by Kim Harrison
“Demus?” I echoed, wondering what the dark reaper had done, but there was no answer. She was gone. I hadn’t even seen her leave.
My brow furrowed, and I crossed my arms over my middle, feeing how empty it was. The elation at having gotten my body back was starting to fade. I was hungry, tired, and I ached from the injuries I’d gotten rolling down a hill in a convertible. It was starting to get hot, and my clothes fit funny. Looking at my nails and the old polish from the prom, I wished I had asked Grace to have Barnabas bring Josh with him. God, he must be worried sick.
The hair on the back of my neck seemed to prick, and I spun, heart pounding. There was no one there, just the big empty house that now belonged to me.
“Madison!” came from above, and I looked up, almost blinding myself. It was Nakita, and I backed up under the canopy as she landed, her beautiful wings glinting in the afternoon sun. She was wearing all white again from her head to her boots, and I felt a pang of guilt. She only wore white when she was upset with me, her way of expressing her anger.
Her face was creased, but upon seeing me in my new black clothes pulled from Kairos’s closet, confusion trickled into her eyes. “You’re wearing Kairos’s clothes,” she said.
“I . . .” I said, then hesitated. “Well, I’ve got his job, right?” I said, sounding harsher than I intended. “I may as well do it right.”
Nakita’s lips parted, and her wings rose to block out the sun. “Then you’re staying?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted, and her expression fell as if I’d told her I was leaving this moment. “Nakita, I’m trying, but nothing seems to be working,” I pleaded with her. “You can see it better than I can. I don’t want to think about it, okay? I just want to do right by Tammy. Then, when it’s over, we can think about what comes next.”
She seemed to accept that, her head down and the wind shifting her long black hair into her face. “I’m sorry the seraphs aren’t listening to you,” she said. “Barnabas found Demus. He went to find you, and found Josh instead. They are both waiting for you in the graveyard.”
“Josh!” I exclaimed, glad he was going to be there.
“You need to talk to Demus,” Nakita said tightly, “or he’s going to kill Tammy the second he sees her.”
A faint smile came over me. “And that would be wrong, huh?” I asked her, and she blinked at me. Slowly her smile grew, and she looked almost embarrassed.
“It might be,” she admitted, stretching her wings to put us both in the shade. “If there is a chance we can change her fate. We should go. I had forgotten how peaceful it is here.” Her eyes met mine, holding not peace but at least a lack of fear. “Or maybe I never noticed before.”
Nodding, I hoisted my pants back up and minced across the black marble to her. Nakita’s arm went around me, and I stepped up on one of her feet, standing next to her, rather than in front. One push of her huge wings, and we were airborne. My stomach dropped, and I clutched at Nakita’s arm. Looking down at the small island, I shivered. Flying was a lot scarier now that I was alive again.
“Close your eyes,” Nakita warned me, and I screwed them shut. The muffling softness of her wings pressed against my ears as she enfolded us, and the scent of feathers and wind filled my nose. I gasped when the world seemed to turn inside out, but I was expecting it. Nakita had flung us across space, moving us from high noon to nearly midnight in an eyeblink.
A warm breeze shifted my hair, and I opened my eyes just as Nakita unfolded her wings and we dropped into space. Below us were the scattered lights of Baxter. Descending in a slow spiral, Nakita angled to a very dark part of town. It was the graveyard. A fitting spot, I thought, for a dark timekeeper to meet with her reapers.
“A reaper, Nakita, once saw, death comes to the big and the small,” came Grace’s faint voice, but I still couldn’t see her. “Alone she once stood, thinking no one else would, but the truth empowers us all.”
“Hi, Grace,” I said, putting a hand to my stomach as we descended in the humid blackness. Man, we were a long way up. And the ground looked really hard.
“I’m not going to drop you,” Nakita said as if she could read my thoughts, but it was probably my grip on her arm that gave me away.
