Early to Death, Early to Rise

by Kim Harrison

“You think you’re tougher than me?” Ace said as he stood up, and I tensed.

  Paul reached for his amulet, and I shivered as something went through me when he touched the divine. The guardian angel let out a yelp when Ace collapsed. Damn, that had been fast. “Wow,” I whispered, totally impressed.

  Shoe nudged Ace in the ribs with his foot. “I’m glad I’m on your side,” he said, then pulled Ace’s truck keys from his former friend’s belt. “They have a camera on the hospital gate,” he said in explanation as he edged past Paul and toward the window. “I don’t want my car seen there.”

  He slipped out the window, leaning in as he said, “Cover for me if my mom knocks, okay?”

  Paul nodded, looking both scared and excited.

  “Can you change memories yet?” I asked him, aware of Shoe outside the window, but I really wanted to know.

  “No,” Paul admitted, looking almost chagrined, as though he’d tried and failed.

  “Me neither,” I said, feeling a surge of kinship. Smiling, I sat on the sill and swung my sneakers outside. It was cooler, and I shivered. Maybe I’d failed to save Ace’s soul, but I could save the lives of some innocents. “Thanks, Paul. You’re not so bad.”

  I dropped to the earth, and Shoe started across the dark grass, head down as he fumbled with Ace’s keys.

  “Madison!”

  It was Paul, and I turned. He was in the window, the guardian angel on his shoulder. “You flashed forward?” he asked, looking uncertain. “Saw what comes of this?”

  I nodded, wincing when Ace’s music blared as Shoe started his truck. “I saw what might be,” I admitted, shivering at the memory. “He wasn’t a bit sorry about it. I think what we’re doing changes things, though.” Paul said nothing, and, jiggling on my feet, I blurted, “I gotta go.”

  “Good luck!” he whispered loudly.

  Smiling, I turned to run to Ace’s truck. “Don’t let Ron hear you say that,” I muttered.

  It was with a much lighter heart that I scrambled into the front passenger side of Ace’s truck and buckled myself in. There were a thousand things that could go wrong, and someone was going to get in trouble even if everything went right, but Paul believed me.

  And I was surprised to realize that meant a lot.

  Eleven

  Shoe put Ace’s truck into park, but he didn’t make one move to get out. Together we stared through the dirty windshield at the brightly lit emergency entrance. It looked quiet, but people were moving around inside.

  “Scared?” I asked, feeling the memory of my heart echo in my thoughts. I hated it when it did that, and I forced it to stop.

  His hand dropped from the steering wheel, and he looked across at me. “I’ve never broken into anything but the school, and you saw how well that went. Jeez, Madison, I’ve never even shoplifted.”

  “But you sat in your room and created a virus that can kill people by shutting down a hospital computer system?” I said with a huff.

  “I did not create a program to kill people,” he said hotly. “I made a virus to shut down the school for a day. That’s it. Ace is a toad’s ass.”

  It wasn’t like I could argue with him. Head bobbing, I focused on the twin glass doors spilling light into the otherwise dimly lit parking lot. It suddenly occurred to me that I was running around with my amulet’s resonance blaring since I’d left Nakita’s and Barnabas’s shielding. Puppy presents, this could come crashing down really fast. As soon as Ron wasn’t occupied, he’d get curious.

  Shoe rubbed his chin, clearly nervous. I knew the feeling. I was really worried about Barnabas, Nakita, and Grace. What if they got hurt? They were more powerful than I, but I was responsible for them. How did that happen?

  “They aren’t going to just let us walk in and sit down at a terminal,” Shoe said with a sigh.

  If Barnabas or Nakita were hurt, would Ron track me down to gloat? I was on borrowed time, and here I was sitting in a truck that didn’t belong to either of us.

  “How are we going to even get in there?” Shoe said, more loudly this time, since I hadn’t answered him.

  Nervous, I brought one of my knees to my chest to retie my sneaker. “It’s too late to pretend to be visiting someone,” I said. “How good an actor are you?”

  Shoe’s eyes widened in the faint security light. “You want to sneak in as an orderly?”

  “No, but if you pulled into the emergency lot fast with me unconscious…”

  Brow furrowing, he winced. “You think that will work?”

