Once Dead, Twice Shy

  Nakita is catatonic? Barnabas was staring at me, and I was starting to think I’d done something really wrong. Sure, she was a dark reaper, but leaving black wings inside her was awful. Even if it had been an accident. “I had to get her to leave,” I said, pitching my voice barely above a whisper when Officer Levy looked at us. “I did the best I could. It’s not like I was able to touch your thoughts,” I finished bitterly.

  Barnabas’s face grew darker. “Ron left you a guardian angel,” he said, leaning forward to hunch over his knees. “You should have been okay.”

  “Yeah?” It was hard, but I managed to not yell the word. Two days of fear was coming out as anger, and I couldn’t help it. “Nakita said he left me a first-sphere guardian angel. I like her and all, but she’s not powerful enough to protect me against a concentrated attack, and Ron knows it.”

  Barnabas’s anger vanished in surprise and he drew back, watching the woman and her two kids as they were escorted into a room. The nurse who’d called them told Officer Levy she could come back as well, and taking that as a good sign, I found a modicum of control. I watched Barnabas’s fingers unclench, thinking they looked a shade too long for a human’s.

  “Josh knows you’re dead?” he asked, and I nodded, unable to look from the carpet. I shouldn’t have gotten him involved, but choice vanished when black wings began following him.

  “I had to tell him,” I said. “Black wings were tracking him, but as long as I was with him, he was okay. I made my angel stay with him last night. He wouldn’t have lived through it otherwise.” And now he was in the hospital. Way to go, Madison.

  A jump of shadows caught my attention, and I pulled my head up to find Ron simply standing there, looking almost sad with his hands clasped before him. The sun coming in shone on his tight, graying curls, and his eyes were a grayish blue as they took in my yellow tights and purple skirt. His eyes had been brown yesterday. I didn’t think gray eyes were a good sign. Every time I saw them, he was upset with me.

  “Madison,” he said, and the amount of weary fatigue in the sound of my name scared me.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, frightened.

  “I know you are.” He glanced at the empty reception desk before he approached, his slippers silent on the carpet. “It’s been over two thousand years since an angel has returned from battle without a blade and unconscious. Do you have any idea what it takes to do that?”

  Miserable, I shrank back into the thin cushions. “Black wings stuck in her?” I offered hesitantly. God help me, but it was an accident!

  Ron’s intake of breath was loud, and Barnabas made a surprised-sounding noise. I couldn’t look up, afraid of what I might find.

  “How did Nakita get black wings inside of her?” Ron asked, each word slow and precise.

  My head came up and I found Ron’s expression one of sadness. “I, uh, accidentally put them there?” I said, hating the way my voice went up at the end.

  “Excuse me?” Ron said, the phrase sounding odd coming from him.

  Barnabas was shaking his head. “That’s impossible. Black wings can’t hurt reapers. She must be confused as to what really happened.”

  That was insulting, and I made a huff of sound. “I am not. I know what happened,” I said, finding the words easier to say than I thought they would be. “Grace said that when I went invisible, I was dissociating from my amulet. That’s what drew the black wings in, and when Nakita fell through me, the black wings stuck to her instead.”

  “Grace?” Ron asked, his round face tight with worry. “Who’s Grace?” His expression became pained. “You named her? Madison, you didn’t name your guardian angel, did you?”

  Compared to leaving black wings inside an angel to eat her from the inside out, naming Grace seemed like a small thing. “I was breaking the lines of connection to my amulet only in the present, not the ones pulling me to the future,” I explained, trying to make myself sound less foolish than I felt, and I could almost see Ron switch mental gears to understand what I was saying. At least, I think that’s why he suddenly looked horrified.

  Barnabas, though, was less than impressed. “What does that have to do with black wings?” he asked.

  “Nakita was going to reap Josh, even though she had me. I couldn’t get her scythe away from her unless I went invisible. I had to find some way to protect myself, and neither of you were around,” I said, pleading for understanding. “I didn’t know the black wings would stick to her instead. She’s a reaper! Black wings aren’t supposed to hurt reapers!”

  Ron’s head was going back and forth in denial. “That’s not how to go invisible. Madison, you weren’t bending light around you; you were breaking your connection to your amulet, as if you weren’t really wearing it. Dead with no connection to life. A walking soul without a body. No wonder you brought in black wings. They were…on you?”

