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.