  Remembering racing into the emergency room with Josh out cold and dying after being scythed by Nakita, I nodded. “I know it will. With all the distraction, you could easily slip into the back, with no one the wiser.” As long as I can keep my fake heartbeat going. “Eventually they’ll stabilize me and leave. It might take hours. Unless…”

  Shoe gazed at me, waiting. “Unless what?”

  “Uh, unless I play dead. They’ll put me in the morgue pretty quick.”

  “Yeah, like that will work,” he said around a snort.

  I grabbed his hand and held it to my wrist. “I told you, I’m dead. See? No pulse. Unless I work at it, that is.”

  My heart gave one thump at the feel of his fingers around my wrist, and then it was silent.

  Shoe’s expression shifted from annoyance, to wonder, to fear. Pulling his hand from me, he got a sick look on his face. “It’s a trick or something,” he said.

  Here I am again, sitting in a truck, trying to convince another guy that I’m dead, I thought. It sounded like a country song gone bad. My death was so messed up. Sighing, I said, “Good. Don’t believe it. Just go along with it for a few more hours. You’ve got the patch?”

  He touched his pocket and nodded.

  “They’re going to want to know who I am,” I said, taking my wallet out of my pocket and putting it in the glove box, having to wedge aside another handful of music discs. My phone went next to it, and I hesitated. It was my only link to my dad. Putting it aside felt wrong.

  “I so don’t want my dad getting a call that I’m in a morgue half a state away,” I said. “Can you tell them my name is Wendy?” Wendy wouldn’t mind. She’d think it was hilarious. “Tell them you met me at the mall and we were going to a movie or something, and I just fell over?”

  Shoe didn’t look good. Actually, he was almost green in the dim security lights. “I don’t know…” he started.

  “Oh, for God’s sake!” I exclaimed, feeling the pinch of time. “You’re going to be blamed for three deaths, and you’re worried about lying to the receptionist about where we met? Take me in, and when they tell you I’ve died, get upset and ask if you can go to the bathroom to throw up. Meet me at the elevators at the lowest floor. You’ve got an access key.”

  He touched his pocket where Ace’s mother’s ID was, and, looking pained, he nodded. “Why don’t you just take the patch and upload it?” he asked as he brought it out.

  The sight of the dripping black wing shivered through me. “Me?” I said. “I don’t know anything about computers. You have to do it.”

  Reluctantly he slid it away. “What about after?” he asked. “You dead? Me bringing you in? The cops?” Then he paused. “You said Barnabas could change memories.”

  I nodded, and, looking even more uncomfortable, Shoe licked his lips. “Don’t change mine, okay?” he asked. “I want to remember this.”

  “Okay,” I said quickly, just wanting to get on with it. I didn’t know how long they would let me lie there before moving me downstairs. “When this is over, I can always simply go back to the morgue and get off the table,” I said. “They’ll think their instruments were off and I wasn’t really dead. It’s a freaking miracle.”

  “I mean it,” Shoe said, his voice loud, and I looked at him. “Don’t make me forget. If you take that from me…what’s the point?”

  My heart gave a thump and stilled. “Okay,” I said, meaning it this time.

  He looked at me for a long moment,
then put the truck back into drive. “This had better work,” he muttered.

  “It’ll work,” I said, but it was kind of scary. I’d have to make sure my heart didn’t start up, and it usually did when I was stressed. And I’d have to make sure I didn’t smile and ruin it. If they put me in a drawer, I was going to be stuck until Shoe found me. But there weren’t many choices here. If the patch wasn’t in place by six, people were going to die. It would be my fault.

  Nervous, I slumped in the seat against the door and concentrated on listening to the emptiness of no heartbeat. Slowly it settled and stopped. Identity hidden—check. Pulse stopped—check. My amulet, I thought, worried that someone might try to take it off me.

  “Wait!” I said loudly, and the truck jerked to a stop. “I have to hide my amulet,” I said sheepishly.

  Shoe’s eyebrows went up in question, and I settled myself to concentrate, glad that I’d been working on this. Taking my amulet in my hand, I thought about it, how it felt in my grip, smooth, warm, and how it was a violet so deep that it was really black. I looked at it with my mind’s eye, seeing how it touched the divine, filtered it so I wouldn’t destroy myself when time echoed in my thoughts. It resonated with the sound of my soul, of the universe. It felt alive. And if I twisted the weight of it just so…light would bend around it.

