Something Deadly This Way Comes

Chapter Six

I watched the wall clock as I sat in the swivel chair, tapping my foot in time with its ticks to irritate the cop sitting behind the desk. But mostly I just sulked. Either luck or Grace had landed me here instead of the juvenile detention area, which was apparently full up at the moment. It could have been the fire, but I think it was Grace. My guardian-angel-turned-messenger had shown up halfway to the station, almost getting me into the psych ward when I started talking to her. Luck had stayed with me, so instead of a cell, I was stuck in some cop’s office while they figured out what to do with me. It stank like stale cigarette smoke, and he had dried Diet Coke rings on his scratched desk. Nasty.

The somewhat overweight, stocky man looked up at me, and I gave him an insincere smile. Irritated, he set his pen down on his steel-and-laminate desk and crossed his arms over his chest, staring back at me. My cell phone was next to his oversize, ugly monitor. Grace had drained the batteries. She drained every single thing they tried to plug into it. They hadn’t been able to contact my parents yet, and I hoped I’d be out of here before they managed it. Grace was good, but these guys were determined.

“You ready to tell me who that redheaded kid was with you?” he asked, and I shook my head. “How about how to call your folks?” he tried, and I looked at the ceiling.

“Punk-ass kids,” he muttered, standing up and pocketing my cell phone. “We used to be able to put you gangbangers behind bars where you belonged and be done with it. You’re only making it harder on yourself. We’ll find out who you are. And that redhead, too.”

“I didn’t set the fire,” I said, and he pressed his lips together, which made his mustache stick out.

“Stay there,” he demanded, pointing a stubby, fat finger at me. “Don’t touch anything.”

I stuck my tongue out at him as he left, but he missed it, more intent on getting a sugar-induced coffee high. The frosted-glass door shut with a bang, and I jumped.

Exhaling a breath I’d taken who knew how long ago, I slumped back in my chair and swung my foot, looking over the cluttered shelves, the high, narrow window with the metal netting on it, and finally the scuffed green and white tiles. I didn’t think my treatment was standard procedure, but I wasn’t making things easy on them, either.

Head thrown back, I looked at the stained ceiling. I’d totally missed my curfew, and I was going to be so-o-o-o grounded when I got home, even if my dad never found out about this. But what really had me worried was Tammy. I didn’t like that the seraphs had sent a reaper out to take her early. They knew I was handling this. Grace had told me that Barnabas was watching Tammy and that both Arariel and Demus were gone, so maybe my actions tonight in stopping Demus had caused them to reconsider. I just didn’t know.

I’d feel a lot better if I could change Tammy’s resonance to help hide her while I cooled my heels in juvie. Ron had changed mine several times, but he had done it by modifying my amulet, seeing as it was the source of my aura now that I was dead. Tammy didn’t have an amulet to give her the illusion of an aura, so I’d have to change it some other way. Logic said I’d have to be with her to do it, but maybe all I needed to do was find her in the time line and just sort of . . . tweak it. It was worth trying.

Bringing my head down, I looked at the ticking clock. It was after ten, past midnight at home. My dad was going to kill me. “Grace?” I whispered, needing some company.

“There once was a cop shop in Baxter,” the guardian-angel-turned-messenger sang out as she ghosted through the glass in the door, “who once a timekeeper did capture. Accused of a fire, her condition was dire, but Barnabas won’t let them ax her.”

Looking at the bookcase of sloppy folders where she had landed, I squinted. “Grace? What’s going on? I feel like I’m on a deserted island, here.”

“You’re in jail, Madison!” the angel said cheerfully. “The seraphs are angry. Tammy is a lost cause. And Demus is walking the streets again, looking for her. She’s run away, just like the seraphs fated she would.”

“What?” I sat up, now twice as worried for Tammy as I was before. “I thought Demus was recalled!”