  Grace had said it was dangerous. I should’ve listened to her. “Nakita was going to kill Josh and take me to Kairos. I thought if I swiped her sword, she at least couldn’t kill Josh. But when I went invisible to take her amulet, two black wings fell on me.” Fear made me shiver. “It hurt. I think I lost something of myself.” I paused as the memory of them eating my past rose anew. I unclenched my hands as I thought about Nakita and what it must be like to have two of those things inside her. “It really hurt, Ron. I went invisible again to try to get her sword away, and they sort of stuck to her when she fell through me.” I looked up, my vision swimming. “I only wanted her to go away,” I finished miserably. Damn it, I wasn’t going to cry.

  Barnabas had pulled back like I was a snake. “What about Nakita’s amulet?” he asked. “How come her amulet didn’t keep you grounded?”

  “Because I cut those ties too,” I said. “I claimed her sword, not her amulet, and it gave me enough control to break the ties without frying me.”

  Barnabas stood, his face pale. “Ron,” he said, looking at me. “She broke the hold Nakita’s amulet had on her while the reaper was still wearing it! How much proof do you need? I believe in choice, as do you, but this is wrong! Look at what’s happened. Madison is—”

  “Fine.” Ron took up my hands and jerked my attention from Barnabas. His round face was smiling confidently, but his eyes were deathly worried. “She’s fine.”

  “Nakita said you drew a first-sphere to watch her,” Barnabas interrupted, anger coloring his face. “It’s clear why. You know this is a mistake. It’s wrong, and you know it!”

  The older man glared at Barnabas, his grip on me tightening. “I do not have to explain myself to you. I called for a first-sphere because chances were slim anything would happen, and I didn’t want to advertise that anything was wrong.”

  “Wrong.” Barnabas faced him squarely, and Ron’s expression went ugly. “You admit it, then.”

  “Barnabas, will you shut up!” the master of time exclaimed, and Barnabas dropped his head, frustrated. I sat there, stunned. It was the second time I’d seen Ron curtail Barnabas’s words, first at the school parking lot, and then here. Something wasn’t right. What had I done?

  “Ron,” I said, scared, “I’m sorry. I was only trying to keep Josh and myself safe. She nicked him. Is he going to be okay?”

  The timekeeper seemed to notice for the first time where he was. Giving me an unhappy look, he shook his head, sending dread through me. “Nakita holds his life. She chooses if he lives or dies.”

  Oh God, I’ve killed him, I thought, the panic almost paralyzing. I had to talk to Nakita.

  “There is hope,” Ron soothed as my thoughts spun, but there was no comfort in his touch on my shoulder. Instead, a warning lifted in me. Behind him, Barnabas fumed. “I’m going to continue to speak on your behalf,” Ron said, as if Josh’s probable death was sad but trifling. “What I’m most concerned about is you. Dissociating yourself from your amulet like you did should have been impossible. That you’re dead probably accounted for your ability to do it. Regardless, I’m sure you damaged your amulet. Don’t d
o it again. Some of this is my fault. I should’ve looked in on your progress, but Barnabas didn’t tell me you were having trouble.”

  He didn’t care about Josh. Not really. Warning was thick in me, and I pulled out from under his grip. And why was he blaming Barnabas? Barnabas said it was my amulet that prevented me from thought-touching, not my lack of skill or lack of trying—and Ron should have known that. He was hiding something. “Grace said I cracked it,” I said warily, but I wouldn’t pull it from behind my shirt to show him.

  Behind Ron, Barnabas stood stiff and tense. I saw a hint of the avenging angel in him as his eyes silvered. “I’m going home,” he said to Ron, pain showing in his brow. “They’ll let me in. They have to. I have to tell them about the black wings. They can get them out of her.”

  Home? I thought. As in heaven? Why wouldn’t they let him in? He wasn’t just earthbound, but barred from heaven? Just who were the bad guys here?

  Fear slid through me like a knife, born of the sudden realization that everything I thought was true probably wasn’t.