  A warm sensation filled me. Knowing it had worked, I opened my eyes and let go of my amulet. It thumped back against me, but it was gone. Damn, I loved it when I could do something.

  “Oh, my God, it went invisible,” Shoe said, sounding scared. “Shit. You really are dead,” he said, white-faced.

  I smiled, trying to reassure him. “Now you look like you’ve got a dead girl in your truck. Let’s go.”

  Taking a deep breath, he turned to the hospital entrance. “I’m going to get in so much trouble for this,” he whispered, hands shaking as he put the truck in drive and revved the engine.

  I closed my eyes again, forcing myself to go limp. I’d made my amulet invisible before, but never when it mattered like it did now. I’d have three balls in the air, and I didn’t know if I could do it. I had to keep the memory of my heart quiet, keep myself from twitching when they tried to bring me to life, and I had to keep my amulet hidden. I didn’t know if I could do this.

  But I had to.

  Twelve

  The double doors shut with a hush of sound when the orderly who had wheeled me down to the morgue went to get a soda. In an explosion of motion, I sat up, shoving the sheet off me as if it were a snake. Angry, I looked down at my shirt, trying to get the ragged edges to cover me. It was my favorite shirt, the one I’d bought for the first day of school, and they ripped it as if it were a discount special. My tights, too, had suffered, but my shirt was the worst where they had poked, prodded, and arced electricity through me.

  “Son of a puppy,” I muttered as I swung my feet over the edge and let them dangle. There were new holes in my arms, too, and I pulled out the needles they had left in me and tossed them on the gurney. No less than four lab techs had tried to get blood from me, failing because there was none to get. I was never going to play dead again. Never!

  Holding my torn shirt closed, I slid from the table. My bare feet slapped the cold tile, and, looking down, I swore again. For crying out loud—I had a toe tag. When had they put that on?

  “Where are my shoes?” I muttered, looking under the gurney to find nothing there. Fortunately, my amulet was still around my neck. If they had tried to take that, I would have flipped. It was visible now. I’d quit hiding it the moment the sheet had been pulled over me. When they had given up on me…It hadn’t been a nice feeling at all.

  Mood sour, I strode across the dimly lit room, snatching a lab coat from a coathook behind the desk. I shoved my arms in and buttoned it up to cover my torn shirt and my ripped tights. My heart had given a blip once while I’d been on the table, and they’d gone all out trying to get it started again. I’d never felt so violated, but at least they hadn’t cut off my bra.

  “Hey, those are mine!” I said when I found my earrings on the orderly’s desk. Mad, I shoved one, then the other into my ears. Still barefoot, I headed for the double doors. I had to find Shoe. Angry at the world, I pushed the doors open and looked out. The hall was empty. One of the fluorescent lights was out, and farther down the low-ceilinged corridor, another flickered. It smelled like bleach. The other direction appeared about the same, but at the end of it was a set of silver elevator doors. I was so out of there.

  The toe tag rasped on the tile, and, not slowing, I leaned down, yanked it off, and let it hit the floor. I hadn’t been “dead” very long, and I was betting Shoe was still upstairs.

  From behind me came a masculine voice calling, “Ma’am? You dropped something.”

  My teeth clenched, and I spun around, eyes narrowing when I found it was the orderly who had wheeled me down here to the mangled tune of “Satisfaction.” The same one who had swiped my earrings, I’d bet. “What!” I snapped, very conscious of my bare feet and my purple-tinted hair. Not to mention my ripped shirt and tattered tights. Posing as a doctor was out, but maybe I could be a lab tech having a bad day.

  The guy’s pudgy face became surprised. “Uh, sorry,” he said as he came forward, slower now. “I thought you were a doctor.” Stopping, he looked at the morgue tag, then at me, then at the doors to his right. The bottle of pop in his hand started to slip. “Ah…”

  Angry, I strode back, my bare feet slapping. “Thanks,” I said, snatching the toe tag and jamming it into the lab coat pocket. Giving him a last glare, I turned and started back to the end of the hall to the elevator. Behind me, there was a nervous shifting of shoes.

