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Shoe’s mouth dropped open, and his eyes widened, but Barnabas had his sword pointed at Nakita, not him. “He doesn’t deserve to die,” Barnabas said to her. “I bested you before, and I will again.”
“You freaks are going to try to kill me?” Shoe said, his voice getting higher. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
Grace’s wings seemed to dim. I wasn’t too happy, either.
This was so getting out of control. The seraphs would never believe it was possible if I couldn’t do this at least once. “Barnabas, put your scythe away!” I shouted. “Nakita, back off! You guys are driving me nuts! Neither of you is giving this a chance!”
Both of them lowered their swords, and I took a breath. Shoe swore softly, and I strode forward, ticked. He was going to listen, damn it. I didn’t have time for this!
Knowing that everything that happened was going to land in a seraph’s ear by way of Grace, I tried to calm myself, but it didn’t work. “Look, you!” I said right in Shoe’s face, to make him back up, startled. “I don’t like Ace. And I don’t particularly like you. Let’s just say I have access to tomorrow’s headlines, okay? The aliens beamed them down to me, all right? If Barnabas gets his way, the papers will read, ‘Three dead in the hospital from a computer virus.’ If Nakita gets her way, it’s going to be your name in the obituaries to save your soul at the expense of your life. Me, I’m trying to do the impossible and have the headlines read, ‘Average day in average America—everyone’s happy.’ But if you don’t even try, I don’t think I can stop Nakita from putting your head on a platter!”
Grace seemed to dim a little more. Barnabas made a pained-sounding noise, but I couldn’t spare him a glance. I felt sick. This was not what I wanted to do. I had thought it would be so easy. Find the mark, talk to the mark, we all go home to be dead another day.
His face pale in the dim light, Shoe eyed the reapers, then shuddered when he looked at their swords. “Who are you?”
His voice lacked the earlier mockery, and, encouraged, I said, “The only person besides you who can fix this. Don’t upload the virus. Please.”
He swallowed hard, his gaze returning to Nakita before jerking back to me. Clearly he’d seen something in her that he couldn’t explain, a glint of the eye, a gesture so graceful a human couldn’t make it. A sense of the divine, perhaps. Finally he was listening. “Madison. They called you Madison,” he said, attention coming back to me.
Sighing, I extended my hand, and Grace made a happy sound. “I’m Madison. Nice to meet you, Shoe.” His hand in mine felt cold, and he let go almost immediately. “Listen to me,” I said, noting that Nakita was looking at me like I’d done the impossible in getting him to pay attention. “Somehow the virus you made gets out. It messes up the hospital system. Three people die before they know what’s going on. Just don’t do it.”
Outside, a dark shadow passed over the window. My gut tightened. Nakita had seen it, and her expression went empty as she slipped to the window to look out. Black wings?
Shoe glanced at the open door. “It’s not that kind of virus,” he repeated. “It won’t get out, and it doesn’t replicate. That’s why I had to break into the school to upload it. I’m not a freak. I want the notoriety for getting everyone a day off from school, not killing people. What kind of monster do you think I am?”
“The kind whom Nakita tries to kill,” Barnabas said, but something in Shoe’s words had struck me.
“You had to break in to upload it?” I whispered, hearing the past tense he had put everything in. My eyes pinched, I looked at him. “You already uploaded it,” I said, and Nakita pulled back from the window while Grace sighed loudly enough for me to hear. “You were coming out of the school when Nakita found you, not going in.”
“Well, yeah,” he said, shrugging. “It’s done. It’s already in. When the clock ticks over to six in the morning, the system will shut down. Fire, security, everything. But that’s all that’s going to happen. It can’t get out!”
Nakita strode forward, her face ugly. My eyes widened. Shoe darted for the door, and I grabbed his arm, swinging him behind me. If he ran, it would be over.
“Look out!” Grace shrilled, and I ducked.
Nakita’s sword struck Barnabas’s, inches before me. Damn it, I had to work harder in figuring out how to make a sword from my amulet. This relying on Barnabas was getting old.
“Knock it off!” I shouted as I rose out of my crouch, grateful that Barnabas could move that fast.
“You’re crazy!” Shoe was yelling behind me. “Crazy! All of you!”
From the ceiling, Grace chimed in merrily, “Nakita, a reaper of light, the bad guy she wanted to smite. But Barney had pla
Nakita’s face went livid.
“Stop it! All of you!” I exclaimed. “This is my scything, not yours!”
The two reapers stared at each other, the air smelling of ozone. I could almost see their wings. As if in slow motion, they lowered their swords and stepped away from each other. Shaking, I turned to Shoe. That flash forward had really taken it out of me. “Sorry,” I said, wondering if he still had the ability to listen after that. “Nakita is intense.”
“She’s freaking crazy!” he shouted, then shivered when Grace landed on his shoulder, bathing him in a glow he couldn’t see.
“He said it’s too late,” Nakita said, trying to defend her actions.
Choice—it was never too late to make a new one. “It’s not too late,” I said, giving Barnabas a thankful look. “We can take the virus out. Shoe, you’ve got a patch, yes?”
“Yes,” he admitted, looking darkly at Nakita. “But I’m telling you, the virus won’t spread. It can’t.” Reaching to his back pocket, he brought out the disc. “This won’t do anything but shut the school down!”
I took a breath to disagree, but when I saw the disc decorated with Ace’s artwork, a cold feeling trickled through me. The disc in Shoe’s hand wasn’t the disc I’d seen in my flash forward. Crap on toast, how stupid can I be?
Oblivious as to why I was staring at the disc, Barnabas drew close. “Madison, I’m sorry,” he was saying, but I wasn’t listening. “Maybe if we had been faster.”
With a thump, my pulse staggered into play. How am I going to fix this? “That isn’t the same disc I saw in the flash forward,” I said, panic making my voice sound thin.
Nakita’s head came up, and her grip on her sword tightened. Grace made a sound like bells, and her glow went completely out. “She flashed forward?” Nakita asked Barnabas, then looked at me. “You flashed forward? Then he’s the mark!”
I shook my head, cursing myself for assuming I’d been in Shoe’s mind when I’d found myself in his room. “No,” I whispered, a hand to my stomach. Fumbling, I took the disc from Shoe and waved it under Barnabas’s nose. “This isn’t the disc I saw in the flash. It has Ace’s artwork on it, but it’s not the same disc. Shoe isn’t the mark.”
Nakita was ashen. “I almost scythed him. I…would have.”
“It’s my fault,” I said. Everything was blue when I saw the virus being uploaded to the disc. It was Ace. I’d been in Ace while he made a duplicate of the virus in Shoe’s computer. Maybe the future wasn’t here yet. Why hadn’t I tried to get him to look in a mirror?
As if from a great distance, I heard Barnabas say, “We’re following the wrong person.”
“It’s Ace,” I said, as if it weren’t already crystal clear, and Shoe jerked back when I grabbed his hand, looking at his fingertips. “There’s no ink on your hands.”
“What is your problem?” he asked, pulling back out of my grip.
“My problem is that I’m stupid!” I exclaimed, taking a step forward and feeling faint. “I’m such a dunce! Shoe, I saw Ace in your room at your computer. I thought it was you. He downloaded the virus to a disc. We have to find Ace before Ron does.”