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“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.
Seeing me looking at him like I’d taken a week’s worth of stupid pills, Ron strode forward among the empty tables with his usual quickness, halting with a comical abruptness when Barnabas flung out a hand in warning and Nakita suddenly had her sword out. The waitress made a muffled yelp, ducking into the back and babbling for the phone.
Better and better.
Ron stopped, his expression frustrated as he assessed the situation. Barnabas calmly crossed his ankles and leaned back against the table, looking good in his casual tee and black jeans. “You’re not touching her…Chronos,” the reaper said calmly, softly, his voice heavy with threat.
Ron’s wrinkles grew deeper. “Back off. Her predecessor is dead. Who else is going to tweak her amulet? You? I’m here as the superior timekeeper under seraph orders. You think I’m going to violate those? How else could I find you, shielded as you are?”
On my other side, Nakita steamed, her grip on her sword hilt tightening. “You might if you thought you could get away with it,” she said, and Paul, almost forgotten, inched forward.
“You’re not superior, Ron. You’re just older,” I said, then glanced at Paul, wondering. He’d helped me until Nakita had hit him. My guess was that he was going to have a black eye by morning. He’d never believe me again. I weighed the chances that Ron would do something sneaky against the real chance that my amulet wasn’t tuned properly. I didn’t want to go through that hell again, and I didn’t want a seraph down here to fix it instead. Ron didn’t look tired or distressed, and he had been flashing forward, too. Clearly something was wrong with me…again.
“He’s right; it’s over,” I said, taking my amulet off and tossing it to Ron.
The silver-wrapped stone smacked into Ron’s hand. Barnabas stiffened, and Nakita almost had kittens, falling to my side and finding an aggressive stance. It was a bold move on my part, but I was trying to prove to Ron that I wasn’t afraid of him. Even if I was. I’d never have done it if I didn’t have two reapers and two guardian angels standing by. I didn’t think I could bear another look at the stars, raw and unfiltered, seen through the divine. “Just fix it,” I said with a sigh, feeling naked without my amulet. “I can’t take more than two flash forwards like that.”
“Two?” Ron said, the amulet forgotten in his hands. “There was more than one?”
I smiled at him, lips closed. From the back, I could hear a frantic conversation, but at least the cook hadn’t come out with a loaded shotgun. Yet. Barnabas and Nakita exchanged a look, and, sighing dramatically, the dark reaper slunk to the kitchen door. She hesitated, then dissolved her sword. Hair tossed back, she pushed on the double door and went in. Screaming quickly ensued, and we all waited until the twin thumps came before we turned back to one another.
Looking at Barnabas, Ron inched forward and extended my amulet. “You have to be wearing it for me to adjust it,” he said.
I waited until Nakita came out before I stepped from Barnabas. A quick glance back at Shoe and I frowned. He looked scared. Breath held, I looped the simple cord around my neck, then stiffened when Ron took the stone in his fingers. I had trusted him once. Never again.
My jaw relaxed as a reddish light leaked from my amulet. The slight headache I didn’t even realize I had lifted from me, and I exhaled, no longer feeling like I needed to hold myself together.
Ron’s hand slipped from my amulet. Barnabas cleared his throat, clearly wanting me to step back near him, but I didn’t, and it was Ron who moved first, with a new wariness in his stance. “Thanks,” I said dryly. “I appreciate that.”
Looking uncomfortable, Ron glanced at Paul, then at Shoe. “I adjusted your pull on the divine,” he said gruffly. “Your predecessor was alive. You’re not. It’s going to take some tweaking.” Wiping his hands together, he backed up. “I don’t know what you had hoped to do by this. You made a bloody mess of it. How many people need their memories adjusted?”
Shoe scuffed his feet, and I shifted to hide him. “A few,” I said. “And a few more now that you’re butting in again. We can take care of it. And what do you mean, a bloody mess? It looks to me like I fixed it. No one died.”
Paul edged forward to stand beside Ron as the older man pointed rudely at me. “Your job makes you a murderer, Madison,” he said, and Barnabas stiffened. “Perhaps not with your own hands, but by your actions. Attempting to soothe your conscience by trying to save people whose souls are not even in danger only makes a mess and is an exercise in futility.”
An exercise in futility? I thought, my chin lifting as I took a step forward. “I’ve died once, and trust me, the people we just saved would have wanted it that way.” I was almost in his face, and I jumped when Barnabas pulled me back. “We saved three people’s lives,” I said from the security of his grip. “Four if you count Shoe not taking the blame for Ace’s actions. They’re all going to feel the sun on their faces tomorrow.” Crap, I was almost crying again. “That feels good to me!” I finished hotly, wiping my eyes and not caring if Ron saw it.
And I did feel good. Sure, there was the problem of the flash forwards, but I didn’t think I’d be living nightmares like tonight again. My amulet had needed adjusting. Thank you, God, for sending Ron.
“Maybe it was their time to go and you messed it up,” Ron said as he glanced past the night-blackened windows, clearly thinking about leaving.
I smiled at him, thinking that for all his years, I’d been somewhere he hadn’t. Maybe that was why I’d been fated to become the dark timekeeper. “That’s fate, Ron, and you don’t believe in fate. Or do you?”
His attention came back from the parking lot as he realized I’d basically said what a seraph had told him not two months ago. “Fine, you win,” I said. “Congratulations. That worthless pile over there in the corner is safe. Got an angel and everything. Nothing to stop you from leaving. We’ve got a lot of cleanup to do.” My thoughts went to the two people in the kitchen. “People to give memories to,” I added, and Shoe cleared his throat behind me.