
“If we’re lucky.” I glanced at Barnabas, knowing that he wasn’t going to sit and wait for Josh. He’d come right back. “Well, I’m going to have to put in an appearance tonight, too,” I said, thinking of my curfew. At least it was the weekend. “Call me?”
Josh smiled at that, and my entire frame of mind changed when he edged around the table and took my hands and pulled gently, hesitantly. I leaned in as he did, and he gave me a kiss.
He smelled like soap, and his lips quirked in a soft smile when he pulled away. “Soon as I know what’s up, I’ll call,” he said. “Maybe I can get away sooner.”
“Okay.” I felt soft and squishy, and I let his fingers slip from mine reluctantly. Outside, Nakita was frowning, but Barnabas patiently waited.
Shifting his gym bag higher, Josh leaned toward me again, and after one last kiss, he rocked back, smiling.
“Come on, Buck Rogers,” Barnabas said as he motioned to the door. “Let’s go.”
Giving me a last look, Josh headed for the parking lot. “Who’s Buck Rogers?” he asked as the door opened, Barnabas catching it before it hit the wall.
I slowly sank back down in my chair, still feeling the warmth of those two kisses. Such a small thing, but not really. My smile fading, I watched Barnabas talk to Nakita. The dark reaper glanced at me, then away. I couldn’t help but wonder what he’d said to her as he started walking away with Josh.
Stretching out my leg, I shoved the dryer door shut with my foot, then stood to push the button to get it started again. The soft hum and sliding schlummp, schlummp, schlummp of someone’s jeans slowly filled the steamy room. Head down, I leaned over the adjacent dryer, wondering if Nakita would come in or continue to boycott me. I wished that Josh could have stayed, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that having him at home to help me if I needed it was a comfort. Being two time zones from home made it hard to cover one’s tracks. Even if one was a timekeeper.
The faint humming in my legs grew stronger. Realizing it wasn’t coming from the adjacent dryer, I pulled my head up. The world had gone blue. Like I was in a gigantic fishbowl in reverse, the parking lot beyond the huge plate-glass windows was a sunny, inky blue, but even as I stared, the fluorescent lights in the Laundromat began dripping an insidious indigo. I was going to flash.
We’ve done it! I thought joyfully, eyes alight as I looked for Nakita, her back to me as she watched Barnabas and Josh leave. Why else would I flash forward unless Tammy had indeed changed her fate?!
My hand rose to grip my amulet, shocked to find it more than warm. It was hot! “Nakita!” I shouted, and she turned. Her eyes widened at something she saw in me, and I heard her mental shout to Barnabas echo as it hit the top of the atmosphere and bounced back.
And then the inky black poured from the ceiling lights. It billowed up around my knees, and, like a deadly gas, it hit me hard. My knees gave way, and I fell, one hand still holding the top of the dryer. The heat of it seemed to burn my fingers, and I couldn’t see. The blue stuff had gotten in my eyes and they were tearing. Suddenly I realized I wasn’t crumpled on the floor of the Laundromat with my fingertips warm on the dryer.
I was in Tammy, her fingers burning, and she was terrified.
Choking, hot air burned in my mouth, and my lungs ached. I couldn’t breathe. “Johnny!” I screamed, then hunched over, coughing. I fell, arms outstretched. It was dark, and I gasped when my cheek hit the carpet. The air down here was a blessed few degrees cooler, and I cried as I pulled it into my damaged lungs. I was dying. I had died before, and I knew the feeling though Tammy didn’t—the same blackness edging my vision, and the same lack of pain filled my arms and legs.
No! I thought, confused. I had changed things! We had talked to Tammy! This couldn’t be the future, could it? Was there going to be a happy ending to this? There had to be. But the flash forward said otherwise, and by the lack of any blue haze, it looked like it was going to be tonight, not tomorrow. Damn it, I’d made things worse, not better.
“Johnny!” I cried again, crawling to his door. I found it, reaching up to turn the knob and push the door open. A wave of sound rushed out over my head, and I cowered in the sudden heat.
“Tammy!” I heard him call, and I crawled forward, scared out of my mind. I could smell things burning, and my mind walled the horror away. Everything. Everything was on fire.
And then I found him.
He was blind with terror, but at my touch, he grasped me, and we clung together as the ceiling above us turned into a beautiful, rolling orange and red. It was mesmerizing, even as my eyelashes singed and my nose burned inside.
“Tammy, I’m scared,” Johnny whispered, coughing, and I held him. It was too late. We couldn’t get out. Crying, I rocked him, our backs to the wall beside his bed.
“I’m here,” I whispered, Tammy’s last breath rasping as our twined thoughts were voiced by her alone. “You’re not alone. I’ve got you.”