I stumbled as she made the last wing-flapping movements in the air and my feet finally touched earth. My oversize shirt was slipping, and I yanked it back into place, warming as everyone looked up. Barnabas looked uneasy, clearly having guessed I had my body back, but Josh, standing beside him, grinned. Demus was leaning indolently against a large stone, his arms over his chest and his expression cross until he noticed what I was wearing, upon which he straightened to attention as if my clothes gave me status. Nakita had hidden her wings and was moving to stand hesitantly beside Barnabas. Grace, I’m sure, was somewhere about, but she wasn’t moving, so who knew where her bright glow was.
“Hi, Josh,” I said, and he ducked his head as he came forward, giving me a quick hug.
“You feel the same as before,” he said, smiling with half his mouth as he gave me a squeeze.
“Thanks,” I said, meaning for about six different things.
Barnabas cleared his throat, and Josh stepped back. “You scared the life out of me when you just vanished like that,” Josh accused, then added proudly, “I knew you could do it. Some warning would have been nice.”
“Sorry,” I said, fidgeting as I turned to Barnabas.
“Congratulations,” Barnabas said as he handed me my phone, his tone not giving me a clue as to what he thought about me getting my body back, and my smile started to fade.
“Yes, well, nothing has changed,” I said as I fumbled for a place to stash it before I handed it to Nakita to put in her purse. “Except I’m hungry.”
Demus pushed himself from the tombstone, squinting as he approached. “You’re wearing Kairos’s clothes and his amulet, but you don’t look anything like him.”
“And we’re all glad of that,” Nakita said, earning a chime of laughter from Grace, who was hiding somewhere.
“There was a cross-dresser from France,” she started, and Nakita threw a rock at her. It went clattering into the dark, and I swear I heard a cat yowl.
I looked down at my clothes. The reapers seemed to be making more out of me wearing them than I’d intended. “I, uh, was in that old prom dress. It was kind of icky. This was the only thing that remotely fit.”
“You look fine,” Barnabas said, but his eyes were on the dark school behind me.
“Well, I think you still smell funny,” Grace whispered right next to my ear, and I jumped.
“Grace, flap your wings a little,” I said. “It’s eerie not knowing where you are!”
I was just in time to see the worried look exchanged between Nakita and Barnabas. “You can’t see her?” Barnabas asked, and I flushed again. Man, I was starting to miss being dead.
“I’ve never been able to see her very well. It’s dark out here,” I said, wondering if I was seeing the tip of my new iceberg. First I wasn’t able to contact Nakita or Barnabas, and now I was having a hard time seeing Grace. It didn’t help that Nakita was still looking at Barnabas like I was broken.
My stomach growled, and I levered myself up to sit on the nearest tombstone. “Okay, the seraphs are mad,” I said.
“Understatement,” Demus said bluntly as he tossed his amulet up and caught it.
“They sent you to scythe her,” I added, making sure we all knew where we stood.
“The moment I find her,” Demus said, throwing his amulet up again into the inky black.
Barnabas reached out, and the dark stone smacked into his hand. Demus sat up fast. “I won’t let you kill her,” Barnabas said. “She might be able to keep her soul alive, rekindle it. You don’t know.”
“They never do!” Demus shouted, lunging. Barnabas sidestepped him, smacking his butt with the flat of his sword, brought into existence in the time it takes for an electron to spin. Josh grabbed my elbow, and I slid from the stone, pu
tting it between us and the reapers.
Demus caught his balance, his face twisted into an ugly snarl. “I will kill her,” he vowed. “I will save her soul from butchers like you, breaking seraph will. Choice is nothing compared to fate. Nothing! Or you’d be able to change it, and you can’t! Give me back my amulet!”
My eyes were wide, and I gripped the stone I was standing behind, Josh firmly next to me. Barnabas had taken the stone to keep Demus from having the ability to kill Tammy, but that wasn’t how I wanted to change things, and I gave a directive head-toss in Demus’s direction.
Barnabas’s lips pressed together disapprovingly, but he lobbed it back to the angry angel even as Nakita scoffed. “But we have changed fate, dark reaper,” Barnabas said as Demus caught it. “The seraphs just don’t want you to know about it.”
“If the seraphs don’t tell me, then I don’t need to know,” Demus said, cradling his amulet as he hunched protectively over it. “Soon as I find her, I take her soul to save it,” Demus said, then turned to Nakita. “Why are you even listening to this? Are you going grim, Nakita?”
