Something Deadly This Way Comes

said, one hand taking mine, and the other going flat on the table between us. With a last look at the empty hallway as if my dad might be coming, he leaned over the table, tilted his head, and met my lips.

I breathed him in, imagining I could feel his aura swirling through mine. My eyes shut, and I leaned forward, our lips moving against each other as the memory of my heart gave a pound. I want to be alive again, I thought as my fingers tightened on his, and then let go.

His eyes opened as we pulled away, his gaze going to the hallway before they came back to me. “If you’re sure?” he said, pulling out the chair facing the archway and sitting down.

My heart was still pounding, and I shrugged, licking my lips as if trying to seal the memory of him there. “Tell me if you hear him coming down, okay?”

Josh put his arms flat on the table, his head shaking. “Okay.”

God, I hope this works. I felt like I was running out of time. Smiling at Josh, I closed my eyes and resettled myself. I felt him take my hand, and I gave his fingers a squeeze. It was easy to find my mindscape of the sheet of the present and the tightly interwoven threads of everyone’s lives falling from it. I could see Josh’s blue twining heavily about mine, Barnabas and Nakita close in thought but not presence. Inching my awareness higher, I found the lines of my thought that were attaching to my amulet and pulling me into the future. And between them was the soft blue and yellow glow of my body, stuck in time, waiting for me.

“I can do this,” I breathed as I let my awareness fall into the spaces in between.

Like a foot into a well-designed shoe, my soul gave a sigh and slipped into my body. The memory of Josh’s lips on mine was replaced by the taste of salt. The hum of the fridge ebbed, and became the sound of surf. I gasped when a wrench twisted my gut.

Josh cried out, but it sounded thin and unreal. And with that same sort of mental relaxation I’d used to let go of the time line and get it started again, I let my mind slip back an instant in time. I hadn’t before, and it made all the difference. With a little thunk of presence, I felt my body shift back in sync with the universe. I was here, and there was no going back.

My heart pounded, and a thrilling sensation spilled through me as I sat up in a spacious, sunlit room. I looked down at my torn prom dress, unbelieving as I felt the grimy fabric between two blood-caked fingers. That fast, it was done. I was in my body.

Dizziness hit me, and I took a gasping breath, almost forgetting to let it out. A laugh burbled up, mixing with the sounds of gulls. I had to breathe. I had to breathe!

My hand went to my neck, and I found my amulet. Swinging my feet around, I jerked my toes from the cold marble floor. Everything seemed to be moving slowly, and I ached everywhere. There was no toe tag when I looked, but I remembered having torn that off.

A throbbing at the front of my head brought my hand up, and I probed my forehead carefully, feeling what was probably a bruise. My shoulder and chest hurt. I pulled the dirt-stained, grimy dress from me to look down my front and see a long bruise where the seat belt would have been. I was really in my body. It was mine!

“I did it!” I shouted, hearing my voice echo, and the gulls outside seemed to mock me. Coughing, I hunched on the velveteen couch, holding my ribs so it wouldn’t hurt so much.

“I did it,” I whispered, not caring if I hurt. I had done it, and I wondered if my resonance had changed because I was again in my body. Black wings, I realized, wouldn’t be a problem anymore. But then my victorious smile hesitated and slowly vanished. Moving carefully until I was sure I could, I stood up and hobbled toward the nearest door, frantically searching for the one thing I hadn’t needed in six months. I had really done it. The proof, they say, is in the pudding. Or in this case, the can. I had to go to the bathroom in the worst way, and I didn’t have a clue where it was.

Chapter Eight

I trailed my hand across the smooth marble walls just so I could feel the silky sensation as I left the bathroom. It had taken me an entire, desperate three minutes to find it. The huge washroom had been off an entire suite of rooms that I was guessing had been Kairos’s private quarters. Kairos, the same guy who had killed me. I’d give the man one thing; he had taste. Everything I’d found in my mad dash for the bathroom had been scrumptiously elegant. Cold and precise. A band poster or CD rack would look out of place, which made me wonder how much time he’d actually spent here.

