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My head bobbed up and down. Stay away from the black wings. Check.
"Cronus!" Barnabas begged, as Ron started downstairs again. "Please. Don't do this to me!"
"Find some wind and make the best of it," Ron muttered when he reached the downstairs landing and headed for the door. "It's only for a year."
He crossed the threshold into the sun. The light hit him, and he vanished, not all at once, but from the feet up as he moved into the light. The sun streaming into the house seemed to glitter, and then the distant mower roared to life.
I took a breath as the world began to turn again with the sound of birds, wind, and someone's radio. Bewildered, I stood beside Barnabas. "What does he mean, for a year?" I whispered. "Is that all I get?"
Barnabas looked me up and down, clearly peeved. "How should I know?"
From in my room came a startled "Madison? Is that you?"
"Dad!" I said, ru
Huh? I thought, shocked. He had already met Barnabas. And how had my dad gone from protective anger to congenial dad so fast? What about the accident? Or the hospital? The crashed car? Me being dead?
Barnabas shifted from foot to foot in what seemed like embarrassment, shooting my gaping-mouth expression-a look to shut up. "No, sir. I'm Barnabas. One of Madison's friends. I was with her last night, too, after Josh left. It's good to meet you, sir. I just came over to see if Madison, uh, wanted to do anything today."
My dad looked proud that I had managed to make a friend without his help, but I was majorly confused. Clearing his throat as if trying to decide how to treat the first boyfriend of mine he'd had the chance to meet, he took Barnabas's extended hand. I stood and watched in wonder as they shook. Barnabas gave me a slight shrug, and I started to relax. It seemed everything had been wiped from my dad's thoughts and a fake memory of an uneventful evening put in its place-a teenager's dream of CYA to the max. Now all I had to do was figure out how Ron had done it. Just for future reference.
"Hey, do you have anything to eat around here?" Barnabas said, rubbing a hand across the back of his neck. "I feel like I haven't eaten in years."
Like magic, my dad fell into jovial-parent mode, talking about waffles as he stomped downstairs. Barnabas started after him, hesitating when I took his elbow and drew him to a stop.
"So the story is Seth brought me home and I watched TV the rest of the night?" I asked, wanting to know how much damage control I'd have to manage on my own. "I never went off that embankment?" I added when he nodded. "Who's going to remember last night? Anyone?"
"No one living," he said. "Ron takes time to be thorough. He must like you a lot." His gaze dropped to the stone about my neck. "Or maybe he simply likes your pretty new stone."
Feeling nervous all over again, I let go of his shirt and Barnabas schlumped after my dad-who was now yelling at us from the kitchen to find out if Barnabas could stay for breakfast. I straightened my dress, ran a hand over my mussed hair, and took slow, careful steps down after him. I felt really weird. A year. I had at least a year. I might not be alive, but by God I wasn't going to die all the way. I'd figure out how to use the stone I took and stay right where I was. Where I belonged. Here with my dad.
Watch me.
Chapter Four
Restless, I sat on the roof in the dark, flicking stones into the night as I tried to realign my thinking. I wasn't alive, but I wasn't altogether dead, either. As I'd suspected, a careful questioning of my dad spa
He wasn't pleased I had ruined the rental, either. I didn't appreciate him taking the cost of it out of my allowance, but I wasn't going to complain. I was here, sort of alive, and that was all that mattered. My dad seemed surprised at my meek acceptance of my punishment, telling me I was growing up. Oh, if he only knew.
I watched my dad closely all day as I unpacked and put my stuff in drawers and on shelves. It was clear he knew something wasn't right, though he couldn't put his finger on it. He hardly let me out of his sight, coming upstairs to bring me snacks and pop until I could have screamed. More than once I caught him watching me with a frightened expression, hiding it when he saw me return his gaze. Di
Yeah. I ought to be tired, but I wasn't. No, it was two in the morning, and here I was out on the roof, pitching stones, pretending to be asleep as the world turned in a chilly darkness. Maybe I didn't need to sleep anymore.
Shoulders slumping, I picked another bit of tar off the shingles and flicked it at the chimney. It hit the metallic cap with a ting, ricocheting into the black. I scooted up the shallow pitch of the roof, then tugged my jeans back up where they ought to be.
A faint feeling of unease crept through me, starting from the tops of my hands in a soft prickling, slipping inward with an increasingly jagged spike. The sensation of being watched exploded into existence, and I spun, gasping, when Barnabas fell out of the tree arching overhead.
"Hey!" I shouted, heart thumping while he landed in a crouch like a cat. "How about some warning?"
He rose to stand in the moonlit darkness with his hands on his hips. There was a faint shimmer on him visible right along with his disgust. "If I had been a black reaper, you'd be dead."
"Yeah, well, I'm already dead, aren't I?" I said, flicking a stone at him. He didn't move as it arched over his shoulder. "What do you want?" I asked sullenly.
Instead of answering, he shrugged his narrow shoulders and looked east. "I want to know what you didn't tell Ron."
"Excuse me?"
He stood still as a rock, arms crossed over his chest and staring. "Seth said something to you in that car. It was the only time you were out of my sight. I want to know what it was. It might be the difference between you getting to play out this lie of being alive, or you getting carted off to a black court." Now he moved, his motion rough and angry. "I'm not going to fail again, and not because of you. You were important to Seth before you stole that stone. That's why he came to get you at the morgue. I want to know why."
I looked down at the stone, glittering in the moonlight, then shifted my gaze to my feet. The awkward angle of the roof made my ankles hurt. "He said my name had come up too many times in the affairs of men, and he was going to cull my soul."
Barnabas moved, coming to sit beside me with a lot of space between us. "He's done that. You're not a threat now that you're dead. Why did he come back for you?"
Reassured by his more relaxed posture, I looked at him, thinking his eyes seemed silver in the moonlight. "You won't tell?" I asked, wanting to trust him. I needed to talk to someone, and it wasn't like I could call up my old friends and vent about being dead-as entertaining as that might be.
Barnabas hesitated. "No, but I might try to persuade you to tell him yourself."
That I could deal with, and I took a slow breath. "He said that his ending my pathetic life was his ticket into a higher court. He came back to prove he had… culled me."
I waited for a reaction, but there was none. Finally I couldn't take it anymore and I lifted my head to meet his eyes. Barnabas was looking at me as if trying to figure out what it meant. Clearly not having an answer, he slowly said, "I think you should keep this to yourself for a while. He probably didn't mean anything by it. Forget it. Spend your time learning how to fit in."