The glowing ball of light landed on my knee, and a soft warmth soaked into me, like a sunbeam. “No, he just went back to heaven temporarily to make sure he wasn’t doing something contrary to heaven’s will by doing what you told him to do.”

My face scrunched up into an ugly expression. “Three guesses as to how that went,” I said sourly. “And the first two don’t count.” Just like Tammy’s desire to live, I guess. This is so unfair. I saved her from the fire. I saved Johnny from the fire, and still Tammy lets her soul die? What is wrong with the girl? Doesn’t she see how much her mother and brother love her?

“Um, they told Demus to get back down here and scythe her. Madison, it doesn’t look good. He knows her aura signature and even what she looks like.”

Thanks to me.

Grace rose up, the glow from her wings a spot of clean in the otherwise sticky office. “Barnabas and Nakita are going to get you out,” she offered, but I didn’t feel much better. “Madison, maybe this isn’t such a good idea,” Grace said softly, and my heart gave a thump.

“Not you, too,” I said, miserable. Damn it, why did no one believe that this was possible! We’d done it before. It would work if they would believe in it!

“It’s just that the seraphs are so agitated!” Grace said, hovering right in front of me. “Their songs are going higher than I’ve ever seen them. The echoes are reaching down here, even. Those sensitive to it are getting visions. I haven’t seen it like this since . . . since the Renaissance in Italy.” She hesitated, and a burst of light came from her at a thought unshared.

“Maybe the seraphs shouldn’t have butted in and sent Demus,” I said, and Grace flew backward in alarm. “I’m trying to help Tammy!” I said, almost pleading. “It doesn’t always happen whiz-bang! If it takes a year for a soul to give up on life, then it might take longer than two hours to rekindle the will to live. Scything someone to save their soul is so fast that it’s cheap. Where’s the honor in that? I’m getting better at this. Haven’t I changed things already so that she is alive? Her and her brother both. She doesn’t have that guilt now. How can that be a bad thing?”

Never. Never would anyone be able to convince me that Tammy and her brother dying in pain and agony in a fire was a good thing.

“There once was a brave human girl, immortality gave her a whirl. For humans to save, God’s wrath did she brave, her tenacity making me hurl.”

“Nice.” I looked at the door as a shadow went past. “Grace,” I whispered, “I got this job for a reason. Maybe because I want to change things.”

Her glow dimmed, and I felt cold as her depression soaked into the room. “What do the seraphs say Tammy’s fate is now?” I asked. There had to be something I could do to make this better.

“It hasn’t changed.” A brief glow came from Grace, vanishing as she moved to the desk and stilled her wings. “Her brother’s death had been the trigger of her soul’s decline. Now it’s losing her home in the fire. That’s why they sent Demus back. She needs to come home early, or she’s not coming home at all. Madison, we’re talking about her soul. What is a human life compared to the everlasting soul? This isn’t a game!”

“Is that what they think I think this is? A game?” I exclaimed, then lowered my voice before someone came in. “I want this to work so badly that it hurts. Tammy’s fate hasn’t changed at all?”

“Nope.”

She sounded resigned, and I slumped back into my chair, not wanting to believe it. Barnabas could lie. Maybe seraphs could, too.

“Tammy’s choice to stay with her brother tonight was based on fear, not a change in heart,” Grace said. “You may have saved their lives, but Tammy still runs away, abandoning those who love her and losing hope in herself. Soon as Demus finds her . . .” Grace made a curious, high-pitched whistle, and went silent.

“Game over,” I whispered, staring at the cop’s desk and his phone. Maybe they left me alone thinking I’d use it and they could track my parents down. “Are you sure?”

“Yup.”

I need to figure out how to change her resonance. I was a timekeeper, damn it. I should be able to do this. “Maybe if I talked to her a little more.”

