Resolving to try it, I looked at the ceiling again, exhaling everything out of my lungs. My eyes closed, and I pulled into my awareness the shimmering silver sheet of time that stretched to infinity in either direction. It glowed from the auras that comprised it, people that existed this very second. Falling from it like water or a drape, was the past. It still glowed, but not nearly as bright as the present. It was the light of collective memory. Go back too far, and the canvas grew black except for people that humanity had chosen to remember, silver triumphs and disasters that transcended time itself. But here, so close to the present, it was alight with color as lives intertwined, connected, and parted.
Going forward from the ribbon was vastly different. A black so intense as to almost not be there made a hazy patch of what-might-be. It was conscious thought, and it was what pulled us from the present into the future. It stretched wide in some places, and narrow at others, almost as if some people were living a tiny bit into the future by pushing their thoughts into it. Artists, mostly. Teachers. Children. The movers and shakers.
But it was the glowing ribbon of “now” that I was interested in, and I searched it, looking for Tammy. I knew Demus was likely looking for her, too, and a spike of fear almost broke me from my concentration. “Steady,” I whispered, hearing a commotion down the hall. An argument about me, probably.
My mental sight grew clearer, and it was as if I hovered over the glowing blanket of light, searching for a particular note among an entire concert. Down one way, then retracing my steps and going farther down the other, searching among the thousands of souls near me. And then, like the small sound a vibrating glass makes when you run your finger across the rim, I felt her.
Tammy, I thought, elated. It had to be. She was alone by the looks of it, and not too far away. I focused on her, trying to put myself in her thoughts, but I only got the impression of wet hair, aching knees, and a sense of fear and hopelessness—of giving up and abandonment. The vibrating-glass sound grew louder, almost sour, and I wondered if it was this off-key sound/taste that the seraphs used to find souls in danger of becoming lost. It grated on me.
She wasn’t thinking of the future at all, her thoughts pulling her into the next moment hardly stretching past her existence. I tried to slip my awareness into that dull gray haze that existed between everyone’s present and future to try to reach her mind like I could Nakita or Barnabas, but it was like trying to thread a needle when you can’t see the eye or feel the thread. I didn’t think it was even possible. But changing the sound her aura was making . . . I might be able to change that.
A sliding thump in the distance jolted my eyes open, and I looked at the clock. Not even a minute had passed. Okay, I’d found her. Now to see if I could make a change. I shifted on the thin padding of the chair, trying to settle myself.
I willed my thoughts to slow and my focus to sharpen on my mindscape, making her aura my entire world and surrounding myself in her green and orange. I changed the color of my thoughts when I talked silently to Barnabas and Nakita. I really didn’t know how I did it, apart from focusing on them and bringing them clearly into my thoughts: Nakita’s willingness and desire to understand, Barnabas’s deep-set melancholy for the human tragedy. But thinking of Tammy would only strengthen her existing aura, which was not what I wanted.
Frowning, I wondered if the answer might be in her past, and I looked down its length, seeing one sorrow layered over the next until it looked like that was all that existed for her: the birthday party her dad promised he’d come to, and then the argument he got in with her mother, which in turn took all the joy from the present he’d given her—and the purse he lovingly picked out for her was never used, forever stained with the memory of it.
There was the shame from a failed test, and another failed test, and another, until it was easier to pretend it didn’t matter than to try, and to fail again. Deeper went the ugly words her friends spoke about another girl, but it was the knowledge that if they said such lies about one person, they probably spoke that way about her, too, which ruined any joy she might find with them.
But what tore at me was her understanding that the promises made in childhood were not true, that the lies our parents told us about being nice to others and others will be nice to you, that people were kind on the inside, and that love was more abundant than hurt . . . all of it was lies. No wonder her soul was lost. It wasn’t that she had a harder life than others, but that she was blinding herself to the joy, that the little things were being brushed aside, forgotten. Her perception of good and bad was off because she refused to put the good on the scale, too.
And as I looked over her life, it was all I could do not to cry along with her. What about this? I thought, seeing the laughter in her mother’s face when they had all come back to the shopping cart with the same carton of ice cream. And this? I wondered, watching Tammy scuff the marvel of a blue-jay feather under her shoe as she walked home. The satisfaction in a poem she wrote but never shared had to have more weight than the sigh of disappointment from her mother because of a dishwasher left unemptied—but Tammy ignored it, any satisfaction rubbed out as if it never existed.
And this! I exclaimed, seeing Johnny’s smile of thanks when she put a bowl out for his breakfast. Was that worth nothing to her?
Tammy made a low moan, clutching her knees to her chest and rocking as if in pain. A flash of brilliance sparked through her aura, shifting the orange, and I knew that Tammy was seeing what I was, not hearing my thoughts perhaps, but seeing the good in her life as I recognized it myself. Excitement shivered through me as I realized her aura was shifting, the orange being muted, dulled, as I made her revaluate her life in small, subtle ways.
