Early to Death, Early to Rise

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.

“This guy is a slob,” Shoe said as he headed for the scratched desk. With a single finger, he shoved the remains of the guy’s chicken dinner across the faded fake-wood desktop and sat in the rolling chair. “Look, he’s got grease all over the keyboard,” Shoe said, disgusted.

I picked up my file. JANE DOE. Yup, that was me. CAUSE OF DEATH, UNDETERMINED. Yuck, I’d been down for an autopsy. I started feeding the contents, sheet by sheet, into a paper shredder, feeling better as my record disappeared. “Can you imagine eating down here?” I said between sheets. “That is just gross.” Kind of like waking up barefoot in the morgue.

With a flourish, Shoe took control of the computer, pulling the chair up close and typing an address into the window to bring up a serious-looking black screen. Watching his proficiency, I mentally kicked myself for not knowing that it hadn’t been him in my first flash forward. Shoe was really good at this. Exceptionally good, I hoped as I finished destroying my file and came to stand behind him so I could watch him work.

“Let’s see what we’ve got…” he said softly, oblivious to where he was as he found the familiar in a new setting. He tapped a few more keys, and a search began. “Yup,” he said when something immediately popped up: a little black bird icon next to the string of nonsense letters and numbers that meant nothing to me. Black bird. Like the dripping artwork Ace had made his trademark. I hadn’t seen a real black wing in two days, but they seemed to be everywhere.

“There it is,” he said, glancing back at me with victory in his eyes. “We can do this from here. I just need to do some backtracking to make sure that it’s a two-way communication, then drop the patch in.”

He was excited. My heart gave a thump, and I smiled. “How long will that take?” I asked as I pushed the greasy chicken into the trash and sat on the desk. The orderly was really close to the elevator. If he kept shouting, someone would eventually hear him.

Shoe shrugged, totally unruffled and cool. “Few minutes.”

Relief spilled into me, and I exhaled a breath I’d probably taken five minutes ago. “That’s great,” I said, beaming. “Shoe, you’re fantastic. I wouldn’t know the first thing to do.”

“Yeah, well, it’s what I do,” he said awkwardly, but then he blinked at me. “What happened to your shirt?”

My hands flew to the lab coat to make sure I was covered. I was, but I slid from the desk, holding the lab coat tighter about my middle. “Uh, I was dead,” I said, flustered. “They tore it while trying to get my heart beating.”

“Sorry,” he said, seeming to mean it. Turning back to the keyboard, he started tapping.

“It was my favorite shirt, too,” I said, wondering how I was going to keep this and my tights from my dad. Oh, swell, my dad. Crap, I’d promised to call my mother, too.

The sound of the elevator dinging in the distance brought both Shoe’s and my heads up. This wasn’t good. Maybe they’d found someone else to try sticking me for blood. “Just do your thing,” I said as I headed for the door. “No matter what, don’t stop. I’ll keep whoever it is out.”

But as my hand was reaching to push the left side of the door open, Nakita blew in through the right. Shocked, I stumbled back.

She was in white again, the designer jeans and red top I’d given her replaced by white slacks and a clingy white shirt that made her one smooth line. Her amulet blazed a deep violet against her skin, and her sword was in her hand. Tiny white boots edged in gold were spread wide on the bleach-faded tile. It was what she had worn the afternoon she’d tried to kill me. Obviously something was wrong.

“Nakita!” I exclaimed, then shivered when something slid over my aura to hide it.

At the computer, Shoe blew his breath out and started to type again.

“I trusted you!” Nakita exclaimed, her eyes dark as she stood before me, shaking.

Bewildered, I stared until I remembered. Ace. He’d gotten a guardian angel. Crap. “Paul followed us from the school,” I blurted, dropping back as she came forward step by stiff step. “I didn’t know he was there! By the time I knew what he was doing, it was too late. Nakita, I didn’t tell him it was Ace. He followed me!” I almost shouted, yelping when my butt hit the rolling gurney behind me. Remembering her killing my predecessor before my very eyes, I let my gaze drop to her amulet. It was as if it were throwing black shards of light into the shadows of the room. Nakita had paused, listening, but her grip on her sword was still white-knuckled. I think she wanted to believe me but was afraid.

“The seraphs were right,” I pleaded. “Talking to Ace wouldn’t have made any difference. But Shoe can still save the people Ace was going to kill.”

Nakita lowered her sword an inch. Her cheeks were spotted with red, and I gripped the rolling table behind me with both hands.