“Madison. Don’t you get it? You are a timekeeper. You can’t change fate. And you can’t cause change. You see the future. You send out dark reapers to cull souls. If they are successful, the light reaper who failed escorts them to heaven’s gate so the black wings don’t eat their still-bright soul, severed early from their body. You know this. It’s how you met Barnabas. Andif the light reaper wins, a guardian angel keeps the mark safe in the hope that their soul will remember how to live. That’s all you do!”

Screw it. I knew I could do more. “I see the future, huh?” I said, starting to get angry. “Then I want to see her future. Ask the seraphs to show me. I can still fix this!”

“They are angry at you! First you fix it so that they both die in grace, which is what they wanted, and then you go muck it up by talking to Tammy and getting her to leave the apartment. You may have saved both their lives, but you damned her soul doing it!” Grace said, glowing so brightly that she started to cast shadows. “I’m not going to ask them to do a far search on her!”

“Yeah? Well, I’m not too happy with them. Butting in like that.” Sullenly I stood, pacing to the high window and back. That cop was going to come back. I had to get out of here. I had to find Tammy before Demus did. Jeez, what kind of timekeeper was I if I couldn’t even elude a building of cops?

“I bet I can find her future by myself,” I said, hands on my hips and glaring at her.

“See the future before the seraphs do?” Grace snorted. “There once was a girl with no brain, whose theories were kind of insane.”

“Thanks, Grace. You’re a font of wisdom,” I muttered.

She rose up in a haze of glowing light, adding, “To outfly immortals, caused many to chortle. Because what the girl was, was vain.”

“I’m not vain,” I said as she hovered before the closed door. “I’m trying to get things done and no one is helping.”

Grace bobbed up and down impatiently. “I gotta go. They found another phone battery.”

“Go, go! And thank you,” I said, waving at her as she flew through the glass and vanished. I didn’t want to explain to my dad why I was on the West Coast and accused of arson. But even if Grace could keep them from contacting my dad, there was no way that I could hide that I wasn’t at home. Never would I have imagined I could get things this messed up. Maybe Grace was right. Maybe they were all right.

Arms wrapped around myself, I glanced at the door and sank down in my squeaky chair. Maybe. But it didn’t feel right. Barnabas had once said to trust my gut. My gut said this wasn’t done. My gut said I could make this better. My gut said . . . I could make a difference.

I looked at the ceiling again, closing my eyes against the water stains that looked like swirling clouds or angels. And I’m disgraced, I thought, feeling a welling of self-pity. The seraphs were angry with me. Worse, I failed Tammy.

Ticked, I kicked out at the cop’s desk. My toe met the thick steel with a dull thump, but I hadn’t put any force behind it and nothing happened, not even a twinge in my toes.

I know Tammy’s aura resonance. I can find her future by myself, I thought defiantly, but it was quickly followed by the realization that I probably couldn’t. I wasn’t being a self-defeatist—I was being a realist. Still . . . maybe I could change her resonance so Demus and Arariel couldn’t find her. Buy me some time.

Resolving to try it, I looked at the ceiling again, exhaling everything out of my lungs. My eyes closed, and I pulled into my awareness the shimmering silver sheet of time that stretched to infinity in either direction. It glowed from the auras that comprised it, people that existed this very second. Falling from it like water or a drape, was the past. It still glowed, but not nearly as bright as the present. It was the light of collective memory. Go back too far, and the canvas grew black except for people that humanity had chosen to remember, silver triumphs and disasters that transcended time itself. But here, so close to the present, it was alight with color as lives intertwined, connected, and parted.

Going forward from the ribbon was vastly different. A black so intense as to almost not be there made a hazy patch of what-might-be. It was conscious thought, and it was what pulled us from the present into the future. It stretched wide in some places, and narrow at others, almost as if some people were living a tiny bit into the future by pushing their thoughts into it. Artists, mostly. Teachers. Children. The movers and shakers.

But it was the glowing ribbon of “now” that I was interested in, and I searched it, looking for Tammy. I knew Demus was likely looking for her, too, and a spike of fear almost broke me from my concentration. “Steady,” I whispered, hearing a commotion down the hall. An argument about me, probably.

