Early to Death, Early to Rise

  “I don’t remember,” he said, and I recognized his confused expression as one I’d seen on my dad’s face too often. He remembered something, but logic said it was impossible. My reapers had come and gone, leaving broken lives in their wake.

  He’s lying! I shouted in Ace’s mind, and the guardian angel in the corner looked up from her weeping. Then I hissed into Ace’s thoughts, You’re a liar. A disgusting liar. I should have let Nakita scythe you. This was so unfair. It looked like the patch had gone in, but somehow, by trying to set things right, I’d put Ace into the perfect place to do the most damage to Shoe’s credibility and secure his own. Especially when no one seemed to remember my being here. Except perhaps the guardian angel.

  I gathered myself to try to change a future that hadn’t happened yet, but the blue tint overlaying everything seemed to hesitate. For an instant, everything went normal, colors, sounds, everything. In that second of clarity, Shoe looked at Ace, but I think he was seeing me, his expression bewildered and betrayed. And then…the world flashed red.

  With a wrench hard enough to make me groan, I felt myself tear from the fabric of time. Gasping, I took a breath that was wholly mine. There was no thudding in my chest. No blood in my veins—and Nakita’s grip on me was so tight it hurt.

  “I’m back,” I whispered, and her hands on me jerked.

  “Madison!” she exclaimed, and I looked up at her, seeing my fear reflected in her silvered eyes. But it was the memory of Shoe’s haunted look that wouldn’t leave my mind.

  A crash pulled my attention from her, and I realized that everything had taken all of an instant. Shoe was getting up off the floor, dazed but determined, holding his jaw. I’d seen this before. Lived it.

  “Get up!” Ace was screaming at him. “I’m going to kill you!”

  “Madison?” Nakita said, helping me sit up. “Are you okay? I’ve never seen anyone flash forward.”

  “I’ll be fine.” Wobbling to my feet, I grasped for anything to steady me, latching onto the rolling gurney. Bad choice, and I stumbled until Nakita caught me. “It really takes a lot out of me.” Crap, I could hardly stand up.

  “Get a grip, Ace,” Shoe breathed, staggering as he stood. “We’re talking about real people. What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “Wrong with me?” Ace shouted, and my eyes went to the angel above us, right where I remembered seeing her. She was crying as it all played out again. I knew she’d seen everything I had seen during the flash forward. She had bathed in the divine and could live the past and the future all at once. And she was chained by a will not her own, but Ron’s.

  Swallowing hard, I leaned heavily into Nakita. “You know what happens,” I said to the angel, and the angel turned to me, surprised. “I never wanted to end his life, and I’m not going to do it now. Fate or choice. They can be the same. As the dark timekeeper, I ask you to do as you would—without breaking the constraints of your previous charge.”

  Ace had yanked the cord from the wall, and as Shoe tried to stop him from snapping the CD in half, Ace shoved him into the wall behind the desk, following it with a punch to Shoe’s gut. Exhaling in a puff of pained air, Shoe slid out of sight behind the desk.

  And though I couldn’t see beyond the shimmering glow that surrounded the guardian angel, I knew she smiled at me, bathing me in the first feeling of peace I’d had since I stood on a Greek island on the other side of the world and agreed to try to change the world. “Is this the present?” she asked, adding a bewildered, “Sometimes I can’t tell.”

  I nodded, and she darted closer, the glow of her seeming to warm my face. “I like you,” she chimed, the words tingling across me in waves. “You use your love to see the world. It makes everything harder for you, but if it were easy, then everyone could do it.”

  I had no clue what she was talking about, but I watched her fly into the fray, shifting the phone cord up an inch. As if choreographed to music, Ace stepped back, tripping on it. Shouting in surprise, he went down.

  It was all the break Shoe needed. Rising up from behind the desk, he flung his hair out of his eyes, blood from his cheek smearing his hands and face. With a furious yell, he launched himself at Ace, and the two of them slid across the tiled floor, Ace’s head thumping into it. I felt the world hiccup as fate shifted, and I took a gulp of air, feeling like I needed it.

  “This isn’t a game, Ace!” Shoe shouted, oblivious to Nakita and me. “These are real people, with families and kids!”

