Once Dead, Twice Shy

by Kim Harrison

  “If Nakita finds you, she’ll take you to Kairos,” Barnabas said to the ceiling. “Being sorry isn’t going to change anything. You’ve already claimed the dark timekeeper amulet. You’re it, Madison. For Kairos to reclaim it, your soul has to be destroyed! Only one or the other of you can be the dark timekeeper.”

  I felt dizzy. There had to be a way out of this. “One or the other? I don’t think so,” I said, my head hurting. “I can dissociate from my amulet. Maybe the reason I can is because it doesn’t really belong to me. You ever think of that? If I can give it fully back to Kairos, then maybe I’m the rising light timekeeper.”

  Barnabas’s foot quit jumping up and down, and he turned to me, considering it. “Ron said not to dissociate from your amulet.”

  I shivered, breathless with hope. “And Ron’s been lying to me—to us. I say chance it. Barnabas, I am not the rising dark timekeeper!” Thinking, I looked away from his intent expression. “I need to talk to Kairos,” I muttered. “Where does he live?”

  Barnabas’s jaw dropped. “You are not going to talk to Kairos!” he said. “And besides, I don’t know.” The fallen angel turned in his chair to face me, bringing a leg up onto the cushion. “Madison, even if you are the rising light timekeeper and you can give his amulet back to him, Kairos will destroy your soul anyway to slide the balance of things his way.”

  I couldn’t afford to think like that. “He’s mortal, so he lives on earth, right?” I asked, standing and looking at the empty reception desk. “If Kairos wants his amulet, he’s going to have to give me my body,” I said, flicking the amulet, heavy around my neck. “I bet Nakita knows where he lives. Is she okay? Did they get the black wings out of her? You can hear the songs between heaven and earth. What are they saying?”

  Barnabas remained where he was, looking up at me from under his curly hair in disbelief. “Madison,” he protested.

  “Is she okay?” I said loudly, hand on my hip. “Can you call someone? Come on! What’s the point of being a reaper if you don’t do anything?”

  His eyes narrowed at me for a moment in annoyance; then a smile quirked the corners of his lips. “She’s okay,” he said, and a knot eased in my middle. “But this is a bad idea.”

  I pulled him up, surprised that he moved so easily. “Yeah, but it’s an idea. And if I’m a rising timekeeper, then I’m going to be your boss someday. Come on. Help me find Nakita.”

  Barnabas dug in his heels, and his hand pulled from mine as I continued on a step without him. “You’re not going to be anyone’s boss if you’re dead,” he said wryly.

  “I have to apologize,” I said, reaching for his hand and tugging him forward another step. “And give her her amulet back. Maybe if I do, she will let Josh live. Maybe that’s why she hasn’t killed him. She’s waiting for me.”

  A frown creased his forehead. “You want to give a dark reaper an amulet. Are you even hearing yourself?”

  “It’s hers,” I said. “What is the problem?”

  “Ron will freak. He’ll take my amulet away,” Barnabas muttered as he glanced at the parking lot in worry. “I shouldn’t have told you.”

  I put a hand on my hip, seeing every second as one more moment that Josh’s life was still hanging by a thread. “You know you did right. I’m not asking you to leave me. If Ron takes your amulet away, I’ll make you another. Unless this is another lie and I’m just a poor slob who got mixed up in this and I’m not a rising timekeeper.” Man, was I glad the receptionist was gone.

  Still he vacillated. “Why are you listening to Ron!” I exclaimed, frustrated. “He knew what I was and didn’t tell me. He told you to teach me something he knew I couldn’t do. Will you just help me?! I have to try to save Josh. I have to try to save myself. I can be me again!”

  Barnabas’s brown eyes searched mine. “You’ve always been you.”

  I backed up, not knowing what he was going to decide. “Will you help me?”

  He stood beside me, his duster shifting about his ankles as his feet scuffed. “You see a choice here?”

  My head bobbed up and down. “I see a chance.” And a way to get out of here before my dad or Josh’s parents show up.

  Barnabas looked to the parking lot and the setting sun, grimacing. “I can’t believe I’m going to do this,” he said.

  “You’ll help me?” I said breathlessly, scared and elated all at the same time.

