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Shaking with anger, the manager pointed at the mall’s doors. “Get out!”
I scrambled back when Ace put a hand on the counter and vaulted over it. From the rear of the kitchen came the slamming of a heavy door as Shoe stormed off. Snatching his hat from his head, Ace dropped it on the tiled floor. “This job sucks,” he said, and he walked away, taking his apron off as he went and letting it fall.
The manager was fuming, and I hesitantly said, “Uh, how much do I owe you?”
He looked up as if noticing me for the first time, his thoughts clearly on Ace and Shoe. “Nothing. It’s free,” he said. “I’m sorry you had to see that. He’s been smart-mouthing me all summer. I should have fired him the third day he was here.”
“Sorry,” I said, not knowing why I was apologizing. Feeling weird, I turned and went back to Nakita and Barnabas. Eyes down, I slid into my seat and took a sip of shake.
Barnabas cleared his throat. “What was all that about?”
The ugliness washed from me, and I looked up, smiling at Nakita, then Barnabas. “I found our mark. It’s Ace.”
Nakita fingered her amulet as if she wanted to follow him out and scythe him in the parking lot. I was starting to understand why the seraphs believed light and dark reapers couldn’t work together. Getting Nakita to hold off until we’d given Ace a chance to change his ways wasn’t going to be easy. “Are you sure?” she asked, eyes alight and eager.
I nodded, sharing her enthusiasm if not the reason behind it. I could do this. I’d just relaxed as Barnabas had said, and let my intuition tell me. “Pretty sure,” I said. “Ace is good with computers and doesn’t mind breaking the law. He says school starts tomorrow, but that he’s ditching it. His mom works at the hospital and has such a tight leash on him that he’s probably ready to do anything to make her mad.” I watched Ace walk through the parking lot, all the while thinking about my dad and how closely he watched me. No longer in his apron, Ace looked kind of rough in a pair of faded jeans and a black T-shirt.
“Let’s go,” I said when Ace angrily smacked a car at random. “I’ve got to talk to him.”
We stood up as one, but Barnabas was hesitant. “I don’t know,” he said as we started after him. “It sounded like Shoe was the computer guy.”
I turned to him, the shake cold in my grip. “You heard that?”
“Everyone heard that,” Nakita said, tossing her hair. Her purse slung over her shoulder, she walked to the doors as if she were a runway model.
Doubt hit me, and my fast pace slowed.
“Shoe lost his temper first,” Barnabas said. “And if he’s the one who hacked the system, then he’s the one who can make the virus, not the guy who does the cover art.”
I frowned as we hit the doors and came out into the early afternoon sun. Past the yellow line in the employee parking area, Ace was standing next to a sporty car and arguing with Shoe. Biting my lip, I thought of Barnabas’s thousand-year-plus experience at this compared to my intuition. It was probably Shoe, but I didn’t want to lose sight of Ace. The memory of how quickly his mood shifted wouldn’t leave me. Something was wrong there.
“Okay,” I said hesitantly as we started to move forward again. “Barnabas, if you think it’s Shoe, you should follow him. Nakita and I will stick with Ace and learn what we can.” And it will keep you and Nakita apart, too.
Nakita made a pleased sound, clearly glad to be taking action. “I should be the one to follow Shoe, not Barnabas,” she said firmly. “That way, if he tries to put the virus in a computer, I’ll be there to kill him.”
I stopped short, and she went two steps before halting. My gaze went to Barnabas, and he made a helpless expression. “Um, Nakita, I thought you’d come with me.”
The reaper was clueless about many things, but she wasn’t stupid. A soft blush marred her face, and she went stiff, her black toenails shining in the sun. “You’re trying to keep me away from Shoe.”
I was trying to keep her away from Barnabas, too. I took a breath to protest, then let it out. “Yeah, but come with me anyway. Ace likes pretty girls. He’ll tell you anything.” Nakita squinted at me, and I added, “Come on. Help me out here. Ron can’t possibly know we’re out of Three Rivers yet, so we’ve got tons of time.”
“She is your boss,” Barnabas muttered, and Nakita frowned.
“Okay,” she said, capitulating, “but if Shoe does anything, promise you’ll call me, Barnabas.”
“You want me to call you?” Barnabas said, thumbs in his jeans pockets and the wind shifting his T-shirt. “How? You’re a dark reaper, and I’m light. Our resonances are too far apart for our amulets to allow it.”
Nakita smiled, changing her amulet from the Gothic cross back to its normal flat stone cradled in a basket of silver wire. “You’re not as light as you think, reaper. Looked at your aura lately? You’ve gone neutral. I bet we can talk through our amulets if we try. You’re going dark. Dude.”
Barnabas’s expression became horrified, and he looked down at his own amulet. Taking Nakita’s arm, I pushed her into motion before Ace drove away. I knew Barnabas wasn’t happy about losing his light-reaper status, but she didn’t have to torment him about it. Since leaving Ron and the light reapers, he was considered a grim reaper, a group of vigilante angels scorned by light and dark reapers alike for their wont to kill without reason. If there was a plague, grim reapers were there. A disaster had them wading into the bodies like they were surf. War was their play yard. It wouldn’t be until Barnabas’s amulet color shifted closer to mine that he might be considered respectable again, but since he’d then be a dark reaper who didn’t believe in fate, he wasn’t truly going to fit in. Heaven probably wouldn’t let him back, either.
“I’ll get you guys some phones next time I’m in the mall,” I said sourly. But if I knew how to use my friggin’ amulet to talk silently with them, then I wouldn’t need to.
Three
“Ace!” I shouted, the hard pavement under my feet sending jolts through me as I ran for his truck. “Wait up!”
Nakita, apparently, saw no reason to run, and she sedately followed somewhere behind me, handbag at her side and matching sandals clicking away. Barnabas was heading off in the opposite direction, probably seeking a quiet place to wait and take wing to follow Shoe. Shoe’s back was hunched as he stomped to a lonely sports car parked by itself in a spot of shade.
Hearing my voice, Ace leaned against his truck and put his thumbs in his pockets. I slowed, not even breathing heavily. Okay, so maybe there were some benefits to this whole being-dead thing. Nakita caught up with me, and I slowed even more. “He’s angry,” she said simply as we matched paces. “Are you sure he’ll tell us anything?”
“Yeah, well, you can be mad at your friends,” I said, remembering how I’d been angry with Wendy, my best friend in Florida, where I’d lived before I moved to Three Rivers. Most of our arguments had stemmed from my trying to get us into the cool crowd, but Wendy was too independent. Even when we fought, though, we remained friends.
“How can you be angry and like someone at the same time?” Nakita asked.
I watched Shoe get in his car and start it up, revving the engine hard. “You just do. You like Barnabas, don’t you? Even when you argue?”
“No,” she said immediately, then hesitated. “He’s smarter than I thought he was. Thinking that he might be right and I might be wrong makes me angry.”
“Same thing here,” I said, indicating Ace, who was now pushing up from the truck and brushing a hand across his wrinkled T-shirt.
She fingered her amulet and asked, “Who’s right?”
I smiled at Ace and said, “It doesn’t matter.”
She sighed. “I don’t understand.”
“It’s a friendship thing.” Shifting my smile brighter, I scuffed to a halt, turning the popular-girl charm on full. It usually got me my way with strangers, so the time I’d spent trying to get in with the cool girls hadn’t been a total loss. I guess.