And then we looked up as a roaring sound of heat sucked a new breath of air into the room an instant before the ceiling gave way. Everything flashed red—
I jumped, feeling as if someone had slapped me. Terrified, my eyes sprang open.
“Barnabas!” I cried. He was crouched before me, his eyes intent. It was over. But what had happened? The memory of my heart was thudding after having been inside Tammy, and slowly it beat one last time and stopped. Her terror took longer to leave me, and I sat there clutching my cooling amulet as Nakita and Josh clustered around me in concern.
“You came back,” I said, thinking it sounded lame, and Barnabas shifted a few inches away. Standing, he extended his hand and pulled me, wobbling, to my feet.
The humid air of the Laundromat seemed cool. Tears were dribbling from me. I slowly leaned back against the thumping dryer, my arms wrapped around myself as I started to shake, the tears steadily slipping from me. It was awful. So awful.
“What happened?” Josh asked, but I couldn’t talk. Not yet. They had died. Both of them. This was so unfair. Johnny and Tammy had died with grace, supporting each other in a way that was beautiful and showed the best of a human soul, but they had died. It wasn’t what I had wanted. Her soul might be saved, but it was the end of her life that had bought its purity.
“Something changed?” Nakita asked, but by her tone of voice, she knew it wasn’t good.
I looked past them at the empty Laundromat as if it was a dream and would flake into nothing and return me to that hell of existence, the fear, the hopelessness, the love for her brother giving Tammy something to believe in. “They both die,” I whispered.
“In a state of grace,” Barnabas finished for me, his brow furrowed.
Josh rocked back, looking worried. I would never tell him of the horror I’d just lived through. “I didn’t save Tammy’s or Johnny’s life,” I said. “All I did was make it so a reaper didn’t have to come out here and scythe her early. God, this sucks!” Depressed, I closed my eyes and wiped a tear away. I couldn’t do this. It was too much. It hurt too much when things went wrong.
“We have to do something,” Nakita said, and my eyes opened. She was standing over the table, her lips pressed in determination. “Now,” she said firmly. “We have to go now.”
“But her soul is safe,” I said, wanting to do just that but surprised that Nakita did, too. “Why do you care?”
Her hand on the door, Nakita paused, looking at me to make me shiver. “Her soul may be safe, but mine is troubled.”
Chapter Four
The memory of fire trucks that existed only in the future seemed to haze over my sight as I looked across the busy road to the three-story apartment complex. Having watched—no, lived—Tammy and Johnny dying in a fire had more than shaken me. It had rocked me to my core. I’d thought that I’d made a difference, but all I’d done was make things worse. Josh, at least, got home safely. He’d been gone only five minutes, and I misse
d him already. I worried that he was going to drift away, looking for someone who wasn’t being yanked across the continent to save someone she didn’t even know, someone who didn’t have to lie to her dad all the time, someone who had friends other than angels—and someone who could eat a friggin’ bowl of popcorn with him. Why couldn’t I just be normal?
I sniffed, jumping when Nakita handed me a tissue from her purse. “Thanks,” I said as I rubbed the soft paper under my nose and wadded it up in a tight ball. God, I was going to throw up, I knew it.
“I’m sorry, Madison,” she said as she stood awkwardly next to me while we waited for traffic to clear enough to cross.
“Me too,” I said, glancing back when Barnabas dropped from the sky, a soft thump of air giving him away. His expression was cross, and his wings immediately vanished, leaving him a slightly surly, broody teenager in dark pants, a faded band tee, and a black duster totally at odds with the hot weather. He shoved his hands in his pockets and joined us at the curb, just back from his quick trip to take Josh home. Josh said he was going to cover for me, but I was likely still going to have to make an appearance for my dad before too long.
I turned back, waiting for a light to change about half a mile up the road. Barnabas was upset, looking positively angry as he scowled at Nakita, something clearly on his mind. I’d be concerned, but disappointment clung to me like a second shadow, made worse by the darkening sky. Heat stored in the asphalt rose, and I brushed the hair from my eyes as I scanned the skies for black wings that wouldn’t be coming. No, I’d fixed everything up just jim dandy. Thanks to me, Tammy would die without reaper intervention. The seraphs were probably tickled three shades of happiness. I was truly the dark timekeeper, able to convince people to kill themselves after a few minutes’ conversation.
“You do not have a soul,” Barnabas muttered to Nakita out of the blue, shocking me. “Only creatures of the earth have souls.”
Souls? I wondered, my thoughts going back to Nakita’s last words before he had left, and I turned to see her standing with her lips pressed and her grip tight on her red purse.