  “I am going to get in so much trouble,” he said as if to himself, and together we turned to the double doors. “I can take you to a safe spot. Nakita can’t hurt you there. Though I don’t think it will do any good.”

  “Thank you,” I said as we walked through the doors purposefully, my stomach fluttering.

  I would convince Nakita to give me Josh’s life for a lousy hunk of rock, then do the same with Kairos for my life. Just watch me.

  Eleven

  I tensed my muscles and screwed my eyes shut when the green tops of the forest grew close. I didn’t want to watch as Barnabas closed his wings about us and dove into a small opening in the canopy. My stomach dipped and fell. There was a brief rush of wind in the leaves, and the air cooled. I opened my eyes as he swooped to dodge a tree and landed with a sharp pull-up on a mossy log. It started to fall apart, and I jumped off as it crumbled with a soft hush.

  My tangled hair covered my face when Barnabas pushed backward once with his wings to stop his momentum. By the time I turned, he was standing behind the log, his wings gone and his coat covering his narrow shoulders. Worry tightened his features, clear even in the gloom, and I gazed up at the canopy. The trees were big and the underbrush almost nonexistent. Soft loam cushioned my feet, and I clasped my arms around myself, feeling the damp. Mounds dotted the space with no pattern I could see. They looked like…graves.

  “Where are we?” I said as I took an awkward step over the log to be closer to Barnabas.

  “A spot of ground,” he said softly. “The earth would shake to feel the touch of a seraph, but there are a few places where the ground is strong enough, and in the past, immortals have used them to conduct business on earth. The circles across the sea have huge stones marking them, but here, where people lived harmoniously with nature until driven out, they’re marked with mounds that shelter bribes to the angels to leave them and their children in peace.” He turned to me, and I shivered at his suddenly alien look. “It’s a neutral place. If blood is spilled here, a seraph will come. Nakita won’t want that.”

  I scanned the open wood, feeling my skin prickle. “It feels funny.”

  “It does, doesn’t it?”

  There was nothing to hear but the wind in the highest leaves. “How do I tell Nakita I want to talk?”

  Barnabas silently stepped from me, moving a good twenty feet away so that his amulet signature wouldn’t mix with mine. Eyes on the darkening trees, he said, “I imagine she’s looking for you. You’d better be sure of this.”

  “I am,” I said confidently, but inside I was worried. I was exposed, my soul singing to those who could hear it, chiming like a bell, making a spot of light that Nakita could follow. My jaw clenched when a black wing flew silently across the space between the ground and the trees, but then I decided it was really a crow. I looked up, my attention drawn by something unseen.

  Barnabas shifted his feet, and a twig snapped. “I feel it too,” he whispered.

  I swallowed hard. “What is it?”

  His eyes slowly moved back and forth. “I don’t know. It feels like a reaper, but afraid. Like a human.”

  Barnabas’s gaze darted behind me. “Madison! Drop!” he shouted, and I fell into a sloppy front fall, getting a faceful of earthy loam. The weight of a stone rolled across my back, and then was gone. I looked up, spitting my hair and dirt out of my mouth.

  With wings so white they glowed in the dusk, Nakita came to earth, spinning so her feet barely touched the ground before her wings vanished like a memory.

  “You’re okay!” I shouted, thinking it was one of the stup
idest things I’d ever said.

  “The seraphs lie to me as well,” the reaper snarled, fear and anger twisting her once beautiful features. I had no idea what she was talking about, and I stared blankly at her.

  “Nakita, wait!” Barnabas shouted as he lunged to get between us. The light reaper darted back when a gleam of steel slashed down. Nakita’s arms were extended and her back bowed as she struck again. I gasped as I reached out in a useless warning, but Barnabas’s own blade met her sword, pulled from forever and nothing, and I shivered as the sound seemed to echo and made the trees tremble. Kairos must have given her a new amulet. She didn’t need the one I wanted to return to her. Her sword had a black stone now, and the jewel on Barnabas’s blade had shifted farther down the spectrum, blazing a glorious yellow. Nakita’s looked dead, a flat black.

  “Madison wants to parlay,” Barnabas said as he held Nakita’s weapon unmoving against his own. “Sheathe your blade in this holy spot.”