Encouraged, I focused on Johnny, and somehow, when everything else seemed to be blocked and useless, she remembered him, and her tears grew to include regret. It was the first step toward making a change, and I fastened on it like a lifeline. Rushing forward through her life, I found more memories of Johnny, forgotten. The sullen thank-you he gave her last Sunday when she gave him the remote control instead of lording over the TV. The gratitude she had felt two weeks ago when she overheard him stick up for her with his friends. And the time that he changed her bowling score so it would look like she won. He loved her, and she had all but forgotten.
I could feel Tammy crying, holding her knees to herself, utterly miserable. I could feel her sorrow, her heartache. It ran through me like it was my own, and I gave her some of my hope, wanting to leave her with the idea that things weren’t so bad. We were as much our past as our future, and hers was better than she knew. She just had to look at it in a new way.
A tear, hot and heavy, spilled down my cheek, and as I wiped it away, I pulled back from Tammy’s aura to see what I’d done.
The orange at its center was now rimmed with black.
My heart gave a thump, then stopped. My first thought was that I’d damaged her, made things worse, but then I decided it didn’t matter. Her aura had shifted, maybe just enough. Demus or Arariel wouldn’t find her. Pulling back farther, I memorized Tammy’s new resonance so I could find it again. I had no idea if the color shift was permanent or not. She was still a lost soul, but perhaps now she’d live long enough for me to get out of here and help her. I had to get her to do her own soul-searching. She had to make the choice herself.
Tammy’s aura melted into the glorious bright line of the present as I withdrew, and a feeling of satisfaction filled me. Smiling, I fingered my amulet, warm from having touched the divine. Take that, seraphs, I thought, feeling empowered for the first time in a long while.
Curious, I brought my own resonance before me, wondering if I had any black in my aura before I had died and taken on the dark timekeeper’s amulet. I felt a soft quiver in me as I ran my attention down my recent history, blurring over the snarl the time line had made when my soul had been cut out of it. It was where I had died, and it amazed me how the lives around me had bound together, support
ing each other until a new weft and weave could mend the tear. And then the sudden burst of light when I had taken the amulet from Kairos, the timekeeper before me, using it to keep me connected to the present.
Nervous, I steadied myself and looked past the snarl. It wasn’t easy to look at one’s past, knowing it was fixed and one’s emotions were laid bare. But I felt myself smile as I saw that I really hadn’t changed since I’d died. Sure, my original aura of blue and yellow was vastly different from the deep violet that it now was, but my vision of the balance between good and bad was about the same.
It really was a pretty aura, I thought, sort of mentally running my fingers through it and feeling melancholy that it wasn’t mine anymore. Or was it? Maybe I could change my own aura, just for a moment, and be myself?
Shifting focus, I ran my attention back to the present until I found myself sitting alone in a cop’s office, waiting for them to find a battery for my phone. My aura was the dark of a timekeeper’s, not my own, but as I compared it to the one in my memory, a faint glimmer of blue seemed to echo, not in my aura but in the hazy gray where the future became the now.
Between the now and the next? Oh, crap, I thought, excitement zinging down to my toes. Was that what the seraph had meant? Was that where my body was hidden? In the fraction of existence where time shifted from the past to the future? Time wouldn’t exist there, and my body would be pristine and perfect, hovering an instant into death until I could reclaim it.
I took a deep breath, letting it all out to try to calm myself. If that was my original aura, then it had to be coming from my body, stuck in stasis where the old timekeeper had left it. I could reclaim my body, and with that, I didn’t need the timekeeper amulet to keep me alive and the black wings off me!
It was all I wanted at this point, and I slowly centered myself, trying to focus on the small space. All around me were my thoughts reaching out to pull me into the future. And a tiny, almost-not-there glow of blue.
I snatched at it, wanting it so bad I could feel it. Vertigo came from everywhere, and I gasped, clenching the arms of the chair but refusing to open my eyes and lose what progress I’d made. “This is mine!” I whispered, feeling my lips move and the last bit of breath I had in my lungs escape.
There was the faintest taste of salt on my lips, and I licked them, curious. A faint breeze sifted my hair, tickling my cheek. But there was no air vent in the cop’s office. The tickling grew more intense, and a faint, uncomfortable feeling of . . . of . . .
“I have to go to the bathroom,” I said, eyes still closed and mystified. Since I had died, the only time I’d run for the bathroom was to evade a question from my dad.
An uncomfortable feeling slid through me, and my hands clenched on the arms of the chair. But they weren’t gripping the hard plastic and metal. It was soft, like velvet.
My eyes flew open. Bright light stabbed into me, and I gasped. I was still sitting in a hot office smelling like cigarettes and stale sugar. But I was also in a breezy room, white curtains drifting in over the sills and thresholds. I could hear surf. And birds. The ceiling was marble, and the floor was black tile. I’d been here before. My island?
I looked down, seeing the grass-stained, torn remains of my prom dress overlaying the reality of my jeans and black lacy top covered in ash. My God! It was my body! I had found my body between the now and the next right where the seraph had said it was. I wasn’t in it yet, since I could still see the reality of my blue jeans and black top, but I had found it. And the best part? My body looked okay. It had been stuck frozen in time, and it was normal. Now all I had to do was let go of the body I was in and . . . take it.