My mental sight grew clearer, and it was as if I hovered over the glowing blanket of light, searching for a particular note among an entire concert. Down one way, then retracing my steps and going farther down the other, searching among the thousands of souls near me. And then, like the small sound a vibrating glass makes when you run your finger across the rim, I felt her.

Tammy, I thought, elated. It had to be. She was alone by the looks of it, and not too far away. I focused on her, trying to put myself in her thoughts, but I only got the impression of wet hair, aching knees, and a sense of fear and hopelessness—of giving up and abandonment. The vibrating-glass sound grew louder, almost sour, and I wondered if it was this off-key sound/taste that the seraphs used to find souls in danger of becoming lost. It grated on me.

She wasn’t thinking of the future at all, her thoughts pulling her into the next moment hardly stretching past her existence. I tried to slip my awareness into that dull gray haze that existed between everyone’s present and future to try to reach her mind like I could Nakita or Barnabas, but it was like trying to thread a needle when you can’t see the eye or feel the thread. I didn’t think it was even possible. But changing the sound her aura was making . . . I might be able to change that.

A sliding thump in the distance jolted my eyes open, and I looked at the clock. Not even a minute had passed. Okay, I’d found her. Now to see if I could make a change. I shifted on the thin padding of the chair, trying to settle myself.

I willed my thoughts to slow and my focus to sharpen on my mindscape, making her aura my entire world and surrounding myself in her green and orange. I changed the color of my thoughts when I talked silently to Barnabas and Nakita. I really didn’t know how I did it, apart from focusing on them and bringing them clearly into my thoughts: Nakita’s willingness and desire to understand, Barnabas’s deep-set melancholy for the human tragedy. But thinking of Tammy would only strengthen her existing aura, which was not what I wanted.

Frowning, I wondered if the answer might be in her past, and I looked down its length, seeing one sorrow layered over the next until it looked like that was all that existed for her: the birthday party her dad promised he’d come to, and then the argument he got in with her mother, which in turn took all the joy from the present he’d given her—and the purse he lovingly picked out for her was never used, forever stained with the memory of it.

There was the shame from a failed test, and another failed test, and another, until it was easier to pretend it didn’t matter than to try, and to fail again. Deeper went the ugly words her friends spoke about another girl, but it was the knowledge that if they said such lies about one person, they probably spoke that way about her, too, which ruined any joy she might find with them.

But what tore at me was her understanding that the promises made in childhood were not true, that the lies our parents told us about being nice to others and others will be nice to you, that people were kind on the inside, and that love was more abundant than hurt . . . all of it was lies. No wonder her soul was lost. It wasn’t that she had a harder life than others, but that she was blinding herself to the joy, that the little things were being brushed aside, forgotten. Her perception of good and bad was off because she refused to put the good on the scale, too.

And as I looked over her life, it was all I could do not to cry along with her. What about this? I thought, seeing the laughter in her mother’s face when they had all come back to the shopping cart with the same carton of ice cream. And this? I wondered, watching Tammy scuff the marvel of a blue-jay feather under her shoe as she walked home. The satisfaction in a poem she wrote but never shared had to have more weight than the sigh of disappointment from her mother because of a dishwasher left unemptied—but Tammy ignored it, any satisfaction rubbed out as if it never existed.

And this! I exclaimed, seeing Johnny’s smile of thanks when she put a bowl out for his breakfast. Was that worth nothing to her?

Tammy made a low moan, clutching her knees to her chest and rocking as if in pain. A flash of brilliance sparked through her aura, shifting the orange, and I knew that Tammy was seeing what I was, not hearing my thoughts perhaps, but seeing the good in her life as I recognized it myself. Excitement shivered through me as I realized her aura was shifting, the orange being muted, dulled, as I made her revaluate her life in small, subtle ways.