Nakita stiffened, her features lost in the dark as she crossed her arms over her middle. Nakita wasn’t grim, but I could see why he asked.
“You can’t find her because I changed Tammy’s resonance,” I said, my bare feet going damp in the grass as I came from around the stone and walked toward him. “And you are not going to kill Tammy. You, dark reaper, are going to help me find her, and then we are not going to scythe her. We are going to talk to her and show her a different choice so she stirs her soul back to life before it dies completely. That’s how we do things down here now. Barnabas saved someone ages ago. And we saved someone else just last month. It can be done.”
“Life is transitory. Souls are not to be risked,” he said, backing away.
“If her soul is to be lost, then we will save it, but not at the cost of her life!” I said, then lowered my voice before someone called the cops about voices in the graveyard. “I am the dark timekeeper,” I said, pushing forward until his back found a tombstone. “I survived my predecessor killing me. I survived black wings eating me alive. I am going to change things,” I said, my heart pounding. “And you are going to help me. Got it?”
He didn’t say yes. But he didn’t say no, either. “Who am I?” I insisted.
“You’re the dark timekeeper,” he muttered, his expression going from defiance to one of a sullen understanding. “Nakita, this is stupid. Haven’t you told her that you can’t change fate?”
“Of course I did.” Nakita, who had been doing handstands against a tombstone, walked on her palms toward us. Flipping right side up, she landed in a fighting pose. “And then she proved me wrong. We saved Ace.”
“Barnabas . . .” Demus almost whined.
The angel smiled with half his mouth, still leaning on his sword. “Just go with it,” he advised. “But if you try to scythe Tammy, I will stop you.”
Demus crossed his arms over his chest, defiant, but understanding. “Why not just let Ron put a flipping guardian angel on her and be done with it?” he said belligerently. “If you want to save someone’s life, that’s how you do it.”
“Because we’re not just trying to save her life, we’re trying to save her soul and her life,” I said, not knowing how to explain it to him. It was about free will and choice, and angels just didn’t get it. Like Barnabas had said, heaven was black and white, but the earth was colorful.
Slumping to the ground, Demus sat cross-legged. “Sweet seraph toes, I don’t get it.”
His head shaking at the angel’s confusion, Josh gingerly sat on a broken stone. “Intense, and a little dense, too,” he whispered to me, and I smiled.
Barnabas put his sword away, clearly relaxing as Demus backed off. “So how do we talk to her?” he asked, then added, “Without her calling the cops on you. I mean, she does think you started the fire, right? Do you want me to wipe her memory?”
“No,” I said quickly, head down as I began to pace in the wet grass. “That’s why marks don’t change. You take their memories, and they have nothing to make a change with.” I came to a halt and pulled my head up. “Everyone leaves Tammy’s memories alone. Got it?”
Demus groaned, rocking back as he sat there cross-legged. “This is the weirdest scything I’ve ever been on.”
I couldn’t help my smile. “That’s because it’s not a scything, it’s a rescue.”
His head thrown back to the stars, Demus moaned, “This isn’t going to work.”
My stomach growled, and I turned to the empty street. “I’m sure Tammy would appreciate us trying.” And he was wrong. It would work. It had to.
“Never going to wo-o-o-ork,” Demus sang, and Nakita threw a rock at him.
“Shut up!” she exclaimed as Demus ducked and the rock shattered into fragments on the stone behind him. “She’s the dark timekeeper and you’re going to listen!”
“It’s okay, Nakita,” I said as I felt the sudden adrenaline rush banish my tiredness. “He sounds like you used to. He’ll learn.”
Barnabas ran a hand through his curls, his eyes on my bare toes. “There’s only one problem,” he said, giving Nakita a worried glance.
“And that would be . . . ?” I prompted, thinking it likely wasn’t my lack of shoes.
“Your amulet,” he said, his gaze flicking to it and back to me. “I don’t think it’s working.”
“What do you mean?” I said, grasping it like it might vanish.
Barnabas shrugged. “What I mean is that Grace has been talking to you for the last five minutes, and you haven’t heard a word she’s said.”