“I don’t care about the people who are going to die,” she said, making Shoe pause in his typing. “Saving them is not my job! Their souls are beautiful and the seraphs will rejoice. It’s wounded souls that concern me. I care for the wounded, Madison, not the well.”

My mouth dropped open in a silent “oh” of understanding. She was a dark reaper. She killed people to save their souls. She thought what I was trying to do was foolish. And yet she stood there, shielding my soul from Ron’s detection as she tried to understand.

“Taking Ace’s soul before he sullied it beyond redemption was my task,” she said, and I couldn’t tell what she was feeling. “His soul depended upon me, and I failed him utterly because I trusted you. You made a deal with the light timekeeper’s acolyte. You let him give Ace a guardian angel so I wouldn’t be able to kill his body. Admit it!”

Shoe was staring. His fingers were still, and the silence soaked into me. “Keep working, Shoe,” I said, not looking away from Nakita. “I didn’t give him Ace,” I said to her, and she grew more agitated, a confused angel with a sword. “Paul gave Ace his guardian angel before I even knew he was there. You didn’t fail him. I did. I’m sorry, but I didn’t betray you! Not on purpose.”

Nakita fingered her amulet, confusion pinching her eyes. Because of me, black wings had eaten her memories. Not all of them, but enough so that she had felt the touch of death. The sound of her screams as she realized there was such a thing as an end had been awful. She alone among the angels knew what it was to fear death. She alone knew the bitterness of loss. And I still couldn’t get her to understand why I wanted to end the early scythings.

“I went to Shoe’s room. I talked to Ace,” she said. “He told me you made a deal with the rising light timekeeper. He laughed at me. You lied! Just like Kairos!”

“I didn’t lie,” I said quickly, reaching to touch her, only to drop my hand. “I forgot about Paul, and because of that, Ace got an angel. I am so, so sorry, Nakita. It was my mistake. I did make a deal with Paul, but it was for him to keep Ace from interfering while Shoe patched the virus. I was so mad at Paul, I could have scythed him myself. But my goal was never to keep Ace from getting an angel. I was trying to show him what his choices were going to bring about and hopefully get him to change so his life would have meaning. I can still do that. I know it goes against your nature, but I thought you understood. Or at least were trying to understand. I thought you were helping me.”

Her anger hesitated, and, looking confused, she lowered her gaze. “Ace won’t change,” she said. “You said it yourself. And now his soul is truly lost.”

Taking a step forward, I touched her shoulder, pulling back when her head came up. There were tears in her eyes, and she wiped them, looking shocked to be crying.

“It’s not over yet.” How am I going to change a millennia of beliefs if I can’t even convince one reaper who wants to understand but can’t? “I can fix this,” I said, and she stared at me as if wondering why I was bothering. “If we don’t do something, Shoe will take the blame for Ace’s choices. But if Ace has to face the fallout, he might change his own fate.”

Fate, I thought, tasting it in my mind as it dissolved on my tongue. I hated that word, but it had piqued Nakita’s interest. She knew fate.

“You think?” she asked, her shoulders easing as hope softened the lines of anger in her face.

“I hope,” I said, wanting to be perfectly clear.

Nakita frowned at Shoe, as if seeing him for the first time, his typing starting and stopping as he muttered to the computer. Change was hard for her, but she’d try for me, her timekeeper, the one who’d damaged her perfect belief. Her sword disappeared. “Then I probably shouldn’t have hit Paul,” she said, biting her lower lip innocently. Her eyes landed on my bare feet, and she blinked. “Where are your shoes?”

The worst of it seemed to be over, and I eased away from the gurney. “I don’t know. Are Barnabas and Grace okay?” I asked.

Nakita was scanning the morgue, clearly not concerned. “They’re coming,” she said as she went to the bank of lockers, running her fingers over them as if searching for something. “After you left, Ron talked to Paul through his amulet. As soon as he found out that Ace got his guardian angel, Ron laughed, said unkind things, and left. Grace and Barnabas followed him to be sure he wasn’t going to find you, seeing as your aura was chiming all over heaven and earth. I went to Shoe’s house to see for myself. Then I came here.”

Nakita twisted and yanked on a locker handle, and it popped open, the hinges bent. “I’m sorry,” she said as she reached in and came out with my shoes and socks. “I should have trusted you. I don’t understand what you are trying to do. Maybe if I understood why.”

Her steps silent, she crossed the room to hand me my yellow sneakers. “It’s okay,” I said as I accepted them. “I don’t know what I’m doing half the time, either. I just do what feels right.”