  “Why should I care?” Ace snarled, and Shoe hauled off and punched him twice, first in the gut to make Ace lose all his breath in one go, then across the jaw with his left. Ace made a tiny grunt of pain, then went still.

  “Because you’re hurting people to make yourself feel good,” Shoe said, staggering up and going to the computer. Above them, the angel cheered, her tears bathing both Ace and Shoe. Something had changed. I just hoped it was for the better.

  Leaning heavily on the desk, Shoe plugged the keyboard back in, hitting a few buttons before turning to me with a tired smile. “It’s in there,” he said, then louder, toward Ace, “It’s in there, you sack of toad crap. I’m not taking the blame for this! Not by a long shot!”

  Dazed, I stared at Shoe, wondering if it was truly a different future that we’d all be living, or if Ace was going to somehow twist this again.

  God help me. Is this what my life is going to be like?

  Ace’s arm moved, angling under him as if he were going to get up. Nakita strode over to him and stepped on his back to make him flop back down with a groan. I looked up at his guardian angel, now glowing with a bright, hazy light.

  “No one is trying to kill him,” she chimed cheerfully, then darted to the ceiling when the morgue doors were shoved open and Barnabas came in. Grace was with him, and I watched in openmouthed awe when the two guardian angels dipped and bobbed in a weird display of greeting.

  “Is it patched? What happened!” Barnabas asked, looking at Nakita, who was now sitting on Ace, checking her nail polish. Shoe was breathing hard, sitting in the rolling chair and dabbing at his cheek with a tissue.

  Nakita shrugged, looking almost disappointed that we hadn’t simply killed him. “Madison has to do things the hard way.”

  My sock was across the room, and, blowing my breath out, I went to get it, sitting down right there on the cold tile floor to put it on. Not a whisper of a heartbeat echoed in my thoughts, and after feeling Ace’s, I missed it. Worse, though, I was tired. I felt unreal and thin, as if part of me were still lost somewhere between the now and the next.

  “You flashed forward again,” Barnabas said, coming close, only to draw to a confused stop at my feet. I’d gotten my sock on, and I made a grasping gesture toward my sneakers, still on the gurney.

  “It was awful,” Nakita admitted while Barnabas fetched my shoes. “It was like she wasn’t there.”

  “I don’t feel so good,” I said, my hands shaking as I put first one, then the other sneaker on. Looking at the skulls and crossbones on the laces, I wondered if I could do this. A thousand years of being inside people, watching them ruin their lives. No wonder Kairos had simply sent his reapers to kill the marked. A tear formed and fell, and, miserable, I tied my skull-and-crossbones laces in careful, perfect loops. I thought we had changed fate, but it was hard. Really hard.

  “You failed?” Barnabas whispered as I wiped at my eye, and I shook my head.

  “I think we succeeded,” I said to make him even more confused.

  “Are you okay, Madison?” Nakita asked. Barnabas reached to pull me up, and I couldn’t do anything but try not to cry. I wasn’t doing very well at that, either.

  “I’m okay,” I finally managed, wobbling on my feet and trying to imagine a lifetime of crap like this. “I’m just going to go crazy. That’s all there is to it.”

  In a graceful motion, Nakita got up off of Ace. The idiot gathered himself to stand, but a pan of morgue tools somehow happened to slide off a nearby counter, beaning him.
Groaning, he collapsed again while Grace and the other guardian angel gave each other what looked to be the angel equivalent of a high five. “He’s still alive.” Ace’s guardian angel giggled, and I wondered if I was going to have to do something about this before Ace was accidented to death, but remembering Ace’s hatred that had echoed in me, I decided I wouldn’t worry about it.

  “Is flashing forward supposed to be like that?” Nakita asked as she took my other elbow.

  On my other side, I felt more than saw Barnabas shrug. “I don’t know. Ron never said. How about Kairos? Did he ever look this tired to you?”

  Nakita shook her head, her expression worried. Sighing, I leaned heavily on them. It was over, but there was still a lot to do. I’d gotten rid of my file, but there was probably something upstairs. And the guy in the closet. And Shoe…

  “I’m really hungry,” I said, the memory of being inside Ace making me feel ill. “Can we go get a burger?”

