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“Grace,” I asked, wondering how I’d become the cool head in this circle. “What exactly did the seraphs tell you?”
This time the reapers stayed quiet, and the messenger angel dropped down to the table, her haze vanishing as she came to a rest.
“Not much,” Grace said, her ethereal voice seeming to insert itself in my mind. “Seraphs aren’t very good at giving physical descriptions. Apart from the town’s location, I know he’s good with computers.”
Leaning back in the plastic chair, I mentally crossed off the guy at the magazine kiosk reading Guns & Ammo.
“The seraphs never said he was a computer geek,” Barnabas said dryly.
Nakita bristled. Her hand dropped from her amulet, and my eyebrows rose as I saw that the gray stone had shifted to a Gothic cross. “The seraphs foretold a computer virus being released into a school as a prank,” she said to me as she glared at him. “I’d say that would make him good with computers. It’s when it gets into the local teaching hospital that people start to die. The seraphs say he finds so much pleasure in the anonymous notoriety that he goes on to do more of the same, intentionally harming people the rest of his life. So you can see why it is in everyone’s best interests, Barney, to take his soul early, before it’s so sullied and turned that he won’t ask for redemption.”
Gritting his teeth, Barnabas stayed quiet, and I shifted nervously on the chair. Fu
My spider sense had stopped tingling, and I put my elbows on the table, thinking that this was as about as productive as the study hall I was currently skipping. I’d be willing to bet the guy in the Harley shirt striding through the mall with a girl talking on a phone beside him was out. I needed to find someone with a pocket protector.
“Computer geek,” I murmured, squinting as I looked up at the bright windows in the ceiling. I supposed I should be grateful for whatever information the seraphs could give, but, frustrated, I dropped my head onto the table. It hit with a thump, cold against my forehead.
Barnabas put a comforting hand on my shoulder. “Madison, it’s okay,” he said, making me feel even worse. “We’re trying to find this guy incredibly early. The time lines are harder to read the farther out they are from the present. Even Ron is incapable of giving a description before he flashes forward, and that’s usually just hours before the mark makes his fatal choice, not an entire day. We’re relying on angelic interpretations of what might happen, so relax.”
I pulled my head up, still staring at the table. The light timekeeper was not my favorite person these days, but I felt better that Ron was likely unaware we were out here trying to save this guy. Once he knew, it would make things more difficult.
“Madison, you’re doing fine! You got us here, didn’t you?” Barnabas said, his hand falling away. “I can feel that the mark is here, too. Your instincts are good. We’ll find him.”
Looking up, I read first his hope, then Nakita’s doubt. On the table, Grace was silent, listening. “In time?” I asked. “Before Ron flashes forward and sends someone to stop us? I don’t think a light reaper will believe I’m trying to save this guy with Nakita standing beside me, ready to kill him if I can’t make him change his mind. Would you?”
Barnabas darted a glance at Nakita, and her grip on her red purse tightened. “Sure I would,” he said, but he was lying. “Madison, don’t worry. We’ll find him. It’s just first-prevention jitters.”
“It’s a reap,” Nakita said, looking at her black nails, and then at the Goths. “Not a reap prevention.”
“It’s whatever Madison makes it,” Barnabas shot back, his face turning red.
“Well, I gotta go!” Grace said, the soft glow that was her wings rising up and sending the scent of strawberries to me. “I was told to get you here, then back off.”
“You’re leaving?” I asked, worried, but then something in Grace’s words caught my attention. “Back off?” I repeated, and her glow above the table turned almost a sickly green. “Not leave? Darn it, Grace, are you spying on us?”
Barnabas sat up in concern, and a high-pitched groan came from Grace. “Don’t be mad!” she exclaimed. “The seraphs are confused, and they want some reassurance that changing a mark’s path is even possible. That’s why you got this reap, Madison. There’s always a shift in policy when a new timekeeper takes over, but there’s never been one as big as what you want. They don’t think a reaper can open a human’s mind to choosing a different path while remaining anonymous, especially if it takes both light and dark reapers working together to do it. If Barnabas and Nakita can’t do this with you helping them, how are they expected to do it together when you’re not with them?”
I’m helping Barnabas and Nakita? I thought, confused. All I’d been thinking about was how I was going to save this guy, not set a precedent for others to follow. But even I had to concede that Ron didn’t handle reaps himself but sent his light reapers out and moved on to the next soul.
“Together?” I questioned, glancing at Barnabas and Nakita, both of them wearing sick looks. “Why would it take them both?”
“Because if the light reaper fails to effect a change, the seraphs want a dark reaper there to scythe the sucker,” the guardian angel said cheerfully. “And I’m not spying! I’m evaluating!”
“It’s the same difference!” I exclaimed, then hunched into my seat when the guy reading the magazine looked up.
“Well, it’s not like you really want the job,” Grace snapped. “How much unconditional support are the seraphs supposed to put behind your ideas if you’re going to give up the position as soon as you find your real body and turn living again?”
Nakita’s expression froze, fear a shadow in the back of her eyes.
Oh, crap. The hum of Grace’s wings seemed to grow louder. Nakita wouldn’t look away from me. It was as if I’d already abandoned her—me, the person who had accidentally damaged her perfect angel wisdom with a human’s understanding of death. She didn’t fit in anymore with her dark brethren, and I was possibly the only one who might be able to help her understand why, seeing as it was my memories and fears that had changed her.
“Well, maybe if they’d get behind my ideas a little more, I might keep the job after I find my body,” I said in a loud whisper. It wasn’t the first time I’d considered keeping it once I found my body. Timekeepers didn’t have to be dead—actually, I think I was the first one who was. But I wouldn’t stay the head of a system that I didn’t believe in. Either they let me do things my way, or I was out of here.
“I don’t believe in ultimate fate, and I won’t send dark reapers out to cull souls because people are ignorant of choice,” I said, knowing that through her, my words would be heard. “If the seraphs can’t meet me halfway, then I’m not going to do this, dead or alive.”
I was arguing with heaven, but I didn’t care. Grace was silent; then the haze of her brightened. “I don’t know why you want to be alive anyway,” she muttered, apparently willing to concede the point. “It’s messy. I mean, you leak liquids from every orifice and can’t stay awake.”
“Yeah, and we eat, too,” I said sourly. “Do you know how long it’s been since food tasted good?” It was a good thing I didn’t need to, or I would have starved by now.
She made a tiny harrumph, and a new urgency layered over me like a second skin. Swell. Not only did I have to save some guy’s life, but I had to get Barnabas and Nakita to work together in the process? Great. Just freaking great.
“You didn’t think it was going to be easy, did you?” Grace said from the middle of the table, her glow shifting wildly through the spectrum before she shot straight up like a reverse falling star and slipped right out through the high skylights. We appeared to be alone, but I’d bet she was watching.