Nakita smiled faintly. “I probably shouldn’t have knocked Paul out—even if it felt right, too. His amulet is powerful, but it’s not a timekeeper’s.”

She didn’t just hit him, but knocked him out? Leaning against the gurney, I looked up from putting my socks on, hopping on one foot when the gurney started to roll. “Nakita…please tell me you’re kidding. He was there to keep Ace from leaving.”

Wincing, Nakita took a breath to answer, but she stopped, spinning to the hall when the twin doors crashed open. It was Ace, and he wasn’t happy.

Jeez, can this get any worse? “Ace!” I shouted, almost panicking, one sock on, the other dangling from a finger.

“Get away from the computer, Shoe,” he demanded, his black shirt hiding the blood that dripped from his nose, but I could smell it like a warning, almost see a red glow flaring from him. Is it his aura? Am I finally starting to see auras?

“Like I said, I probably shouldn’t have hit Paul,” Nakita admitted.

Shoe didn’t look up, his fingers typing furiously. “Go to hell,” he muttered, trusting us to keep Ace off him. “I’m not taking the blame for this.”

Ace predictably went for Shoe, and Nakita lunged forward. “Back…” she threatened, but her motion to pull her sword faltered when a glowing ball of light hummed in after him. It was his guardian angel, and I knew from experience that they worked by making things go wrong. The more Nakita tried to hurt him, the worse it would become. The angel might not believe in saving Ace, but she’d do it.

“Keep working, Shoe!” I shouted, angling to get between them and raising my hands in placation when his guardian angel hummed a warning. All Ace saw was me looking as if I were begging for him to be a good little boy. If only I could reason with this angel like I do Grace.

Peeved, I glanced at Nakita as I settled into a martial arts stance, one sock on, one off. “You not only let him get away, you let him follow you?” I said to Nakita.

“Not exactly,” she said, then stomped her foot at Ace to make him drop back a step. “Well, maybe,” she added. “Ace woke up when I hit Paul. I knew he was following me, but I didn’t think it mattered. Madison, I’m sorry. I thought we had failed!”

Ace began moving, and all three of us shifted to stay with him: me, Nakita, and the guardian angel. “Shoe, you’re pathetic,” Ace said, and I wondered why he was limping. “Girls guarding you? Get away from the computer or I’m going to pound you.”

Yeah, like that was going to happen. “Don’t stop, Shoe!” I encouraged. Ace took another step forward with his hands fisted, and Nakita drew her sword. I felt dizzy. Everything was spiraling out of control.

“You crazy chick!” Ace shouted, knowing he had a guardian angel, but not ready to trust it. “I’m not afraid of you!”

“Come closer,” she encouraged, her hair falling about her face to make her look dangerous.

Shoe was clicking and clacking. Then he stopped, and as he whispered a hushed, “Yes!” I heard the whine of the CD tray slide open. We’re going to do it! We’re actually going to do it! I thought, elation filling me.

But Ace heard Shoe, too, and he gritted his teeth, a wild look coming over his face. And suddenly, as I stood between Ace and Shoe, I felt the strength drain from me.

A thin tracing of blue spun from the overhead lights to pool on the morgue’s floor.

Not now!

Frightened, I dropped back, holding my stomach as if I could keep myself in. Nakita turned to me, and I panicked as the lights filled the entire room with a blue haze, spilling out from the fixtures in a flood. I was going to flash forward. Ace had made a decision, and his future was changing. This was not what I needed right now!

“Madison?” Nakita called, but her voice sounded tinny, as if from far away.

Dizzy, I looked at her. I could see her wings behind her, existing an instant in the future and therefore invisible to everyone except perhaps the guardian angel hovering over all of us. Her eyes were silver. Nakita was almost too beautiful to look at, and it took several tries for me to whisper, “I’m going to flash forward, Nakita. Don’t let me go!”

Her blade drooped in her confusion, and, seeing an opening, Ace moved.

“No!” I shouted, but I collapsed as the world turned inside out. Nakita lunged for me, her hands catching me just before I hit the floor. Shoe was shouting, but my head was turned to the ceiling. And as the blueshift intensified, the ceiling, the walls, everything melted away…and the beauty of the stars slammed into me.

I gasped, the pain of so much beauty slicing through me like fire. The ringing of sounds never before heard exploded within my soul. Tears filled my eyes, and I shook in Nakita’s arms.