  Nakita smiled, the determination on her face frightening. She looked nothing like herself, dressed in white garb that was twin to Ron’s robes. “I need her,” she said, her voice musical as it rose and fell. “You brought her. She’s mine.”

  Barnabas took a step back, and the humming in my ears ceased when their blades no longer touched. “She brought herself. She wants to apologize. To not listen would shame you.”

  With a flourish, Nakita stepped back, wild and extravagant as she gestured for me to speak. I didn’t think she cared what I might say, but it was my only shot.

  Scared, I faced her with Barnabas at my elbow. “Nakita, I’m sorry,” I said, my words vanishing into the gloom of dusk. “I didn’t know the black wings would stay in you. I was only trying to stop you from killing Josh. I brought your amulet back,” I said, hand trembling as I extended it. “It’s not a bribe, but please let Josh live.”

  Her face twisted in a frown, but she caught the amulet when I tossed it to her, shoving it into her belt. “Kairos gives me my amulet, not you,” she said. “And I need your pity less than I need your apology. The seraphs say I am perfectly fine. I am perfect!” she screamed to the sky, then turned to me, panting and eyes wild. “But they lie.”

  Barnabas pulled me back a step. “We need to leave. She’s broken. This isn’t going to accomplish anything.”

  “I’m broken, too,” I said, thinking of my interrupted life, and I jerked out of his grip. “Nakita, will you take a message to Kairos for me? He has my body. I want it back. I’ll give him his amulet for it if he promises to leave me alone. I just want to be the way I was. Please. I’m tired of being afraid.”

  At the word afraid, she trembled, and a shimmer of air behind her shifted to show her wings arching over her, larger than seemed possible, the tips of the longest feathers shaking. They may have gotten the black wings out of her, but they left within her something a reaper was never created to understand. Fear. And it had come from me. My memories.

  “I’m not your messenger angel,” she said bitterly. “But we are going to Kairos. You’re a thief. A liar. With your body and soul and my scythe, he can make me as I was. As everything was. He promised!”

  Kairos still has my body. Thank you, God.

  “You aren’t taking her,” Barnabas said, clueless that Nakita was now a hundred times more dangerous. She had the power of angels cleaved to the will of humanity. Fear and a knowledge of death had made her so. I had made her so.

  “She’s mine as she stands there.” Dropping into a hunched position, Nakita dragged her new sword forward, the tip cutting into the ground to make the moss split like a wound.

  I shook my head, backing up. “Nakita, listen to me. I just want my body back, alive and unharmed. He doesn’t have to destroy my soul for the amulet. I can dissociate from it.”

  She straightened as a laugh, cruel and horrible to hear, burst from her. Barnabas shifted closer to me in support. “Kairos needs you dead to make me whole again,” she said. “Barnabas, get out of my way, or you’ll go down first.”

  “You wouldn’t.” Barnabas pushed me behind him as Nakita pulled her sword from the earth and casually wiped the dirt from it upon her leg. “A seraph will come. You won’t risk it.”

  “Why not?!” Nakita shouted, then fell back a step, wide-eyed. “I have nothing, Barnabas!” she screamed. “Do you know what it is like to fear? I will laugh if a seraph should slay me for violating one of their places on earth. It would at least be over and I wouldn’t have to be afraid anymore!”

  Barnabas didn’t understand, and his brow furrowed. “Afraid?”

  An ugly noise came from Nakita, low, almost a growl. It sifted through my brain and paralyzed me. And then she moved.

  I stifled a shriek as she lunged at Barnabas, white wings unfurling behind her. Barnabas dropped to a knee, his own gray wings wide as he darted back, airborne. I retreated, scrambling for cover. A great wind churned the leaves from the forest floor. A clang of steel hurt my ears. They were locked, arms straining, Barnabas standing, his wings beating to find the force to push Nakita back.

  “I will have her!” Nakita screamed as her wings beat wildly, and she tried to press Barnabas into the ground with her will alone. “I will not be this way! I cannot!”

  Barnabas kicked out to shove her off. Gray and white wings struck the trees. Silver flashed in the gloom as Barnabas dove forward, his disadvantage clear. He didn’t want to spill blood. Nakita didn’t care, and she struck wildly at Barnabas, the light reaper countering each blow more slowly than the last. The dark reaper was fighting with a savage desperation that only humans possess, and it was starting to tell upon Barnabas.

