by Kim Harrison
“Yes you do,” he said, and I shook my head, but at least I was able to stop crying.
“For the first time,” I said. “For the first time I feel like I can make a difference, but the seraphs won’t give me a chance. I could do this timekeeper thing if they would just let me do it!”
Suddenly I realized how close we were. He had taken my hands again, and his knees, where they pressed against mine, were warm. He was listening to me, and it almost started me crying again. “I miss not being able to eat dinner with my dad,” I whispered. “I miss waking up and looking at the sun on my wall and wondering what the day is going to be like.”
I blinked, and a tear brimmed and fell. Josh wiped it away, and his hand taking mine again was damp.
“I miss being normal,” I breathed, feeling drained and thinking about Paul, the rising light timekeeper. Sure, there was the icky factor of having Ron as a teacher, but he did have a teacher, and a life, and probably a girlfriend who didn’t know he was someday going to be a friggin’ timekeeper in charge of angels. He could pretend he was the same as everyone else. “Most timekeepers get to live their entire life before the old one dies and they have to set everything aside and be more than normal. I’m going to miss everything.”
Okay, so maybe I was being a little drama queen, but Josh was the only person who I could tell this to who might understand.
“You’re not going to miss everything,” he said, and before I knew what he was doing, he leaned in and gave me a kiss.
A spark lifted in me. My hands tightened on his, and I shifted my head so our lips met more fully. My eyes closed, and I leaned in just a bit, feeling the space between us. Electricity spun down to my toes, and I pulled him closer.
It was awkward, sitting the way that we were, but it was the first time all day that I felt something other than confusion and desperation. I didn’t want the kiss to end, but he slowly pulled back. The memory of my heartbeat thumped and my eyes opened. I felt breathless, though I knew I couldn’t be. Josh was smiling, and his eyes flicked to mine and held, making me feel warm again.
“You want your body, right?” he asked, as if he hadn’t just made every part of me come alive. I nodded, and he added, “So go get it.”
I pulled back, worried. “You mean you think I should give the amulet up?” I said, feeling a ping of alarm ring through me. “Just walk away from being the dark timekeeper?”
“No, of course not.” He shifted, and our knees parted. “But Ron still has his body, right? He’s alive and he’s still the light timekeeper. So what’s the big deal? You want it. Go get it. Being alive doesn’t mean you have to give it up, does it?”
“No,” I said hesitantly as I recalled my conversation with a seraph on that Greek island when I accepted the position. I had asked if I could take the amulet until I found my body, then return it, and the seraph had said I could if that was what I chose to do. If I chose now to have both, wouldn’t that count for something?
Josh leaned in, surprising me when he kissed me again, lightly, almost teasingly as he took my fingers in his. “Just go get it. Let the rest figure itself out.”
I looked at the hallway, thinking of my dad. “Now?”
Josh stood, grinning down at my reluctance. “Why not? If it had been me, I would have made Barnabas stop so I could have taken it when I first saw it. They live forever, Madison. What do they know? Go get your body, and I’ll make you a sandwich. We can eat it and be normal. And when we’re done being normal, we can call Barnabas and you can go back to saving the world. Jeez, Madison, even superheroes have real lives.”
It was exactly what I wanted, what I’d been thinking about all day, and I sat at the table, unable to stop my fake heart from pounding. He made it sound so simple. I wanted it. To agonize over what everyone else thought I might do because I had my body was a stupid thing to do. “I’m going to do it,” I said, and his smile grew wide.
“I knew you would.” He gave me a soft smack on the shoulder. It wasn’t as nice as that kiss, but I smiled back at him. Doing this felt right, for a change. Heaven be damned, if they didn’t want to do things my way, then I’d just give the amulet back and to hell with them all.
Excitement zinged down to my toes, almost as potent as that kiss had been. I settled myself more firmly in the chair, setting it square to the table with my back to the hallway arch.
Josh made a sound of surprise. “Here? What if your dad comes in?”