  “Hey, uh, weren’t you…” the guy said, then hesitated, thinking. I got three steps farther down the hall, and he shouted, “Hey!”

  I didn’t turn around, but every muscle in me tensed as I smacked the up button. Almost instantly the doors slid apart, but I jerked to a halt when Shoe looked out at me, shocked. His eyes went behind me, and I wasn’t surprised when I heard the orderly shout, “Hey, you! Wait up!”

  Shoe’s eyes were huge as he took in my lab coat and angry expression, and he rocked back, saying, “Uh, you okay?”

  “Find me a broom closet, will you?” I muttered, and he darted out of the elevator.

  I stiffened as the orderly came up behind me, huffing and puffing. I’d had enough. The stuff they did to dead people sucked. The last thing I wanted to do was answer this guy’s questions as to why I was up and walking.

  “You got a problem?” I exclaimed as I turned to him. It had the desired effect, and he stopped short. Behind him, Shoe had found a tiny room with a wheeled bucket and mop. Jabbing my finger at the guy, I forced him to take a step backward.

  “You’re alive…” the orderly stammered, his eyes going to my earrings, back where they belonged—in my ears.

  “Not really, but you’re a thief,” I said tightly. “Take a timeout,” I added, shoving him back into the closet.

  Arms pinwheeling, the guy fell back. Tripping on the bucket, he went down, staring up at me when I reached in and grabbed his keys off his belt. I rocked back out of the way, and Shoe yanked the door shut, almost catching the guy’s white sneaker.

  “I’d guess that one,” Shoe said as he pointed out a key with MAINTENANCE on it, and I jammed it into the lock and gave it a twist.

  “Hey!” came faintly from the closet, and I exhaled, feeling vastly better.

  Shoe eyed the closet, laughing. “Make a new friend?” he asked, and I jumped when the orderly rattled the handle and pounded on the door.

  Embarrassed, I felt my anger fizzle. “He stole my earrings,” I said, glad I hadn’t found them in his earlobes. Skulls and crossbones were harder to find than one might expect.

  “Let me out!” came from the closet.

  “Thanks,” I said to Shoe as we turned back to the elevator and I hit the up button.

  “For what?”

  Suddenly
shy, I looked at Shoe, his hands in his pockets and his shirt casually untucked. “For coming to find me,” I said.

  The elevator wasn’t back yet, and he glanced askance at me. “I wanted to make sure you were okay. I mean, you were dead.”

  “I still am.”

  He became even more nervous, shifting from foot to foot as he watched for the up light to glow. “Yeah,” he admitted, “but…you’re okay, too.”

  I smiled, reaching out to mock punch his shoulder. “It’s just my body that’s dead.”

  Shoe took a deep breath, exhaling loudly. “Ah, we need a quiet computer.”

  From the closet came a soft, “Damn, no bars.”

  “There’s a computer in the morgue,” I suggested, and Shoe looked down the empty hallway, his eyebrows high in speculation. I knew exactly what he was thinking: Why go somewhere else when the only person down here was locked in a closet?

  “Sounds good to me,” Shoe said, and we started for the double doors, his shoes squeaking on the tile and my bare feet silent. “If the virus is on the computer, then I can connect to the server from here and upload the patch.”

  My smile went wider. This was going to work. Finally, something was going my way.

  “Guys?” the orderly called, starting to sound frantic. “Anyone? Hello?”

  Shoe looked down as we entered the morgue. “Why did they take your shoes off?” he asked, and I suddenly became very conscious of my torn shirt, hidden under the coat.

  “They have to put the toe tag somewhere,” I said, slowing to a stop and wondering if my shoes might be in one of the lockers against the wall. I wasn’t a connoisseur of morgues, but this one was nicer than the one I’d woken up dead in the first time. There was only the gurney I’d come in on, and I guessed this was a holding area where they kept the bodies before they were given…permanent shelving. That was probably in the room beyond the doors with BIOHAZARD stenciled on them. I wasn’t going to go look. I was just glad they dropped me off and left before putting me in a cold drawer. I hadn’t been looking forward to having to knock to be let out.