  A heavy feeling about my neck shocked me, and I grasped my amulet, feeling as if the earth had vanished under my feet. Someone…someone was trying to use it! And when Nakita screamed, I knew it was her attempting to duplicate what I’d done to go invisible. She was too far away for my amulet to hold her solid, but Barnabas’s wasn’t.

  With a wild scream, Nakita smashed her sword into Barnabas’s blade, knocking it from him. The amulet about his neck flared and went still. He was helpless. Mouth open in a howl, Nakita jumped right at him. Barnabas braced for an impact that never came as Nakita broke her connection to her amulet and went invisible, diving through him as if he were water.

  “Barnabas, look out!” I shouted, but it was too late. Nakita appeared behind the light reaper, spinning to put her sword against his neck. Her arms braced to pull.

  “Nakita, no!” I shrieked, scrambling to stand before them. The dark reaper hesitated, her lips pulled back in a savage, victorious smile. They were posed, two angels of death locked together, one wild and crazed, the other beaten and shocked.

  “W-where did you learn that?” Barnabas stammered, frozen at the feel of another reaper’s blade against his throat.

  Nakita’s eyes never left mine as she leaned forward, whispering in Barnabas’s ear, “It’s amazing what you can do once you know nothing lasts forever unless you make it so.”

  My mouth was dry. “Don’t kill him,” I pleaded. “Please, Nakita.”

  “Silly girl,” Nakita said, her lips twisted into an ugly expression. “Why do you care? No one else does. He failed to protect you, brought you to me. And now, you’re going to die.”

  “I’ll go with you! Just don’t kill him. Take me to Kairos,” I demanded, shaking. “Let me talk to him.”

  “That’s exactly what I intend to do,” Nakita said, and then she moved, drawing back.

  “Nakita, don’t!” I screamed as she brought the butt of her sword against Barnabas’s skull. Silently the light reaper’s gray wings drooped and he fell forward, slumped against the mossy earth. His wings covered him, and he looked asleep, an angel resting on a forest floor.

  My heart was beating again, and I started to back up. Nakita shook her wings and smiled. One soft feather slipped from her, the pure white drifting to land on the green, green moss.

  I ran.

  There was a whoosh of air, and she
had me. That fast, and it was over. “Let me go!” I cried. I knew going invisible wouldn’t help if she could, too. “Why can’t you leave me alone?!”

  “I want myself back,” Nakita snarled as she held me tight against her. “I don’t want to be afraid anymore. The black wings,” she said, her words clipped as her voice rose in pitch. “I’ve never known fear. I’ve seen it, thought you were all weak for it, but you aren’t. I don’t want to be afraid anymore. I want to be the way I was. Kairos can make me the way I was. But he needs his amulet to do it.”

  My amulet, I thought defiantly, then shrieked as we were abruptly airborne, ducking when we exploded through the canopy and back into the light. Her arm was tight around me, and my legs flailed until my heels found her feet and I stood upon them. It was a show of cooperation, but at least my guts weren’t being shoved up into my lungs.

  “Nakita, I’m sorry,” I said as we ascended. “I didn’t know the black wings would hurt you. You were trying to kill me!”

  “It was my task, your fate,” she said, gripping me tightly. “I can’t exist the way I am now. I will be the way I was!”

  The air was cold. Without warning, Nakita swooped into a dive, her wings folding around us, cocooning us in pillow-soft warmth. I fought her as my stomach dropped and vertigo told me we were falling.

  “Be still,” Nakita snarled, and then the world turned inside out.

  I screamed, my mind unable to take the absolute absence of everything. No sound, no touch, nothing. It was as if I were a black wing, never having existed but having the terror of knowing there was more and it was now lost to me. I was falling, and there was nothing within my experience to tell me it would ever end.

  Suddenly Nakita’s wings were about me once more, infusing their warmth into me. I breathed her scent in, gasping in relief, feeling her presence bring me back to sanity. We weren’t moving, and when her arm about me fell away, my knees hit a hard floor. Struggling to rise with my shaking muscles, I scrambled backward, getting to my feet and trying to figure out what had happened. My back hit a thick pillar holding up a white canopy, and I froze, mouth gaping.