Early to Death, Early to Rise

  “Got all your assignments?” he asked, looking at the note in my grip.

  “Yes, thanks to you,” I said, shoving the note in a pocket. “I really wanted you to come. Nakita can’t carry more than one person.”

  His eyes went to the open archway to the kitchen. “It’s okay,” he said, dropping a step back to the door. “Just don’t make me into the librarian guy who looks things up for you and always misses out.” He smiled. “Dinner was good.”

  “I’ll take your word on that.”

  Josh took his truck keys from his pocket and reached for the door behind him. “Well, I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said, slinging his book bag over his shoulder.

  Disappointment seeped into me, but what had I expected? It wasn’t like we’d been on a date—except for last year’s prom, and that was a disaster. Reaching out, I touched his hand. Josh halted, the door cracked open.

  “Thank you,” I whispered. “Josh, I mean it.”

  He looked down at our hands, then at the kitchen where my dad was noisily putting dishes in the dishwasher. “Will your dad freak if I kiss you good-bye?” he asked.

  I blinked, my heart giving a thump before I stopped it. “Probably,” I said, feeling breathless. I’d kissed boys before—my mom didn’t ground me because I was a saint—but I’d been flaking out lately about being dead and had been holding myself apart. That he might want to kiss me thrilled me down to my toes.

  Josh took my hand more firmly. From the kitchen came a clatter of pans in the sink. I held my breath, feeling the memory of my heart pound all the harder. “Don’t forget about me?” he whispered, his head beside mine, not kissing me, but really close.

  The scent of spaghetti, bread, and shampoo filled me with a feeling of security. “Never,” I said, meaning it. Tilting my head, I closed my eyes. Our lips touched, like I hoped they would. Warm against mine, his were hardly there before he dropped back. A quiver rose and fell through me, and my eyes opened, finding his. He was smiling softly. It had happened too fast, and he ducked his head when the silverware clinked. I felt flushed, warm. Excited and calm all at the same time.

  “I should go,” he said, hoisting his bag to his shoulder again.

  “Yeah,” I said, wondering how something so simple made the world look so different.

  “See you tomorrow, Madison,” he added, glancing at the kitchen.

  “Bye.” I really didn’t want him to go.

  Josh reached out, taking my hand and then letting it slip from his as he walked through the door and shut it behind him.

  I let go of a breath I’d taken who knew how long ago, my attention flicking to the kitchen when my dad shouted through the open window, “Bye, Josh. Take it easy going home.”

  “You got it, Mr. A,” came back faintly, and I turned to the stairway, jerking when I saw Nakita waiting for me at the top. Josh hadn’t given any indication that she’d been there, but I knew from her bothered expression that she’d seen the entire thing.

  “He kissed you,” she said before I was even halfway up.

  “You want to say that a little louder?” I said sourly. “My dad might not have heard you.”

  She stepped aside as I came even with her, her posture uneasy. “It made your pulse start,” she said, falling into step behind me.

  “Yep,” I said, smiling. Through the house, I heard Josh’s truck rev. My thoughts were still on him as I flopped onto my bed. He really was a nice guy.

  Nakita shut the door behind her. “Do you think I should paint my nails?”

  The shift of topics pulled my attention from the ceiling, and I propped myself up on an elbow. “You saw my dad look at them?” I asked, and she nodded, her beautiful face holding an almost comical amount of worry. “If you want.”

  “I want to,” she said, looking relieved now. “And my toes.”

  “I like them the way they are,” I said, rolling onto my stomach to reach the bedside table. Pulling it open, I rummaged until I found a bright red that went with her purse, now sitting on my dresser beside our textbooks. Josh had brought them over, too. Man, I really owed him.

  “Good?” I asked as I held it up to her.

  Nakita took it, her expression empty. “Do you have a paler color?”

  I suddenly realized she was trying to look normal—to fit in—and I rolled back to look again. “I’ve got pink,” I said, and Nakita visibly relaxed.

  “Thank you.”