  “Barnabas, shut up,” Ron said as he rose between us, smaller than Barnabas but deathly serious. “I’ll send word, and Nakita will be fine. They won’t let you back, and I’ve got work to do. Stay with Madison. Try to keep her out of trouble. And keep your mouth shut!” His eyes were almost black, carrying a mix of anger, frustration, and…uncertainty. “You understand me? I can’t fix this if you interfere. Keep your mouth…shut.”

  The image of Nakita arched in pain, white wings stretched high as she screamed, lifted through my memory. I had hurt one of heaven’s angels. Who was Barnabas? Who had I been spending my nights with on my roof?

  Scared, I watched Ron stride from the building, vanishing as he found the sun. I turned to Barnabas, shrinking back when he made a sound of anger and flopped into the chair next to me, his brow furrowed and his expression cross. He didn’t move. Not one fidget or blink.

  “She was trying to kill me,” I said. “She was trying to kill Josh! She was going to—”

  “Take you to Kairos. You said that,” he said abruptly. There was a hint of fear in him. It wasn’t fear of me, but fear for himself. He wasn’t going to shut up as Ron had told him, and I shivered.

  “So many religions, Madison,” he said, “but only one resting place, and she was going to put you right back on that path that you skipped off when you claimed Kairos’s amulet.”

  “Nakita’s not from hell,” I guessed, knowing my face was white. “You are.”

  Barnabas jerked straight. “Me? No,” he said, coloring as if embarrassed. “Not hell. I don’t even know if there is such a place other than what we make for ourselves. But I’m not from heaven…anymore. I left because I disagreed with seraph fate. They won’t let me back. They won’t let any of us light reapers back.” Jaw tight, he exhaled, putting a hand to his head and rubbing his temples. “I should have told you, but it’s embarrassing.”

  “But you’re a light reaper!” I said, confused. “Light is good; dark is bad.”

  He scowled at me. “Light is for human choice, easily seen. Dark is for hidden seraph fate, no choice to glean.”

  “Oh! That would have been nice to know!” I shouted. “How come no one bothered to tell me that?!” I added, frustrated, scared, and a little relieved that Barnabas wasn’t from hell, just kicked out of heaven. There was a difference, right?

  The receptionist peeked out from a doorway, disappearing when she decided I was upset about Josh, not a little misunderstanding about light and dark.

  Barnabas’s thoughts were clearly somewhere else. “I don’t understand what Ron is doing,” he said to himself, gaze distant, and unaware that I was having a meltdown. “I believe in choice, but after what’s happened, I don’t know. You’re a nice person, Madison, and I like you, but you put black wings in Nakita. That’s…a terrible thing. Maybe the seraphs are right. Maybe you need to go where you belong. Maybe fate has a place in the world. Fighting it has only made things worse.”

  Where I belong? Does he mean like home with my dad, or like dead? I swallowed hard. I was not the one who’d been kicked out of heaven. “It was an accident.”

  “Was it an accident that you worked to learn how to go invisible?” he asked earnestly. “Was it an accident that you used that knowledge to break the hold Nakita’s amulet had on you? Was it an accident that she fell through you? Or was it fate?” His head slowly shook back and forth, dark curls shifting. “I should’ve realized what Ron was doing sooner.” His eyes narrowed. “I still don’t believe it. I didn’t want to believe it.”

  My mouth was dry. Just what was Ron doing? Barnabas knew something I didn’t, and by God, I was going to find out. “Barnabas,” I started, but the phone at the desk hummed and the nurse came back to answer it. She gave me an encouraging smile when she sat down, telling me that Josh was okay. Or at least not getting any worse. Distracted, I settled back in my chair, and, hearing a dry leaf crunch, I picked it out of my hair. I held it for a moment, then set it on the nearby table. Did I really want to know the truth? Yeah. I do.

  I watched the line Barnabas’s duster made against the dull carpet as I screwed my courage up, wondering if the coat was his wings in disguise. My mind shifted back to Ron dragging Barnabas away from me at the school’s parking lot, and then just now, when Ron cautioned Barnabas to keep his mouth shut so he could fix things, the awful feeling of Ron’s hand on me when he tried to comfort me. “Barnabas,” I whispered, “what’s Ron not telling me?”

