Something Deadly This Way Comes

“You feel the same as before,” he said, smiling with half his mouth as he gave me a squeeze.

“Thanks,” I said, meaning for about six different things.

Barnabas cleared his throat, and Josh stepped back. “You scared the life out of me when you just vanished like that,” Josh accused, then added proudly, “I knew you could do it. Some warning would have been nice.”

“Sorry,” I said, fidgeting as I turned to Barnabas.

“Congratulations,” Barnabas said as he handed me my phone, his tone not giving me a clue as to what he thought about me getting my body back, and my smile started to fade.

“Yes, well, nothing has changed,” I said as I fumbled for a place to stash it before I handed it to Nakita to put in her purse. “Except I’m hungry.”

Demus pushed himself from the tombstone, squinting as he approached. “You’re wearing Kairos’s clothes and his amulet, but you don’t look anything like him.”

“And we’re all glad of that,” Nakita said, earning a chime of laughter from Grace, who was hiding somewhere.

“There was a cross-dresser from France,” she started, and Nakita threw a rock at her. It went clattering into the dark, and I swear I heard a cat yowl.

I looked down at my clothes. The reapers seemed to be making more out of me wearing them than I’d intended. “I, uh, was in that old prom dress. It was kind of icky. This was the only thing that remotely fit.”

“You look fine,” Barnabas said, but his eyes were on the dark school behind me.

“Well, I think you still smell funny,” Grace whispered right next to my ear, and I jumped.

“Grace, flap your wings a little,” I said. “It’s eerie not knowing where you are!”

I was just in time to see the worried look exchanged between Nakita and Barnabas. “You can’t see her?” Barnabas asked, and I flushed again. Man, I was starting to miss being dead.

“I’ve never been able to see her very well. It’s dark out here,” I said, wondering if I was seeing the tip of my new iceberg. First I wasn’t able to contact Nakita or Barnabas, and now I was having a hard time seeing Grace. It didn’t help that Nakita was still looking at Barnabas like I was broken.

My stomach growled, and I levered myself up to sit on the nearest tombstone. “Okay, the seraphs are mad,” I said.

“Understatement,” Demus said bluntly as he tossed his amulet up and caught it.

“They sent you to scythe her,” I added, making sure we all knew where we stood.

“The moment I find her,” Demus said, throwing his amulet up again into the inky black.

Barnabas reached out, and the dark stone smacked into his hand. Demus sat up fast. “I won’t let you kill her,” Barnabas said. “She might be able to keep her soul alive, rekindle it. You don’t know.”

“They never do!” Demus shouted, lunging. Barnabas sidestepped him, smacking his butt with the flat of his sword, brought into existence in the time it takes for an electron to spin. Josh grabbed my elbow, and I slid from the stone, putting it between us and the reapers.

Demus caught his balance, his face twisted into an ugly snarl. “I will kill her,” he vowed. “I will save her soul from butchers like you, breaking seraph will. Choice is nothing compared to fate. Nothing! Or you’d be able to change it, and you can’t! Give me back my amulet!”

My eyes were wide, and I gripped the stone I was standing behind, Josh firmly next to me. Barnabas had taken the stone to keep Demus from having the ability to kill Tammy, but that wasn’t how I wanted to change things, and I gave a directive head-toss in Demus’s direction.

Barnabas’s lips pressed together disapprovingly, but he lobbed it back to the angry angel even as Nakita scoffed. “But we have changed fate, dark reaper,” Barnabas said as Demus caught it. “The seraphs just don’t want you to know about it.”

“If the seraphs don’t tell me, then I don’t need to know,” Demus said, cradling his amulet as he hunched protectively over it. “Soon as I find her, I take her soul to save it,” Demus said, then turned to Nakita. “Why are you even listening to this? Are you going grim, Nakita?”

Nakita stiffened, her features lost in the dark as she crossed her arms over her middle. Nakita wasn’t grim, but I could see why he asked.

“You can’t find her because I changed Tammy’s resonance,” I said, my bare feet going damp in the grass as I came from around the stone and walked toward him. “And you are not going to kill Tammy. You, dark reaper, are going to help me find her, and then we are not going to scythe her. We are going to talk to her and show her a different choice so she stirs her soul back to life before it dies completely. That’s how we do things down here now. Barnabas saved someone ages ago. And we saved someone else just last month. It can be done.”

“Life is transitory. Souls are not to be risked,” he said, backing away.

“If her soul is to be lost, then we will save it, but not at the cost of her life!” I said, then lowered my voice before someone called the cops about voices in the graveyard. “I am the dark timekeeper,” I said, pushing forward until his back found a tombstone. “I survived my predecessor killing me. I survived black wings eating me alive. I am going to change things,” I said, my heart pounding. “And you are going to help me. Got it?”

He didn’t say yes. But he didn’t say no, either. “Who am I?” I insisted.

“You’re the dark timekeeper,” he muttered, his expression going from defiance to one of a sullen understanding. “Nakita, this is stupid. Haven’t you told her that you can’t change fate?”

“Of course I did.” Nakita, who had been doing handstands against a tombstone, walked on her palms toward us. Flipping right side up, she landed in a fighting pose. “And then she proved me wrong. We saved Ace.”

“Barnabas . . .” Demus almost whined.

The angel smiled with half his mouth, still leaning on his sword. “Just go with it,” he advised. “But if you try to scythe Tammy, I will stop you.”

Demus crossed his arms over his chest, defiant, but understanding. “Why not just let Ron put a flipping guardian angel on her and be done with it?” he said belligerently. “If you want to save someone’s life, that’s how you do it.”

“Because we’re not just trying to save her life, we’re trying to save her soul and her life,” I said, not knowing how to explain it to him. It was about free will and choice, and angels just didn’t get it. Like Barnabas had said, heaven was black and white, but the earth was colorful.

Slumping to the ground, Demus sat cross-legged. “Sweet seraph toes, I don’t get it.”

His head shaking at the angel’s confusion, Josh gingerly sat on a broken stone. “Intense, and a little dense, too,” he whispered to me, and I smiled.

Barnabas put his sword away, clearly relaxing as Demus backed off. “So how do we talk to her?” he asked, then added, “Without her calling the cops on you. I mean, she does think you started the fire, right? Do you want me to wipe her memory?”

“No,” I said quickly, head down as I began to pace in the wet grass. “That’s why marks don’t change. You take their memories, and they have nothing to make a change with.” I came to a halt and pulled my head up. “Everyone leaves Tammy’s memories alone. Got it?”

Demus groaned, rocking back as he sat there cross-legged. “This is the weirdest scything I’ve ever been on.”

I couldn’t help my smile. “That’s because it’s not a scything, it’s a rescue.”

His head thrown back to the stars, Demus moaned, “This isn’t going to work.”

My stomach growled, and I turned to the empty street. “I’m sure Tammy would appreciate us trying.” And he was wrong. It would work. It had to.

“Never going to wo-o-o-ork,” Demus sang, and Nakita threw a rock at him.

“Shut up!” she exclaimed as Demus ducked and the rock shattered into fragments on the stone behind him. “She’s the dark timekeeper and you’re going to listen!”

“It’s okay, Nakita,” I said as I felt the sudden adrenaline rush banish my tiredness. “He sounds like you used to. He’ll learn.”

Barnabas ran a hand through his curls, his eyes on my bare toes. “There’s only one problem,” he said, giving Nakita a worried glance.

“And that would be . . . ?” I prompted, thinking it likely wasn’t my lack of shoes.

“Your amulet,” he said, his gaze flicking to it and back to me. “I don’t think it’s working.”