Encouraged, I focused on Johnny, and somehow, when everything else seemed to be blocked and useless, she remembered him, and her tears grew to include regret. It was the first step toward making a change, and I fastened on it like a lifeline. Rushing forward through her life, I found more memories of Johnny, forgotten. The sullen thank-you he gave her last Sunday when she gave him the remote control instead of lording over the TV. The gratitude she had felt two weeks ago when she overheard him stick up for her with his friends. And the time that he changed her bowling score so it would look like she won. He loved her, and she had all but forgotten.

I could feel Tammy crying, holding her knees to herself, utterly miserable. I could feel her sorrow, her heartache. It ran through me like it was my own, and I gave her some of my hope, wanting to leave her with the idea that things weren’t so bad. We were as much our past as our future, and hers was better than she knew. She just had to look at it in a new way.

A tear, hot and heavy, spilled down my cheek, and as I wiped it away, I pulled back from Tammy’s aura to see what I’d done.

The orange at its center was now rimmed with black.

My heart gave a thump, then stopped. My first thought was that I’d damaged her, made things worse, but then I decided it didn’t matter. Her aura had shifted, maybe just enough. Demus or Arariel wouldn’t find her. Pulling back farther, I memorized Tammy’s new resonance so I could find it again. I had no idea if the color shift was permanent or not. She was still a lost soul, but perhaps now she’d live long enough for me to get out of here and help her. I had to get her to do her own soul-searching. She had to make the choice herself.

Tammy’s aura melted into the glorious bright line of the present as I withdrew, and a feeling of satisfaction filled me. Smiling, I fingered my amulet, warm from having touched the divine. Take that, seraphs, I thought, feeling empowered for the first time in a long while.

Curious, I brought my own resonance before me, wondering if I had any black in my aura before I had died and taken on the dark timekeeper’s amulet. I felt a soft quiver in me as I ran my attention down my recent history, blurring over the snarl the time line had made when my soul had been cut out of it. It was where I had died, and it amazed me how the lives around me had bound together, supporting each other until a new weft and weave could mend the tear. And then the sudden burst of light when I had taken the amulet from Kairos, the timekeeper before me, using it to keep me connected to the present.

Nervous, I steadied myself and looked past the snarl. It wasn’t easy to look at one’s past, knowing it was fixed and one’s emotions were laid bare. But I felt myself smile as I saw that I really hadn’t changed since I’d died. Sure, my original aura of blue and yellow was vastly different from the deep violet that it now was, but my vision of the balance between good and bad was about the same.

It really was a pretty aura, I thought, sort of mentally running my fingers through it and feeling melancholy that it wasn’t mine anymore. Or was it? Maybe I could change my own aura, just for a moment, and be myself?

Shifting focus, I ran my attention back to the present until I found myself sitting alone in a cop’s office, waiting for them to find a battery for my phone. My aura was the dark of a timekeeper’s, not my own, but as I compared it to the one in my memory, a faint glimmer of blue seemed to echo, not in my aura but in the hazy gray where the future became the now.

Between the now and the next? Oh, crap, I thought, excitement zinging down to my toes. Was that what the seraph had meant? Was that where my body was hidden? In the fraction of existence where time shifted from the past to the future? Time wouldn’t exist there, and my body would be pristine and perfect, hovering an instant into death until I could reclaim it.

I took a deep breath, letting it all out to try to calm myself. If that was my original aura, then it had to be coming from my body, stuck in stasis where the old timekeeper had left it. I could reclaim my body, and with that, I didn’t need the timekeeper amulet to keep me alive and the black wings off me!

It was all I wanted at this point, and I slowly centered myself, trying to focus on the small space. All around me were my thoughts reaching out to pull me into the future. And a tiny, almost-not-there glow of blue.

I snatched at it, wanting it so bad I could feel it. Vertigo came from everywhere, and I gasped, clenching the arms of the chair but refusing to open my eyes and lose what progress I’d made. “This is mine!” I whispered, feeling my lips move and the last bit of breath I had in my lungs escape.