Giving the huge, sunken tub a last, longing glance from over my shoulder, I padded barefoot into the bedroom with its huge bed of soft pillows and downy comforters, still messed up from when Kairos had left it. Which was kind of creepy, when you thought about it. My body had been here all along, just an instant out of step with the rest of the world and therefore unseen and protected from the passage of time. Sort of like Barnabas hiding his wings, out of sync with the universe and invisible.

The sun coming in the huge windows with the flat ocean beyond it made me sigh. Taking a bath didn’t sound prudent, even if I would feel a hundred percent better. I had changed clothes, though. Spending the rest of the night trying to save Tammy in my old prom dress wasn’t an option. Kairos predictably hadn’t had any skirts or dresses in his closet, but I’d found a black pair of trousers that almost fit if I rolled up the bottoms, and a baggy tunic that might be fashionable if you were in Azeroth in World of Warcraft.

I hoisted the baggy pants up higher and tied a small knot in the waistband to keep them from falling down as I went into the hallway. The shirt I couldn’t do much with, and I’d just have to be careful not to lean too far forward. My old dress was wadded up and shoved under the bathroom sink. If I never saw it again, it would be too soon. Though caught in time and basically static for the time I’d been out of my body, I couldn’t help but feel like I’d been wearing it since I’d died. No wonder my chest hurt, scrunched into that corset. My shoulder ached from the car accident, and I swung it experimentally, smiling. Yeah, it hurt, but it was because I was alive. I couldn’t wait to tell Josh.

The hallway opened up into a huge common area with fabulous cushions and low tables, which in turn led out to the spacious, tiled patio through wide archways edged in flowing curtains. I knew no one had been here since Kairos had died, but everything looked clean. One of the perks of living on holy ground, maybe?

I headed for the outside, my hand holding my amulet in reassurance. I was so-o-o- o glad I still had it and it hadn’t been left behind in the kitchen when I had vanished, and I was sure I had. Barnabas had told me I had looked like a ghost when he yanked me back the first time, and since my amulet was what gave me my fake body, and it was with me now . . .

Poor Josh, I thought, wishing I had a way to talk soundlessly with him as I went outside and blinked in the sudden sun. He must be worried sick, me vanishing like that. As soon as I got myself thinking straight, I was going to contact Barnabas or Nakita to come pick me up. Nakita, at least, knew where Kairos’s island was, seeing as she killed him here.

My eyes darted to the broken table where she’d scythed him, the cracked table empty of any sign of violence. I’d taken on the duties of the dark timekeeper before the blood of the last one had gone cold, and I shivered. The hard stone had been cracked when the seraph had laughed at me for not believing in fate. Or had it been laughing because it had seen the future and knew that I’d be here now, wanting my body and the amulet both. They’d let me keep it, right?

Concerned, I wrapped my arms around myself and turned from the table as I remembered the painful beauty of the seraph. They’d let me keep the amulet. I mean, I’d asked if I could try it out, then give it back, and the angel had given me this crafty look and said I could if that was what I chose, like choice was all that there was when it was obvious that seraphs were all about fate. It had even said that there was always a choice. Well, I was making one now. Ron had an amulet, and he was alive. It had said I could choose to give up my amulet when I found my body. That meant the default was for me to keep it. Right?

Determination filled me, and the wind from the water rose up the hundred-foot drop from the tiny beach to shift my hair. The white cloth strung between the pillars made Kairos’s patio look like a perfume commercial. The tide was mostly out, and I closed my eyes and faced the sun, hands spread wide as if I could take the moment and remember it forever, filling myself with the heat of the sun. My heart beat in my chest, and I breathed in and out. I was alive and it felt wonderful—even if my neck hurt as if I had whiplash.

Slowly my smile faded, and my head dropped. Somewhere, on the other side of the earth, Nakita waited in