He had moved to stand beside the coffeepot, concern in his expression, and I put my hand out, hoping he’d come sit beside me. “I want you with me when I do this,” I said, my foot jiggling under the table. “You in my room after midnight isn’t going to happen. Talk about my dad having a cow! The roof is out, too. Ron might still be out there.”
“Okay, but we could go somewhere else,” he said, arms crossing in front of him as he looked out the black window to the street.
“Barnabas is going to be here in an hour,” I said impatiently. “There’s nothing open. It will be fine, Josh. The first time I did this, I was in a cop’s office. Besides, what do you think is going to happen? I slip into my body, and it’s done!”
He made a face, and I wiggled my fingers at him, my palm up. “A kiss for luck?” I said, feeling myself grow warm. I couldn’t wait to get my real body back. Everything I felt with Josh was being filtered through my amulet, and I just wanted to be myself again.
Josh chuckled at that, his arms uncrossing as he took the few steps that separated us. “A kiss for luck,” he said, one hand taking mine, and the other going flat on the table between us. With a last look at the empty hallway as if my dad might be coming, he leaned over the table, tilted his head, and met my lips.
I breathed him in, imagining I could feel his aura swirling through mine. My eyes shut, and I leaned forward, our lips moving against each other as the memory of my heart gave a pound. I want to be alive again, I thought as my fingers tightened on his, and then let go.
His eyes opened as we pulled away, his gaze going to the hallway before they came back to me. “If you’re sure?” he said, pulling out the chair facing the archway and sitting down.
My heart was still pounding, and I shrugged, licking my lips as if trying to seal the memory of him there. “Tell me if you hear him coming down, okay?”
Josh put his arms flat on the table, his head shaking. “Okay.”
God, I hope this works. I felt like I was running out of time. Smiling at Josh, I closed my eyes and resettled myself. I felt him take my hand, and I gave his fingers a squeeze. It was easy to find my mindscape of the sheet of the present and the tightly interwoven threads of everyone’s lives falling from it. I could see Josh’s blue twining heavily about mine, Barnabas and Nakita close in thought but not presence. Inching my awareness higher, I found the lines of my thought that were attaching to my amulet and pulling me into the future. And between them was the soft blue and yellow glow of my body, stuck in time, waiting for me.
“I can do this,” I breathed as I let my awareness fall into the spaces in between.
Like a foot into a well-designed shoe, my soul gave a sigh and slipped into my body. The memory of Josh’s lips on mine was replaced by the taste of salt. The hum of the fridge ebbed, and became the sound of surf. I gasped when a wrench twisted my gut.
Josh cried out, but it sounded thin and unreal. And with that same sort of mental relaxation I’d used to let go of the time line and get it started again, I let my mind slip back an instant in time. I hadn’t before, and it made all the difference. With a little thunk of presence, I felt my body shift back in sync with the universe. I was here, and there was no going back.
My heart pounded, and a thrilling sensation spilled through me as I sat up in a spacious, sunlit room. I looked down at my torn prom dress, unbelieving as I felt the grimy fabric between two blood-caked fingers. That fast, it was done. I was in my body.
Dizziness hit me, and I took a gasping breath, almost forgetting to let it out. A lau
gh burbled up, mixing with the sounds of gulls. I had to breathe. I had to breathe!
My hand went to my neck, and I found my amulet. Swinging my feet around, I jerked my toes from the cold marble floor. Everything seemed to be moving slowly, and I ached everywhere. There was no toe tag when I looked, but I remembered having torn that off.
A throbbing at the front of my head brought my hand up, and I probed my forehead carefully, feeling what was probably a bruise. My shoulder and chest hurt. I pulled the dirt-stained, grimy dress from me to look down my front and see a long bruise where the seat belt would have been. I was really in my body. It was mine!
“I did it!” I shouted, hearing my voice echo, and the gulls outside seemed to mock me. Coughing, I hunched on the velveteen couch, holding my ribs so it wouldn’t hurt so much.