  Nakita turned to me, her surprise mirrored by Barnabas’s. Sighing, I sent my gaze to Shoe and Ace. “All of us?” I added. “I’m starving,” I said, shocked to realize I was. “Besides,” I said softly so Shoe couldn’t hear, “we can take care of their memories there and leave them maybe as friends or something.”

  Instead of answering me, Barnabas looked over the morgue. “Is the patch in place?” he asked Shoe.

  Shoe rolled his chair over to the computer. His expression was relieved, and he pocketed the disc. “Yes.”

  Barnabas straightened, gesturing for Nakita to get Ace. “Burgers sound good to me,” he said with a startling amount of enthusiasm. We’d probably have no problem getting out of the hospital even with letting the guy out of the closet. Not with two reapers and two guardian angels.

  Thoughts of salty fries and cold pop made my mouth water as I followed Barnabas, Ace, and Shoe out into the empty hallway. I was tired and depressed…and hungry. This wasn’t the ending I had expected. Had I won? I really didn’t know.

  Time would tell, I supposed.

  Thirteen

  Sweet and tangy, the ketchup dripped from my French fries until I shoved them in my mouth and licked the salt from my fingers. “Oh, puppies from Hades, this is good,” I mumbled around the mouthful, reaching for the pop and taking a long pull on the straw. Bubbles exploded all the way down my throat, and I made a happy mmmm even as I was reaching for another fry. They were cut thick and had been cooked to perfection. I jammed another one in my mouth. I hadn’t eaten in so long, it was as if I were starving.

  Suddenly I realized that no one was saying anything, and I looked up. Shoe was sitting across from me in the booth. Nakita was to his right, her red purse sitting carefully on the table beside her. Barnabas was to my left, and beside him, Ace sat in sullen silence against the wall, holding a wad of ice wrapped in brown napkins to his head.

  “What?” I asked, seeing that everyone was staring at me.

  Nakita glanced at Barnabas, then said softly, “I’ve never seen you eat…like that.”

  My reach for another fry slowed, and I ate it in two bites instead of one. It was late, and the diner was empty but for us, the waitress counting money in the till, and the cook glowering at us through the hole in the wall, clearly wanting to go home. “I’m starving,” I said, taking a tiny sip of pop when what I wanted to do was gulp it. “And tired.” But no heartbeat. None at all.

  Beside me, Barnabas leaned back in the bench seat, casual as he stirred the ice in his untouched drink. “It’s kind of gross, Madison.”

  I eyed him, reading a soft envy in his carefully relaxed pose. “Jealous?” I asked tartly.

  “Sort of,” he muttered, looking up and away to where Grace and her new friend were chatting on the light fixture, their wings making them into softball-size globes of light only I and my reapers could see.

  Eating another fry, I grimaced when a splotch of ketchup hit my lab coat. “I think it’s from the flash forward,” I said as I dabbed at it. “I was alive again, or at least it felt like I was when I was in Ace.” I looked at him, feeling my face twist up in distaste. “You’re a piece of work, you know that?”

  The guy sneered at me, and, wadding up my napkin, I stifled a yawn. “My mind must have remembered what it’s like to be hungry. And tired. What time is it?”

  Not looking, Barnabas said, “Midnight.”

  “Mmmm.” I crumpled the napkin up and dropped it on the fries. I was still hungry, but I didn’t want to look like a pig. “I gotta get home.” It wasn’t too late yet to call my mom as I had promised, school night or not. She kept hours like a vampire.

  My gaze went back to Ace, scrunched up and silent in the corner of the booth. He hadn’t said anything much since waking up in his truck. As it stood, there was not going to be any problem at the hospital come six the next morning. No one would ever know. What would happen to Ace now was anyone’s guess.

  Shoe, on the other hand…I smiled at him as he carefully felt his jaw, which was now turning an ugly purple. “You going to be okay?” I asked him, and he winced.

  “I’m going to catch hell for trashing the school’s computers,” he said, glancing at Ace. “But I knew that before I did it. It’s staying out to midnight on a school night that I wasn’t planning on. But at this point, I don’t care.”

  We all looked at Ace, who flipped us off. The waitress must have seen, because she cleared her throat loudly and went to talk to the cook in the kitchen.

  I looked at the plate of fries, then ate one, feeling guilty for no reason that I could fathom. “Barnabas, maybe we can stop at Shoe’s house on the way home and make his mom and dad think he’s been tucked into bed,” I suggested.