There was the faintest taste of salt on my lips, and I licked them, curious. A faint breeze sifted my hair, tickling my cheek. But there was no air vent in the cop’s office. The tickling grew more intense, and a faint, uncomfortable feeling of . . . of . . .

“I have to go to the bathroom,” I said, eyes still closed and mystified. Since I had died, the only time I’d run for the bathroom was to evade a question from my dad.

An uncomfortable feeling slid through me, and my hands clenched on the arms of the chair. But they weren’t gripping the hard plastic and metal. It was soft, like velvet.

My eyes flew open. Bright light stabbed into me, and I gasped. I was still sitting in a hot office smelling like cigarettes and stale sugar. But I was also in a breezy room, white curtains drifting in over the sills and thresholds. I could hear surf. And birds. The ceiling was marble, and the floor was black tile. I’d been here before. My island?

I looked down, seeing the grass-stained, torn remains of my prom dress overlaying the reality of my jeans and black lacy top covered in ash. My God! It was my body! I had found my body between the now and the next right where the seraph had said it was. I wasn’t in it yet, since I could still see the reality of my blue jeans and black top, but I had found it. And the best part? My body looked okay. It had been stuck frozen in time, and it was normal. Now all I had to do was let go of the body I was in and . . . take it.

“Madison!”

Someone grabbed my shoulder from behind. I jerked, and with a cry, I felt a gut-wrenching pull. Pain vibrated through me, and I doubled over, eyes closed against the pain. The sound of the wind and the taste of the salt were gone. I had almost had it, but now it was gone!

“Madison! Are you okay? You looked like a ghost! See-through!”

“Stop!” I croaked out, almost vomiting as I bent over my knees. My eyes opened, and sadness rose up. I was staring at the ugly green and white tiles of the police station. Where in the hell was the beach?

“I almost had it!” I cried, standing up and nearly hitting Barnabas in the chin.

He backed up in confusion, and I spun, looking at the chair as if I might still see myself sitting in it, torn prom dress and all. But all that I saw was the empty chair.

“Barnabas, I was there!” I pointed down, feeling my heart thump, but I knew it wasn’t real. It wasn’t real—and the heartache of that almost brought me to tears. “I found my body. Between the now and the next! It was at the island, stuck in a time bubble or something! Barnabas, damn it! Why couldn’t you have waited just a few minutes more! I almost had it! I was in it. I was almost alive!”

Barnabas’s shocked expression went empty. “You—”

“Found my body! Yes!” I looked at the ugly room, torn between crying and screaming at someone.

There were footsteps in the hall, and Barnabas took my elbow. “Let’s go. The sooner we get out of here, the fewer memories I’m going to have to fix.”

He started pulling me to the door, and I dug my heels in. Memories? He’s worried about memories? “I found my body, and you don’t care!”

“I do care, but we have to get out of here!” His grip on me tightening, he jerked me into the hallway as someone skidded around the bend in the hallway.

“Where do you think you’re going?!” the cop said, and then his eyes widened as he looked at Barnabas. “Hey, weren’t you at the fire?” Falling into a crouch, he reached for his gun.

“You have got to be kidding me,” Barnabas said, pushing me toward the end of the hallway.

“I found my friggin’ body, and you don’t care!” I insisted, resisting.

“Stop!” the cop exclaimed, and Barnabas’s eyes, inches from my own, glinted silver. As sweet as syrup, the man fell down.

I looked over my shoulder to see, but Barnabas’s grip on my arm tightened, and he started pushing me to the end of the hallway again. “I’m thrilled you found your body, but we’re trying to get out of here,” he muttered. “You can claim your body later.” His gaze went over my shoulder, and his eyes widened. “Run!”