“I did it,” I whispered, not caring if I hurt. I had done it, and I wondered if my resonance had changed because I was again in my body. Black wings, I realized, wouldn’t be a problem anymore. But then my victorious smile hesitated and slowly vanished. Moving carefully until I was sure I could, I stood up and hobbled toward the nearest door, frantically searching for the one thing I hadn’t needed in six months. I had really done it. The proof, they say, is in the pudding. Or in this case, the can. I had to go to the bathroom in the worst way, and I didn’t have a clue where it was.
Chapter Eight
I trailed my hand across the smooth marble walls just so I could feel the silky sensation as I left the bathroom. It had taken me an entire, desperate three minutes to find it. The huge washroom had been off an entire suite of rooms that I was guessing had been Kairos’s private quarters. Kairos, the same guy who had killed me. I’d give the man one thing; he had taste. Everything I’d found in my mad dash for the bathroom had been scrumptiously elegant. Cold and precise. A band poster or CD rack would look out of place, which made me wonder how much time he’d actually spent here.
Giving the huge, sunken tub a last, longing glance from over my shoulder, I padded barefoot into the bedroom with its huge bed of soft pillows and downy comforters, still messed up from when Kairos had left it. Which was kind of creepy, when you thought about it. My body had been here all along, just an instant out of step with the rest of the world and therefore unseen and protected from the passage of time. Sort of like Barnabas hiding his wings, out of sync with the universe and invisible.
The sun coming in the huge windows with the flat ocean beyond it made me sigh. Taking a bath didn’t sound prudent, even if I would feel a hundred percent better. I had changed clothes, though. Spending the rest of the night trying to save Tammy in my old prom dress wasn’t an option. Kairos predictably hadn’t had any skirts or dresses in his closet, but I’d found a black pair of trousers that almost fit if I rolled up the bottoms, and a baggy tunic that might be fashionable if you were in Azeroth in World of Warcraft.
I hoisted the baggy pants up higher and tied a small knot in the waistband to keep them from falling down as I went into the hallway. The shirt I couldn’t do much with, and I’d just have to be careful not to lean too far forward. My old dress was wadded up and shoved under the bathroom sink. If I never saw it again, it would be too soon. Though caught in time and basically static for the time I’d been out of my body, I couldn’t help but feel like I’d been wearing it since I’d died. No wonder my chest hurt, scrunched into that corset. My shoulder ached from the car accident, and I swung it experimentally, smiling. Yeah, it hurt, but it was because I was alive. I couldn’t wait to tell Josh.
The hallway opened up into a huge common area with fabulous cushions and low tables, which in turn led out to the spacious, tiled patio through wide archways edged in flowing curtains. I knew no one had been here since Kairos had died, but everything looked clean. One of the perks of living on holy ground, maybe?
I headed for the outside, my hand holding my amulet in reassurance. I was so-o-o-o glad I still had it and it hadn’t been left behind in the kitchen when I had vanished, and I was sure I had. Barnabas had told me I had looked like a ghost when he yanked me back the first time, and since my amulet was what gave me my fake body, and it was with me now . . .
Poor Josh, I thought, wishing I had a way to talk soundlessly with him as I went outside and blinked in the sudden sun. He must be worried sick, me vanishing like that. As soon as I got myself thinking straight, I was going to contact Barnabas or Nakita to come pick me up. Nakita, at least, knew where Kairos’s island was, seeing as she killed him here.
My eyes darted to the broken table where she’d scythed him, the cracked table empty of any sign of violence. I’d taken on the duties of the dark timekeeper before the blood of the last one had gone cold, and I shivered. The hard stone had been cracked when the seraph had laughed at me for not believing in fate. Or had it been laughing because it had seen the future and knew that I’d be here now, wanting my body and the amulet both. They’d let me keep it, right?
Concerned, I wrapped my arms around myself and turned from the table as I remembered the painful beauty of the seraph. They’d let me keep the amulet. I mean, I’d asked if I could try it out, then give it back, and the angel had given me this crafty look and said I could if that was what I chose, like choice was all that there was when it was obvious that seraphs were all about fate. It had even said that there was always a choice. Well, I was making one now. Ron had an amulet, and he was alive. It had said I could choose to give up my amulet when I found my body. That meant the default was for me to keep it. Right?