  Looking up, I saw his jaw clench. “It’s not my place.”

  Fear made my heart give a thump, but then it stopped. “You want to tell me. You tried at the school parking lot, and I see you want to tell me now. If you believe in choice, tell me so I can make a good one.”

  His eyes lifted, falling first upon my amulet, then my eyes, and I shivered.

  “Ron is hiding who you are from the seraphs so he can shift the balance between fate and choice by misleading you,” he said flatly. “That’s what I think he’s doing.”

  “He said he was talking to them!” I argued, then hesitated. “Misleading me? Why?”

  Eyes fixed on mine, Barnabas quietly said, “You’re the new timekeeper, Madison. The dark one.”

  I blinked. “I am not,” I said belligerently.

  But instead of arguing with me, he smiled bitterly. “I told you there’s a reason you can’t touch my thoughts,” he said, his gaze alighting on my amulet. “You’ve got a dark timekeeper amulet. If it were otherwise, our resonances would be close enough that we could talk, but they are on opposite ends of the spectrum. Ron knows that. Ron knows everything. He’s just not saying anything.”

  Reaching down, I touched the black stone, then dropped it. “Maybe it doesn’t work because I’m dead.”

  Barnabas turned away, and his chest rose and fell in a heavy sigh. “The only reason you succeeded in claiming a timekeeper’s amulet is because you are one.”

  “No!” I exclaimed. “I was able to claim it because I was human.”

  He shook his head. “You could touch it because you were human, but you claimed it because of who you are. You went on to teach yourself how to dissociate yourself from it and still hold that claim. You commanded Grace, gave her a name that bound her and broke the charge that Ron put on her. You’re a rising timekeeper, Madison, one of two people born to this millennium with the ability to survive the bending of time.”

  I stared at him, panic starting to wind its way through my spine. Me? A dark timekeeper? I didn’t believe in fate. He had to be wrong. “Has Ron said so?” I whispered.

  He shifted his feet in their dirty sneakers and scooted forward. Leaning over his knees, he eyed me from under his mop of curls. “No,” he admitted, and I exhaled in relief. “But you are. Madison, timekeepers are mortal for a reason. The earth changes, people change, values change. To ask a human who was born in the time of the pyramids to understand someone who takes for granted that man can see the earth from s
pace isn’t reasonable, and so when change spills over itself in its rush to happen, new timekeepers take over.”

  He glanced at the receptionist and inched closer. “I’ve seen it before, like the turning of a wheel. Rising timekeepers are found and taught, learning until the amulet is passed on and the old timekeeper resumes aging, picking up where his or her life was disrupted by the divine. That you’re dead complicates things, but this is who you are.”

  “No I’m not!” I protested. “I’m just me. And even if I was a timekeeper, I wouldn’t be the dark timekeeper. I don’t believe in fate. I just took Kairos’s stone to stay alive!”

  Frowning, Barnabas shot a look at the busy receptionist. “Taking it might have been a choice, but fate put you there to do it. If you were an innocent scything, Ron would have given you to the seraphs that first day. But he didn’t.” Barnabas’s frown deepened. “I should have known then, but I never guessed he’d stoop so low as to keep you in the dark with lies.”

  “Ron said he told the seraphs about me, to ask them to let me keep the stone,” I said, bewildered. “If he didn’t, why do I still have it?”

  “Because Kairos hasn’t told them you have it, either.”

  “Why?” I asked. I couldn’t think. I was numb. I needed an answer, and I couldn’t grasp enough to guess it for myself.

  Barnabas shifted in his chair, pulling his coat around himself. “I’m guessing Kairos wants you destroyed so he doesn’t have to give up his place, and if the seraphs find out you exist, even dead as you are, they will force him to abide by their will. Only if you are destroyed will they be obliged to allow him to remain the dark timekeeper through the turn of another wheel.”

  Kairos would live forever. Immortality—a higher court. That’s why he killed me, then came after me. He wanted to destroy my soul completely. Panic started up again. “No. You’re wrong. I simply have the wrong amulet,” I said. “I just need to give it back. I need to return Nakita’s amulet, too,” I babbled as Barnabas flopped back to look at the ceiling. “Tell her I’m sorry. Maybe she’ll let Josh live.”