He shoved me, and I staggered, almost cracking my nose as I went down on all fours. My palms stung, and my knees throbbed. I looked up in time to see Barnabas make a gesture, his eyes silvering for a moment.

The second man bending over the first fell, but I could hear more people coming. Ticked, I pulled myself up off the floor. My palms were sticky, and I didn’t know what to wipe them on. “Later?” I shouted. “I want it now!”

My last words were a veritable shout, and a wave of angry force pulsed from me.

Swearing, Barnabas ducked, his face white as he rose from his crouch and looked at me.

I staggered as the dizziness that had risen up and lapped about my head slowly ebbed to my feet. My hand went to the wall, and I swear, it felt spongy. I yanked it back, then blinked. My stone had gone ice cold and silvery.

“Uh, Madison?” Barnabas whispered, and I realized it was quiet.

You know . . . too quiet.

The men sprawled on the floor weren’t moving. Fear trickled through me as I remembered that burst of anger that had exploded from me. Had I killed them?

“Whoo-hoo!” came Nakita’s excited whoop from somewhere in the building, and a sudden pounding of feet echoed in the hallway. I spun as she leapt over the downed men, skidding to a breathless halt, her sword bared and her amulet gleaming. “Madison, when did you learn to stop time?”

Stop time?

“I, uh,” I stammered, then looked at my amulet. It was still silver, like Barnabas’s eyes when he touched the divine. A thread of sound was running through me, and when I chanced a look at the time line, it burst into existence so brilliantly that I almost fell.

“I don’t know,” I said, instinct making me cover my eyes, though the brightness was in me. Blinking, I dropped my inner sight, and looked up. Barnabas was holding me upright. Seeing me okay, he let go and stepped back. “Uh, how do I undo it?” I asked them.

“Not yet!” Nakita exclaimed, her color high. “Wait until we get out.” She darted past us to the back door, sending her whoops of excitement to echo in the absolute stillness. The clock in the cop’s office wasn’t ticking when we passed it. The lights from the cars outside weren’t moving. The only sound in the entire world was coming from us. It was as creepy as all get-out. And I did it?

“Let’s go,” Barnabas said, clearly subdued.

I followed him down the hall to where Nakita was pushing open the automatic door. Outside was even creepier, with no wind, no noise. It was as if we had walked into a painting. Everything felt flat. Nakita almost danced down the cement steps and to the shadowed parking lot. “Madison, you’re getting good at this. I think we should try teaching you how to make a sword from your thoughts when this is done, okay?”

I cringed. All I wanted to do was go home. I wanted to get my body and go home and forget everything that had happened. But if I did, nothing would change. Not in heaven, not in earth, not in me. Nothing.

“How do I start time?” I whispered, confusion so thick in me it made me ill.

“I don’t know.” Barnabas scuffed to a halt beside a cop car, turning to look as a ball of light burst out the still-open doors.

“Madison!” Grace exclaimed, darting circles around me. “You stopped time? That’s wonderful! And how clever of you to exempt the divine!”

I had been wondering about that, but it wasn’t as if I knew what I was doing.

“It would be if she knew how she did it,” Barnabas said, echoing my thoughts. He stood with his hands on his hips, watching Nakita doing her impression of a professional football player after a touchdown.

“What is your problem, Barney?” Nakita said, giving him a little shove as she finished. “Madison is finally getting the hang of this. You look like you just swallowed a scarab.”

Barnabas furrowed his brow, the skin tight around his eyes. “She found her body.”

Nakita’s smile hesitated, her eyes becoming confused even as her delight lingered in her expression. “What?”

“She found her body, between the now and the next,” he said again, and even Grace’s glow dimmed.

It was if the deadness of the world around us seeped into Nakita. She froze, unspoken thoughts turning her elation into ash. “Nakita,” I said, reaching out, and she took a step back, the sword in her hand dissolving into nothing. Her amulet went dark as the energy was reabsorbed, and her gaze fell from mine.