“Madison!”
Someone grabbed my shoulder from behind. I jerked, and with a cry, I felt a gut-wrenching pull. Pain vibrated through me, and I doubled over, eyes closed against the pain. The sound of the wind and the taste of the salt were gone. I had almost had it, but now it was gone!
“Madison! Are you okay? You looked like a ghost! See-through!”
“Stop!” I croaked out, almost vomiting as I bent over my knees. My eyes opened, and sadness rose up. I was staring at the ugly green and white tiles of the police station. Where in the hell was the beach?
“I almost had it!” I cried, standing up and nearly hitting Barnabas in the chin.
He backed up in confusion, and I spun, looking at the chair as if I might still see myself sitting in it, torn prom dress and all. But all that I saw was the empty chair.
“Barnabas, I was there!” I pointed down, feeling my heart thump, but I knew it wasn’t real. It wasn’t real—and the heartache of that almost brought me to tears. “I found my body. Between the now and the next! It was at the island, stuck in a time bubble or something! Barnabas, damn it! Why couldn’t you have waited just a few minutes more! I almost had it! I was in it. I was almost alive!”
Barnabas’s shocked expression went empty. “You—”
“Found my body! Yes!” I looked at the ugly room, torn between crying and screaming at someone.
There were footsteps in the hall, and Barnabas took my elbow. “Let’s go. The sooner we get out of here, the fewer memories I’m going to have to fix.”
He started pulling me to the door, and I dug my heels in. Memories? He’s worried about memories? “I found my body, and you don’t care!”
“I do care, but we have to get out of here!” His grip on me tightening, he jerked me into the hallway as someone skidded around the bend in the hallway.
“Where do you think you’re going?!” the cop said, and then his eyes widened as he looked at Barnabas. “Hey, weren’t you at the fire?” Falling into a crouch, he reached for his gun.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Barnabas said, pushing me toward the end of the hallway.
“I found my friggin’ body, and you don’t care!” I insisted, resisting.
“Stop!” the cop exclaimed, and Barnabas’s eyes, inches from my own, glinted silver. As sweet as syrup, the man fell down.
I looked over my shoulder to see, but Barnabas’s grip on my arm tightened, and he started pushing me to the end of the hallway again. “I’m thrilled you found your body, but we’re trying to get out of here,” he muttered. “You can claim your body later.” His gaze went over my shoulder, and his eyes widened. “Run!”
He shoved me, and I staggered, almost cracking my nose as I went down on all fours. My palms stung, and my knees throbbed. I looked up in time to see Barnabas make a gesture, his eyes silvering for a moment.
The second man bending over the first fell, but I could hear more people coming. Ticked, I pulled myself up off the floor. My palms were sticky, and I didn’t know what to wipe them on. “Later?” I shouted. “I want it now!”
My last words were a veritable shout, and a wave of angry force pulsed from me.
Swearing, Barnabas ducked, his face white as he rose from his crouch and looked at me.
I staggered as the dizziness that had risen up and lapped about my head slowly ebbed to my feet. My hand went to the wall, and I swear, it felt spongy. I yanked it back, then blinked. My stone had gone ice cold and silvery.
“Uh, Madison?” Barnabas whispered, and I realized it was quiet.
You know . . . too quiet.
The men sprawled on the floor weren’t moving. Fear trickled through me as I remembered that burst of anger that had exploded from me. Had I killed them?
“Whoo-hoo!” came Nakita’s excited whoop from somewhere in the building, and a sudden pounding of feet echoed in the hallway. I spun as she leapt over the downed men, skidding to a breathless halt, her sword bared and her amulet gleaming. “Madison, when did you learn to stop time?”
Stop time?
“I, uh,” I stammered, then looked at my amulet. It was still silver, like Barnabas’s eyes when he touched the divine. A thread of sound was running through me, and when I chanced a look at the time line, it burst into existence so brilliantly that I almost fel
l.
“I don’t know,” I said, instinct making me cover my eyes, though the brightness was in me. Blinking, I dropped my inner sight, and looked up. Barnabas was holding me upright. Seeing me okay, he let go and stepped back. “Uh, how do I undo it?” I asked them.
“Not yet!” Nakita exclaimed, her color high. “Wait until we get out.” She darted past us to the back door, sending her whoops of excitement to echo in the absolute stillness. The clock in the cop’s office wasn’t ticking when we passed it. The lights from the cars outside weren’t moving. The only sound in the entire world was coming from us. It was as creepy as all get-out. And I did it?
“Let’s go,” Barnabas said, clearly subdued.
I followed him down the hall to where Nakita was pushing open the automatic door. Outside was even creepier, with no wind, no noise. It was as if we had walked into a painting. Everything felt flat. Nakita almost danced down the cement steps and to the shadowed parking lot. “Madison, you’re getting good at this. I think we should try teaching you how to make a sword from your thoughts when this is done, okay?”