Chapter Nine
“No!” I exclaimed, my grip on my amulet becoming tighter as Josh straightened, concern pinching his brow. “I could hear her before!” Barely, though, and I hadn’t seen her at all. “And I can see the time lines!” I added, bringing them up in my thoughts.
But panic iced through me, and I stared at Barnabas. All I could see in my mindscape was a hazy glow, like the imprint a bright light might leave on your retina. “It’s almost not there!” I yelped. “They cut me off. The seraphs cut me off. No wonder I couldn’t reach either of you earlier. Try to talk to me, Barnabas. Talk to me!”
Barnabas gave me a pained look. “I’ve tried. Been trying. Madison, I don’t think you’ve been cut off.”
“Then my aura has shifted.” I was babbling, but I couldn’t help it. Josh had risen, but I was frantic, and I wouldn’t let him touch me when he tried to put a hand on my shoulder.
“We can see that, and compensate,” Nakita said. She was standing next to Barnabas. I think it was the first time they had ever made a united front.
Demus flopped back against the grass and stared up at the stars, completely uncaring. “Like a light reaper can hear a dark timekeeper,” he scoffed.
“They can,” Josh said belligerently.
“And I’m not light,” Barnabas added, his angry tone shocking me out of my own fear. I stared at him, and his gaze dropped as if he was ashamed. “Not anymore.”
My lips parted, making my fear hesitate. He had admitted it. Barnabas had let go of the last of himself. His eyes were on my amulet, and I took my hands off it, letting it dangle freely. “If they haven’t cut me off, then I broke it when I took my body,” I said. “Damn it, how long do you think before it fixes itself?”
Nakita was waving her hand in front of her face, backing up. “I will!” she was saying to Grace, probably, since I didn’t think Nakita was psychotic. “Just shut up a moment, okay?” Exhaling, she turned to me. “Grace says that your amulet is fine.”
I looked at Josh, almost wishing I’d never taken my body back, and he dropped his eyes. It wasn’t his fault. I made the choice. “Then they cut me off—” I started.
“No,” Nakita insisted. “Madison, will you just listen? They didn’t cut you off, and you didn’t break it by claiming your body. But you’re alive now, and that’s a problem.”
Barnabas, though, was nodding his head. “Remember when you first flashed forward into Ace’s future and it was too much for you?” he said, and I took Josh’s hand, giving it a quick squeeze at the memory of stars so beautiful they almost broke me. “You were dead,” he said. “Halfway to the divine. Ron had to adjust your amulet for you? It’s still toned down, and now that you’re alive, you’re not making a strong enough connection.”
“Oh, ma-a-a-an,” I groaned, dropping back to slump against a tall tombstone. Muffled. Everything was muffled. “You think?” I asked, my voice quavering. If that was all it was, it could be fixed. Not by me, though. Ron had fixed it the last time.
“You should have waited and gotten your body back after we saved Tammy,” Barnabas said.
I gave Barnabas a dark look, relieved that it wasn’t anything that the seraphs did to curtail me. Grace had said something about how my decision to claim my body messed up both fate and chance. I’d just have to deal with it. How am I going to deal with it?
“So we look for her on foot,” Josh said, seeming as relieved as I was. “What’s the big deal? We have enough people. We should hit the bus depots and all-night places first. There isn’t much open. How hard can it be?”
“You’d be surprised,” Demus said to the stars. “Finding someone on foot isn’t as easy as it sounds.”
Nakita nudged him with the toe of her white boot. “Saving a mark isn’t easy, reaper. It’s hard work. Get used to it.”
Scowling, he swung at her foot, and she danced back, laughing at him, enjoying herself.
Barnabas was frowning—as usual. “Finding her visually will take too long. Even if we split up. This would be a lot easier if you hadn’t changed her resonance,” he grumbled.
“Maybe you can ask the seraphs to fix your amulet,” Josh said, sitting back down on his broken grave marker.
“Yeah, like they would do that now?” Demus said with a harsh laugh. “Madison, they are so mad at you.”
“Ron maybe?” Nakita offered, looking like she had swallowed something nasty, and I shook my head.