“I trusted you to do what is right,” Barnabas said softly. “Now I trust Madison.”
Ron huffed. “So easily swayed into killing the innocent,” the light timekeeper mocked, trying not to look as if he were edging back.
“I’m not,” Barnabas said, and Nakita pushed past him.
“And the mark isn’t innocent,” she said hotly, a flush to her cheeks. “He’s deliberately going to allow people to die by his actions, then go on to do it again!”
Alarmed, I shot a look at her. “Shut up!” I exclaimed. She was giving everything away!
But the damage had been done, and Ron’s eyes lit up. “It is a reap,” he said. “But I’ve not flashed forward.”
Nakita struck a dramatic pose. “The seraphs see farther than you.”
“Will you shut your mouth!” Barnabas shouted.
“And no worries, Chronos,” Nakita boasted, undaunted. “I will kill him before you can set a guardian angel to protect him to his dying days. You won’t sully the seraphs’ perfect vision this time!”
Great. Just great. This wasn’t going well, and I looked into the frozen cornfields as I stood in the middle of an empty road, the sky holding an unmoving sun. “Ron, will you just back off?” I said, knowing he wouldn’t. “Whether you believe it or not, I’m trying to save someone.”
Barnabas made a strangled noise, and I turned to him. “What, like he hasn’t already figured out it’s a reap?” I said sourly. “Nakita kind of sank that boat.”
Nakita winced with a wash of chagrin, only now realizing what she’d done.
“You,” Ron said, pointing a finger at me, “are a murderer for allowing a blood-seeking, avenging angel to scythe the innocent. I tried to save you from it, but you threw your own chance to make a difference in the dirt!”
My eyes narrowed, and I stepped forward until Barnabas’s touch stopped me. “Well, maybe if you hadn’t lied to me, I might see things differently!” I exclaimed, shaking off Barnabas. Yeah, I was working for the dark reapers, but I was trying to change things, make what the seraphs wanted mesh with what I believed. Ron, though, would never understand.
“I don’t care if you believe me or not,” I said. “I’m trying to save someone’s life. Why don’t you just go away?”
Smiling, he slid his gaze to Nakita. She was there to kill Shoe if I failed, and a calculating gleam came into his eye. No matter what, he would always see me in a bad light—chained by what he had believed because it was all he had known.
“You’re trying to save someone,” he echoed, mocking me. “With a traitorous light reaper who’s gone grim and a dark reaper beside you in case you fail.”
“I am not a traitor to what I believe!” Barnabas said, and I lifted my chin high.
“We’ll find him first,” I stated.
Ron chuckled, starting to fall back with a slow toe-heel, toe-heel motion. “We’ll see,” he said knowingly. “You don’t know who you’re looking for. You’ve not flashed forward, either. I can tell. You’re far too confident. The seraphs giving you information? Good luck with that. They are so farsighted that they can’t see what’s under their stuck-up noses. You don’t have a clue what you’re doing.”
“Yeah?” I shot back at him, ticked. “Whose fault is that?”
A huge smile came over his face. “Mine,” he said, and still looking at me, he vanished.
The world jumped into motion with a whoosh of sound, and I started, shocked by the sudden burst of new light and noise. My focus blurred as I found myself trying to wipe threads from an amulet that was no longer there. I’d seen him go this time, folding in on himself to vanish in a bright, soundless pop. I’d never be able to do that.
“God help you, Nakita,” Barnabas said as he strode out to the middle of the road. “Why didn’t you just draw him a picture of who we’re trying to save?”
Nakita spun on her heel. “You’re still laboring under the assumption that I’m trying to save Shoe,” she said, pointing her purse at him as if it were a weapon. “If I so much as see a black wing, light reaper, or guardian angel other than Grace, I will kill him. I will not have that cretin of a timekeeper put a guardian angel on such as Shoe!”
“Ron is not a cretin!” Barnabas shouted, still feeling a smidgen of loyalty, apparently.
“Yes, he is!”
I sighed, sitting down in the middle of the warm road with my back to them, waiting for them to finish yelling at each other. At least Ron had left thinking we didn’t know who was marked.
“You are not going to kill Shoe!” Barnabas said. “I won’t let you!”
“Careful, Barnabas,” she mocked. “Your grim is showing.”
That was low, and I turned to see her with a hand on a hip, standing inches from him. He was scowling, feeling the shame of the derogatory term. Barnabas wasn’t grim. Sure, he had left Ron, but he wasn’t a vigilante who existed only for the thrill of killing someone.
“I won’t allow a guardian angel to be gifted to Shoe,” she said, pointing vaguely in the direction of the unseen town. “From the moment he chooses to kill, he will cause only pain to the world. There is no grace in a life lived like that!”
“Funny, isn’t that what you do? Kill people?” he shot back at her, and she made a muffled scream of frustration.
“Shut your singing hole,” she hissed at Barnabas. “All this arguing is going to get Madison in trouble. The seraphs are watching.”
“Then you shut up,” he huffed, but I felt a new worry mix with the old. I’d forgotten that. The seraphs were watching, and if I couldn’t get a light and a dark reaper to work together, then this would never work.
“Barnabas,” I interrupted, not looking up from my view of the cornfield. “Does Ron’s knowing what we’re doing make this impossible, or just harder?”
Finally they stopped arguing. Barnabas’s steps were silent in his faded sneakers as he came to stand in front of me. His wings were gone, and he looked haunted. Clearly Ron had shaken him. “Until Ron can identify who the mark is, I think nothing has changed,” Barnabas said, and Nakita snorted. “We’ll need to be more circumspect to keep him from following us. One of us needs to stay with you and hide your amulet’s resonance.” His gaze went behind me to Nakita. “It’d be easier if you’d simply agree not to kill Shoe.”
“I have not killed him!” she protested, stalking forward. “But I will before I let Chronos or one of his reapers put an angel on him to protect him from his fate. An angel is forever, and with heaven’s mindless protection, he could do untold damage.”
I wondered how many of history’s recent dictators had been the result of Ron’s sending a light reaper to uphold a soul’s right to choice. Getting to my feet, I sighed. “This is really weird,” I said as I brushed my black tights off. “I like both of you, and I don’t know why.”
Nakita blinked, her attention diverted from Barnabas. “Because you’re the dark timekeeper,” she said, as if it were obvious.
Sighing, I looked up and down the road, wanting to be somewhere else. Anywhere else. “What do you think he’s going to do?” I asked Barnabas. “Ron, I mean. You know him best.”
Barnabas looked to the spot of pavement where Ron had last stood. “Probably search the local time lines until he finds out where we’ve been, then try to identify the people we’ve come in contact with. But he won’t be able to actually act until he flashes forward and sees the future. That’s when he would send a reaper out. Sometimes the dark timekeeper flashes first, sometimes the light. It’s the person who flashes last who has the clearer picture of the mark, so it evens things out, I suppose.”
I nodded, thinking it made sense. The closer in time the flash was from the turning point happening, the clearer the timekeeper’s perceptions would be. Grimacing, I glanced at my watch. It was getting late, and it was going to take a while to get home, even by wing. “I have to get back to school,” I said, worried. “Check in with my dad. Get my assignments from Josh.”