Determination filled me, and the wind from the water rose up the hundred-foot drop from the tiny beach to shift my hair. The white cloth strung between the pillars made Kairos’s patio look like a perfume commercial. The tide was mostly out, and I closed my eyes and faced the sun, hands spread wide as if I could take the moment and remember it forever, filling myself with the heat of the sun. My heart beat in my chest, and I breathed in and out. I was alive and it felt wonderful—even if my neck hurt as if I had whiplash.
Slowly my smile faded, and my head dropped. Somewhere, on the other side of the earth, Nakita waited in the darkness, thinking I was going to give up my position and abandon her. Some might think it unhealthy to have pinned so much on another person, but Nakita was an angel, one of heaven’s finest reapers. For a creature who had existed since time began, fear was a world-altering realization. Her mind wasn’t created to understand it, and I was her only way to figure it out. Friend was too simple a word. Master was just wrong. Mentor didn’t fit. I only knew we had a bond, and I couldn’t dismiss it just to make my life easier.
My hand gripping my amulet, I closed my eyes, thinking of Nakita’s aura. Shifting my own aura so my thought could slip free of me, I sent a call to her, imagining her in my mind.
Nakita, I thought, feeling my emotion wing from me, and I modified it to her aura, exactly and precisely, right before it hit the top of the atmosphere and bounced down. Even if she were on the opposite side of the earth, she would hear.
But my thoughts stayed empty.
Frowning, I tightened my hold on my amulet. Nakita! I thought louder, taking more care to tailor it to her. Again it bounced from the ceiling of air back to earth . . . and simply vanished.
Concerned, I opened my eyes. I might be in some trouble here. Eventually they’d talk to Josh and figure out what I’d done, and since I had told Barnabas that I’d found my body on my island, they’d look for me here. How long that would take I didn’t know. What might happen to Tammy in the meantime was not pretty.
Barnabas? I called, modifying my thought to slip past his aura and into his mind. I had always been able to reach him the easiest.
“Oh, crap,” I whispered when I got the same response—which was no response. What the devil was going on? It was entirely possible that I’d accidentally changed my signature when I took my body, even if it looked the same to me. They might be hearing me and be unable to answer back. But I didn’t think so. It was as if my thoughts weren’t reaching them at all!
I spun to look at the broken table, fear making my stomach hurt. Maybe the seraphs had cut me off. They had been taking care of the dark timekeeper’s duties for months. What if they had seen me take my body and they just cut me completely out of the equation and left me here before I could tell them I had made a new choice!
Clutching my amulet, I searched its depths. It looked the same, and scared, I stood with the drop-off to my back, the wind shifting my hair as I held my amulet and brought the time line into focus. It looked the same, too, and I exhaled in relief. My amulet, at least, worked.
“There once was a girl who was dead,” Grace sang, and my eyes flew open as I spun, looking for her. “Whose decisions she made with her head. Her body to save, was just what she craved. Choice or fate—both were messed up, instead.”
“Grace!” I exclaimed, hardly able to hear her over the loud surf, and squinting, still not seeing her glow in the bright sun. “I’m so glad you’re here. Barnabas and Nakita . . . are they okay? I tried calling them, and they didn’t answer. I’m still the dark timekeeper. Right?”
A faint buzzing tipped me off that she was nearby, and a warmth stole into my aching shoulder, soothing it. “Yup. You’re still the dark timekeeper. They can’t just take that away. You have to voluntarily give it up. Or be scythed.”
My chest felt warm, and I wondered if she had moved to hover before me. “Your aura looks the same,” she said, her voice going more faint. “Maybe they’re just ignoring you. You smell funny now.”
“Gee, thanks,” I said, fully aware that I stank like I hadn’t bathed in a month. There was nothing funny about it. “Do you think you could have one of them come get me? I’m worried about Tammy.”
“You should be worried about Demus,” she said cryptically.