  She was all smiles again. Thinking that anyone else would get labeled with bipolar disorder, I shoved the drawer shut and dug the photography class–supplies list out of my pocket, going over the crumpled paper and mentally comparing it to what I had in my closet. “Most of this I’ve got,” I said, rolling over and finding my feet. “Do you want my red camera or the black one?”

  “Black. No, red,” she said immediately, and then followed it with, “Which one would you pick?”

  I opened my closet. Hands on my hips, I looked for the box I’d stashed them in. Josh said I took great pictures. My dad had said the same thing, but hearing it come from Josh so casually left me feeling warm—when warmth was something I hadn’t felt in months.

  “There it is,” I said softly, leaning in past my skirts, tops, and jeans to reach the box in the back. It was from my mother’s grocery store, and I felt a twinge of homesickness as I set it on my desk. Call Mom. Don’t forget.

  The unmistakable scent of electronics sifted out when I opened it up, tickling memories. “The red one is newer, but the black one has more versatility,” I said, and when she blinked vacantly at me, I handed her the black one. “This one takes better pictures. It doesn’t focus automatically, and you can choose what you focus on. Sometimes shooting something fuzzy makes it easier to see what you’re trying to show.”

  Okay, it didn’t make much sense, but she took the old camera, carefully unzipping her purse and setting it inside. I swore I saw her smile as the up-to-now-useless bag suddenly had a purpose. It was the only thing in there.

  “You can keep the nail polish, too,” I said, thinking that a purse should really have more than one thing in it.

  “Thank you,” she said seriously as she set the bag beside her books and kicked off her sandals like a normal person. Normal, yes, but the wedges landed neatly under my wide window as if having been placed there. “I’ll never be as good as you,” she said wistfully.

  I glanced at her perfect feet, then looked away. Jeez, no wonder the guys fell over themselves to talk to her. Even her feet were beautiful. “Being as ‘good’ as someone else isn’t the goal,” I said, dropping back on the bed to stare at my ceiling. I’d call my mom later. “Finding a way to show how something makes you feel is. There’s no wrong way to take a picture. If it makes you feel something, then you’ve done it right.”

  The bed moved as she sat down on the end, and I shifted my weight. “Do you think your dad will like them?” she asked. “My pictures, I mean.”

  Nakita was so confident of herself when she was on a scythe, it was odd to see her so unsure. “I know he will.” A smile curved up the corners of my mouth as I imagined her showing them to him. My dad loved my photography. He had an entire wall in the formal dining room devoted to my stuff, with lights shining on his favorites and everything. He was the one who told me about capturing how something makes you feel, and I think he tried to figure out what was going on in my head by what was coming out of my printer.

  The biting smell of polish was strong. This waiting-around stuff was aggravating, but we couldn’t leave until my dad was in bed. My gaze drifted, finding the picture of Wendy and my ex-boyfriend, Ted, on my mirror. They looked happy together on the beach at sunset. I rolled over so I could see my old friends upright. I’d let go of the idea of Ted in my life almost as soon as I’d moved up here. Guys were like puppies sometimes—loyal but easily distracted—and I had known that as soon as I was gone, he’d find someone else to follow around. That it had been my best friend, Wendy, wasn’t a surprise. Squinting, I wondered i
f I could see a haze of blue around Wendy, mixing with a shadow of yellow about Ted. Their auras? My thoughts flitted back to Josh and that first kiss. And I smiled.

  “Do you think Barnabas is doing okay?” I asked Nakita.

  “I don’t know. I can’t reach him,” she said, sounding almost catty.

  Jeez, what is with her tonight?I turned, seeing her bent at a sharp angle to put her face near her toes. Her hair draped to one side, framing her strong cheekbones and accentuating her perfect complexion. Her amulet gently swayed as she covered her black nails in pink, hiding what she was. Frankly, she looked like a model. Me, I was too flat chested, and since I was now dead, I was stuck waiting for the boob fairy for the rest of my existence. Isn’t that nice…?

  Nakita knew I couldn’t contact Barnabas, but that didn’t mean I’d have to waste the next couple of hours. My body was somewhere between the now and the next, according to the seraph who had witnessed me taking on the role of the dark timekeeper. If I could find it, then I could go back to really living and give up being the boss of a system I didn’t agree with. I could forget all about timekeepers, amulets, reapers, and black wings. I could be myself again. Even if it meant forgetting all of this.

