Something Deadly This Way Comes

brought it back and slumped into the couch beside me. Nakita was in the chair next to Barnabas, and I propped my feet up on the table.

“You found the place okay?” I asked Barnabas as Josh took a huge bite, white cream squishing out the back.

Barnabas nodded, running a hand over his loose curls as his gaze went out the window to the apartment building. “How about you? Did you find Tammy?”

Nakita rolled her eyes and set her purse on the table. “She blew it.”

My brow furrowed, and Barnabas’s eyes widened. “She’s dead?”

“She is not dead!” I said, then lowered my voice when an attendant poked his head in before vanishing into a back room. A sitcom laugh track rose faintly, and I leaned toward Barnabas. “I know who she is. Blonde. Bossy —”

“And thinks Madison is a wacko,” Nakita said as she snapped open her purse and brought her camera out. Focusing on the rows of silent washers, lids up, she added, “You just had to blurt it out.”

“Hey. I’m not the one telling her I’m trying to save her soul,” I said, and Barnabas exhaled loudly.

Totally unperturbed, Nakita looked at the back of her camera and the digital screen. “Stay home or you’ll ruin your life was the first thing out of her mouth. We had to get off the bus.” Glancing at Barnabas, she added, “Did you see Tammy get off?”

Barnabas pulled himself out of his slouch. “Could have. I saw a girl the right age get off the bus with a boy. She looked scared.”

I nodded. “That was probably her. Jeans, pink shirt. Blonde?”

“Yup, she lives on the third floor, corner apartment.” Barnabas sipped his machine-made drink, grimaced, and set it down. “Sweet seraphs, this is bad. So what happened on the bus?”

My focus blurred as I thought back to it. Maybe I hadn’t screwed things up too badly. “Other than she and her friends thinking I was a freak of a Goody Two-shoes? I don’t know. If she looked scared, maybe she’ll stay home tonight instead of going to the movies to swap spit with David.”

“It was Dan,” Nakita said, and I rolled my eyes.

“Dan then. But if her brother doesn’t die, she won’t run away, right? Problem solved.”

Nakita, though, didn’t look convinced as she exchanged a worried look with Barnabas. “What?” I asked, thinking they knew something I didn’t.

Josh turned his cookie around to lick the cream squishing out. He looked happy and content, and I shifted my leg until our knees touched. He smiled as he looked up, making me glad he was here with me. “Don’t you ever stop eating?” Nakita asked him.

“No.” Josh turned to look at the vending machine. “You chipped your nail polish.”

Nakita gasped, immediately checking her fingernails, then bending first one sandal up to check her toes, then the other. “I did not!” she exclaimed indignantly.

Barnabas was smiling, and Josh held the last of his cookie up. “Madison, you want one?”

I shook my head, and Nakita glared at him. “She doesn’t eat, mortal.”

“It’s still polite to ask,” Josh said, chewing, and if I was able to blush, I would have. “Barnabas, did they tell you yet that Madison identified Tammy by her aura?”

A jolt of excitement raced through me, and I sat up, having forgotten my success there. “No,” Barnabas said, looking as happy as I suddenly felt. “Madison, that’s fantastic! How long have you been able to see auras?”

“I can’t,” I said, though I was starting to wonder.

Nakita, too, was smiling again. “She looked back through at the time line to where she flashed so I could see Tammy’s aura resonance. She’s a fish.”

“Green with an orange center,” Barnabas said cryptically. “She’s got issues.”

“Fish?” I asked, wondering if it was some kind of code.

“My aura is blue,” Josh said.

Barnabas looked askance at him. “I know,” he said, then turned to me. “So you talked to her. You scared her. You think it was enough?”

I shrugged, glancing at Josh’s cookie. “I don’t know. It’s not like I zap back home when reality realigns itself. I want to talk to her again.”

“There’s a good idea.”

Ignoring Barnabas, I licked my lips, wishing I was hungry. “That looks good, Josh.”

Josh beamed as he stood up. “I’ll get you one.”

“She doesn’t eat . . . Josh,” Nakita said dryly, then took a picture of everyone’s feet and the crumbs he had made.

I shook my head, and Josh sat back down. “Thanks, anyway,” I said softly. “I’ll be glad when I learn how to look between the now and the next and find my body. I’m tired of not being hungry.”

Nakita froze, and I looked up to find her staring at me. Her eyes blinked, and in a sudden motion, she shoved her camera into her purse. “I’ll be outside watching the apartment,” she said, then walked quickly to the door, her back stiff and her pace stilted. The door hit the wall, making a bigger dent, and then she was outside, standing with her arms crossed and her head down in the fading sun.

Bewildered, I looked from Josh, his mouth full and chewing slowly, to Barnabas’s resigned expression. “What did I say?” I asked.

Josh shrugged, but Barnabas winced. “She’s worried that once you get your body back that you’ll dissociate from your amulet and leave her. So am I.”

Worried, I looked out the plate-glass windows.

“Those black wings you put in her left some of your memories in her. She knows you better than anyone on heaven or earth, and she’s afraid. I’ll be okay, but Nakita . . . You taught her what it’s like to fear death, and she thinks that once you’re gone no one will understand her and people will think she’s more of a square peg than they already do.”

Oh, God. How do I get into these messes?

Josh jumped when his phone vibrated. Excusing himself, he went to answer it and give us some privacy at the same time. My gaze dropped, and I ran my fingernail along a groove in the table. Looking up, I gathered my determination. “I don’t want to give up being the dark timekeeper,” I said. “But if I can’t make this work—if I can’t convince the seraphs that the early scythings are unnecessary to save a person’s soul before it goes bad, then I’m not going to stay around to send reapers to kill people who are too scared, or frightened, or just plain stupid to find joy in life.”

Barnabas looked out the window, his hat pulled low over his eyes. “You wanted to know what was bothering her. That’s it.”

He was being unusually callous, and I frowned. “You don’t think I’d rather stay here with you?” I almost growled, crumpling up Josh’s cookie wrapper. “I’m trying to make this work!”

“So is she.” Barnabas leaned forward. “She hasn’t been on earth as long as I have. She doesn’t understand about human choice and the fragility of your dreams and the strength that lies in your hopes and faith. Angels see everything in black and white, and the earth was made to be colorful. Think about what you’re asking her to do. She is all about the soul, Madison. Life is secondary to her. Life is transient, and you’re asking her to risk someone’s soul for an extension of something that to her is a blink of an eye.”

“But all we have is that blink,” I said miserably.

Barnabas leaned back and glanced at Josh, talking with someone on the phone. “I know. It’s one of the reasons I left heaven. I think that Nakita is starting to understand. She’s come a long way.”

My throat was tight, and I watched Josh close his phone, looking as depressed as I felt. “So have you, Barnabas,” I said softly.

Frowning, Barnabas looked away. I knew he wasn’t happy about leaving his light-reaper status. My special talent seemed to be screwing up everyone’s life. Sighing, I watched Nakita standing in the lowering sun looking perfect and worried. She wasn’t a fallen angel like Barnabas, but one in good standing. So far. But I’d scarred her, changed her forever when I had accidentally put two black wings inside her. They had been eating me alive when I’d lost contact with my amulet and had fallen through her like a ghost. The black wings had latched on to her and started to eat her memories, much richer than mine. Eventually the seraphs had gotten them out, but the memories