  Barnabas nodded, looking a bit too casual for my comfort. Sneaky, almost.

  “That’d be great,” Shoe said nervously, edging away from Nakita as she started to mutter about wanting to just scythe the lot of them. But Shoe’s discomfort seemed to be stemming from Barnabas’s sly demeanor, not from Nakita, and I wondered if he was worried that I was going to go back on my word and change his memories as well.

  Throwing his wad of damp napkins down, Ace sat straighter. “You all suck,” he said loudly. “You’re going to fix it so that no one remembers he’s even been out?”

  “Quiet!” Nakita hissed, leaning across the table. “You should be dead.”

  “You shut up!” he exclaimed, his brow furrowed. “Crazy chick!”

  “Don’t call me that!” she said, starting to rise, but when the guardian angel set her wings to humming, Nakita sat back down with a huff. “You’re lucky, human,” she muttered. “Lucky.”

  Lucky wasn’t the word I’d like to apply to Ace, but he was. He’d tried to make a name for himself by killing people and blaming Shoe for it, and the only way he’d get in trouble for it now would be if Shoe got in bigger trouble, too. I was all for being honest and taking one’s licks, but sometimes…the better part of valor and all.

  Sighing, I slid to the end of the bench and stood. It was time to go home, and I dropped my head as I looked at the lab coat. I kind of liked it, even with the ketchup. Maybe I could start a new trend at school. I hadn’t done anything really kooky yet to make myself stand out. Other than being dead, that is, and no one but Josh knew that. It would have been nice for him to have helped me tonight, and I missed him.

  “We have to go,” I said softly, giving my fries a last longing look.

  Barnabas gathered himself, standing when Nakita did. The two of them exchanged knowing looks as they slid out of the booth. Their eyes had both gone silver, and I jumped to get in front of Shoe. “Not Shoe,” I said, hand outstretched to keep them from wiping his memory.

  Barnabas rolled his eyes. “Madison…” he started, but a subtle prickling in my temple shocked through me. Barnabas felt it, too, and so did Nakita.

  “There once was a keeper named Ron,” Grace said from the light fixtures, “whose karma was kind of a yawn. He showed up too late; some say it was fate. I think he’s just really stupid,
myself.”

  True, it didn’t rhyme, but I still kind of liked it. “Ron is coming?” I said, bothered. What does he want? It’s over!

  “But I’m shielding us!” Nakita said, clearly bewildered.

  “Apparently not well enough,” Barnabas said snidely, and I felt all the more tired. Swell. They were arguing again.

  “I won’t let him mess with you,” Grace said, and I smiled up at her darting ball of light as she left the fixture. I knew my face still held my grateful expression when Shoe whistled and I followed his gaze to the front door, where Ron was standing just inside as if he’d been there all the time. Paul was standing beside him, and the little entry bells were not ringing.

  Ron looked peeved, one hand lost in the folds of his flowing tunic as he put it on his hip and gestured at me with the other as if I were an errant child. I glared right back, shifting to hide Shoe, still sitting down. Barnabas moved to my right, Nakita to my left. Ron’s gaze lingered over her traditional white clothes of a dark reaper, and Nakita lifted her chin.

  “I wouldn’t have believed it if I’d not seen it,” Ron said, his eyes taking in my lab coat and yellow sneakers with their skulls. “The scything is over. The mark is safe. Well, he’s beaten up, but he’s alive,” he added, glancing up at the two guardian angels. “I won. It’s over. You lost. Go home, Madison.”

  I took a slow breath to find my words. Mark, I thought, deciding that giving people labels was degrading. “Ace has a name,” I said softly, wondering how bad I looked when I noticed Paul was staring at me.

  “Hi, Ron,” I finally said loudly. “Come any closer, and I’m going to kick you right in your pendulum. What do you want? As you said, you already won.”

  The small man harrumphed, squinting warily first at the two guardian angels, then at my reapers flanking me, and finally at Ace behind us. “The seraphs sent me to adjust your amulet,” he said, surprising me. “Me. Ha. Go figure. Apparently you’re touching the divine too closely.”

  I’m touching the divine too closely? That was exactly what it had felt like. Maybe the hell I’d just gone through wasn’t the norm.