“I’m happy for you,” she said, not looking at me. “I know it’s what you wanted.”

“Nakita . . .” Why was I feeling bad about this? If the seraphs weren’t going to give me a real chance to make this work, then why should I stick around and be a part of a system that I didn’t agree with? I could be with Josh then, and be normal. But she had turned away, and guilt hit me hard.

“Nakita!” I said more firmly, and she stopped. Feeling like a heel, I caught up with her and tried to get her to look at me. “I don’t want to give this up, but what choice do I have?”

“You say you believe in choice,” she said, turning away. “But you don’t really. Or you’d stay.”

Again she turned away, and this time I let her go. Grace came to hover over my shoulder, and Barnabas eased up on my other side. “Why does everyone think I should stick around when no one believes I can change things?”

“I believe you can change things,” Barnabas said, but I wasn’t listening, and I stomped off. Nakita had found the street and was walking in front of cars that had been going fifty miles per hour, her pace stiff and her arms swinging. “I do,” he insisted as he caught up to me. “That’s why I left Ron. I still think you can if you’d stick with it.”

He probably did, which made it all the harder.

“Madison,” he said as he drew me to a stop. We were at the curb, and the lights from the oncoming traffic lit his face, showing his pinched brow and his eyes, pleading with me. “You keep saying that no one is giving you a chance to see if your theories work, but they are. You’re trying to change a system that has been in place since people looked up at the stars and wondered how they got there. It works for a reason, and you might make more progress if you’d take the time to see why a system is in place before trying to change it to yours. The seraphs are singing. I can hear them even down here. Change is happening; you simply don’t see it. You might have to do something you don’t want to for a while before you find the way to make your change happen.”

I couldn’t say anything back, I was too depressed. Seeing me silent, he inclined his head, then turned to follow Nakita, walking fast as he tried to catch up.

“Nakita!” he called out, and I stared at him, my hand wrapped around my amulet. I think it was the longest thing he’d ever said to me, and it left me feeling even worse.

“I’m such an idiot,” I whispered to Grace.

“But you’re our idiot,” she chimed out, and I winced.

“What do you think I should do?” I asked as I started to follow them, my sneakers barely lifting from the asphalt.

“First, you need to let go of the time line and start things moving,” she said, “before Ron comes to see what’s going on.”

“Yeah.” Okay, let go of the time line. How does one do that?

“And I think you ought to go home and check in with your dad before he realizes I set his clocks back two hours,” Grace added. “He thinks it’s . . . like, ten thirty. Same as here.”

“Oh, wow. Thanks, Grace.” The first inkling of hope started to seep back in, and I mentally added talk to Nakita to my list of things to do. She looked positively melancholy as she walked beside Barnabas, her head down as he talked to her.

“Well, once a guardian angel, always a guardian angel,” she said wryly, if a glowing ball of light could be wry. “And after that, you can meet us back in the graveyard to figure out how to fix this mess you made with Tammy. The seraphs are ticked. When did you learn how to change a person’s aura?”

“Right before I learned how to stop time,” I said, thinking it wasn’t right that my learning something had gotten me in trouble with the seraphs. Again.

“Great,” Grace said pointedly. “How about starting it back up? This is getting old. Any tighter of a grip, and you would have stopped your reapers, too.”

I nodded, bringing up the image of the time line in my imagination. It was brighter than usual, and it was starting to give me a headache. Relax, I thought, dropping my shoulders. My eyes flashed open when, just that easy, the noise and color rushed back into the world.

“Good job!” Grace said, dipping up and down as car lights flickered over us and a cry of outrage rose up from the cop shop. “Let’s get out of here.”

I ran after Barnabas and Nakita, glad time was going again, but that lingering feeling of doubt wouldn’t leave me. Yes, I had found my body, but no one seemed to care. Or rather, they wished I hadn’t. What did it say about my life when the thing I wanted most of all was the very thing that would cause me to lose the things I loved?