  Glancing at Nakita, I wondered if that was something I still wanted to do.

  Of course it is,I told myself, then stared up at the ceiling, wondering how one found the space between the now and the next.

  Silence filled my soul, and I closed my eyes. I didn’t know where to even look. But wherever it was, I probably had to find it using my head, not my eyes. Taking three slow breaths, I held the last one, letting it out slowly until my lungs were empty. It was the first step in Barnabas’s “center yourself” exercise.

  “What are you doing?” Nakita asked, startling me even though her voice had been soft.

  I took a breath. “Besides waiting for my dad to go to sleep? Seeing if I can find the now and the next.” It was either that or call my mom.

  I heard her shift position and start on the other foot. “Good luck with that.”

  My eyebrows rose. The modern phrase had sounded odd coming from her. She was mad. “You’re fitting in great, Nakita,” I said as I opened my eyes and sat cross-legged on my bed. “You sounded almost like a real teenager there.”

  “You don’t want to be a timekeeper,” she accused, blue eyes flashing, then amended it, saying sullenly, “You don’t want to be the dark timekeeper. I think if you had the chance, you’d put a guardian angel on Shoe.”

  Is that what’s bothering her?“I am not going to put a guardian angel on Shoe,” I said. “A guardian angel won’t accomplish anything.” I snatched up the red nail polish and rubbed the bottle between my palms to mix it without putting air into it.

  Nakita watched me mix the polish, and I could almost see her file the information away. Eyes coming up, she pressed her lips together and glared. “You don’t believe in fate. Soon as you don’t need that amulet to stay alive, you’ll give it back. And then you’ll forget everything. I was there. I heard you tell the seraph.”

  “Nakita…” I coaxed.

  “It’s okay,” she said tightly, and dipped the brush back in the bottle balanced precariously on her bent knee. “I’m a dark reaper. It’s my job to kill people. I don’t expect you to like me.”

  This was getting worse and worse. Sighing, I set the bottle on my dresser and carefully opened it. “I do like you,” I said, unable to look at her as I put a red stripe on my black nails. “I think you’re great. God, Nakita, you can fly!” I looked up. “But I miss sleeping. I like being hungry, and then feeling good after I eat. I feel bad about lying to my dad and changing his memories. And I can’t be the boss of a system that I don’t believe in. If I can’t change things, then I’m going to give it up as soon as I get my body back.”

  She took a breath to speak. Her eyes fixed on mine, and I couldn’t look away. “But you’re good at this,” she said softly.

  I’m good at this?Shocked, I stared at her, and a drop of red hit my comforter. “How so?” I said, dropping the brush into the bottle and scrambling for a tissue. “You’ve made it clear you think I’m doing the wrong thing. How can I convince the seraphs if I can’t even convince you?”

  Great. Dad’s going to be mad about the comforter, I thought, flustered as I dabbed to get the worst of it, but confusion was pinching her eyes when I looked up.

  “I don’t know,” she said, “but you believe in what you’re doing. Timekeepers change for a reason. You’re…passionate about helping people, even if I don’t understand what you’re trying to do. The mistakes don’t matter. It’s what you do when you mess up that does.”

  I met her lost expression with my own. I understood what she was saying, sort of, but I couldn’t have it both ways.

  “Besides,” Nakita said softly as she turned her attention back to her nails, “I’d miss you if you were gone.”

  I sat on my bed, two nails painted, the rest still utterly black. I didn’t know what to say. My curtains moved in a gust of wind, and a roll of thunder gave her last words more weight. The sun was probably still up, but I couldn’t see it behind the dark clouds.

  Nakita’s sigh mixed with the first drops of rain hitting the roof. I had to say something, but nothing rose through my blissfully empty mind as big plops of rain hit sporadically and the smell of wet shingles drifted in with the breeze. Still searching for something to say that would give her solace and yet make my intentions clear, I moved to close my window.

  “Nakita—” I started, gazing out at the early darkness and the flat gray clouds.

  But a soft, oh-so-familiar sound scraped across my awareness like a knife. It was the sound of sneakers finding a grip on the roof. And then the soft tinkling of Grace singing, “There once was a boy on a roof, who kept himself far too aloof. Like a snail he did crawl, till he took a big fall. ’Cause really he was a big stupe.”

  Is Barnabas back?“Barnabas?” I called loudly, leaning out the window.

  Nakita looked up from finishing her toenails. A sudden scrabbling from higher up on the roof shocked through me. Reaching for the screen, I lifted it free and set it aside. A yelp of alarm from the roof pulled Nakita to her feet, and with the frightening sound of sliding grit, a white shadow fell past my window. Arms and legs flailing, someone dropped off the roof. A loud thump followed by a groan rose up with the soft roll of thunder.

  I turned to Nakita. “I don’t think that was Barnabas,” I said.

  Her face was calm, but her eyes were silver. “I can’t tell. Whoever it is, he’s shielding his aura.” Eager to find out, she handed me her polish. “I’ll be right back.”

  My eyes widened. “Nakita!” I hissed, but she had already sent her hand about her amulet. A shimmer of violet light ran over her, and then her sword appeared in her free hand. “Nakita, wait!” I demanded as I set the polish down, but she was halfway through my window and on the roof.

  “Puppy presents on the rug,” I whispered as she stood on the edge of the roof and looked at the ground with a hand on her hip. The wind gusted, and the rain pattered down heavier, the branches over my room blocking most of it.

  “Who are you?” she said loudly as she looked down; then she dropped out of sight.

  “Grace!” I shouted. Okay, it hadn’t been Barnabas eavesdropping, but someone was, and Grace had made him fall.

  The messenger angel flew in, bringing with her the smell of ozone and rain, darting about in chagrin, if a ball of light could look chagrined.

  “Darn it, Madison! I didn’t want you to know I was here,” she said, sounding disappointed. “I wasn’t spying on you. I promise! It was that boy of a rising timekeeper. Paul wasn’t being nice, so I made him fall. You weren’t supposed to know I was here!”

  “Go get Barnabas,” I said, my hand on the sill.

  “You’re not mad?” The glow that was all I could see of her vanished as her wings stopped moving.

  “No, but I will be if you don’t get Bar
nabas. He’s shielded, and I can’t reach him.” Actually, I was furious, but I was more concerned about Nakita and whoever had fallen off the roof.

  “Be right back,” she chimed in relief, and she darted out the window.

  Taking a breath, I reached for the window again. A faint huff of surprise came from the yard under my window, followed by a ping. It was more of a feeling than a sound, and a wash of violet colored the underside of the leaves of the oak tree arching over my room.

  That did not look good. Pushing the curtains aside, I vaulted onto the warm, damp roof and into the heavy night.

  Six

  My sneakers slid on the damp grit of the roof, and I sat down fast before I fell off. The branches overhanging the house made the night seem darker, and I carefully scooted to the edge, looking down to find Nakita standing over someone. She had two swords, one in each hand. My lips parted as I recognized the guy, now flat on his back in my yard. I’d seen him in the desert through Ron’s eyes. He had an amulet glowing a thick, earthy green. The deep color was echoed in one of the swords Nakita held. His, obviously. Grace had called him Paul.

  “Tell me who you are!” Nakita demanded.

  Sighing, I dangled my feet and dropped from the eaves, pushing out so I wouldn’t snag my tights on the gutters. I hit the ground hard and tugged my skirt down fast. “Nakita! Take it easy!” I said in a loud whisper as the shock of impact shivered up through me.

  She turned to me and I added, “I think that’s Ron’s replacement, Paul.”

  “Chronos’s—” she started, then yelped and jumped back when the guy kicked at her. Sandy, our neighbor’s golden retriever, began to bark and jump against the chain-link fence.

  The guy scrambled back and up, tugging his clothes straight as he halted well within Nakita’s strike range. Silly mortal.

  “Give me my scythe,” he demanded, but Nakita wasn’t listening. Neither was Sandy as I told her to shut up. It was raining harder, and everything not under the tree was getting wet.