“It hurts…” I moaned, and she turned my face to her. The terrible beauty of the heavens was replaced by the tragic beauty of an angel I had damaged—Nakita, to whom I had taught the meaning of fear. I had done it to her. Me. But the seraphs were right: The fear was a gift, and it made her more than she had been before, even as it tore at her.

“Close your eyes,” Nakita whispered in a terrified hush, and I buried my face against her, sobbing. It was too much. I was mortal, and to see the divine was killing me. How did Ron do this?

The sound of fighting pulled at me, and I felt my awareness drift in the room as my illusion of a body started to go indistinct. And then…I was Ace, feeling his anger, his fear. His everything.

I hate you, I thought with him, unable to separate from him, and with a loud shout, he swung his fist at Shoe, who was rising up from his chair. I howled as his fist connected and the pain shot up his arm. Shaking the throbbing from our hand, I watched Ace’s satisfaction as Shoe rocked back to the chair and fell off it, his hand on his jaw.

No! I screamed into Ace’s mind as he hit the delete button and yanked the connection from the wall. I had no idea whether there’d been enough time to load it completely, and as I tried to take control of a future that hadn’t happened yet, Ace picked up the keyboard and smashed it against Shoe’s head when he tried to stand.

“Get up!” I heard Ace say, both in our shared ears and in our shared mind, furious. “I’m going to kill you!”

I wanted to throw up, but I was trapped, trying to change things but unable to even make myself heard. This was a freaking nightmare. And above it hovered Ace’s guardian angel, weeping for him, weeping for me—a glittering silver cloud falling from her to turn the blue to silver until it touched Ace’s aura and was repelled.

Shoe looked up from the floor. “Get a grip, Ace,” he breathed, staggering as he rose to stand in front of it. “We’re talking about real people. What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Wrong with me?” Ace shouted.

Ace, stop! I screamed, unheard, but as if in response, a heavier wash of blue filled my awareness. Vertigo made me clutch at anything, memories and visions slipping past me like a maelstrom. I was going deeper into the future, and my mind rebelled. With a nauseating sensation, and sounding like a coin spinning to a stop, the blue around me shifted and spun until it settled to a steady solid blue.

I was still in the morgue, still in Ace. The police were here, and the guy I’d locked in the closet was standing by the lockers, looking bewildered. Shoe was sitting on the floor with his head down, cuffs on his wrists. And I was feeling pretty damn good even as I was aching in despair. I had to get out. I was trapped in Ace’s head—feeling his satisfaction mixing with my pain was driving me insane.

“So when I found out what he was doing,” I heard myself say, thinking I was damn clever for thinking up this plan, “I followed him from the school to the hospital. He snuck in, locked the guy in the closet, and put the virus in the morgue’s computer. Isn’t that sick? Trying to kill people from a morgue computer?”

The cops were nodding, and the one holding Shoe’s shoulder gave him a disgusted look.

That’s a lie! I thought, not feeling a twinge in Ace’s conscience.

“I told him not to,” Ace lied, and Shoe’s jaw clenched as he refused to say anything. “It was just lucky that I had the patch. I put it in place, and then he hit me! Broke the keyboard over my head. He’s crazy, I tell you. Nuts! He did the same thing at the school. He could have killed someone!”

The cops turned to the orderly. “Is that what happened?” they asked him, and the shaken man looked up blankly.

“I don’t remember,” he said, and I recognized his confused expression as one I’d seen on my dad’s face too often. He remembered something, but logic said it was impossible. My reapers had come and gone, leaving broken lives in their wake.

He’s lying! I shouted in Ace’s mind, and the guardian angel in the corner looked up from her weeping. Then I hissed into Ace’s thoughts, You’re a liar. A disgusting liar. I should have let Nakita scythe you. This was so unfair. It looked like the patch had gone in, but somehow, by trying to set things right, I’d put Ace into the perfect place to do the most damage to Shoe’s credibility and secure his own. Especially when no one seemed to remember my being here. Except perhaps the guardian angel.

I gathered myself to try to change a future that hadn’t happened yet, but the blue tint overlaying everything seemed to hesitate. For an instant, everything went normal, colors, sounds, everything. In that second of clarity, Shoe looked at Ace, but I think he was seeing me, his expression bewildered and betrayed. And then…the world flashed red.

With a wrench hard enough to make me groan, I felt myself tear from the fabric of time. Gasping, I took a breath that was wholly mine. There was no thudding in my chest. No blood in my veins—and Nakita’s grip on me was so tight it hurt.

“I’m back,” I whispered, and her hands on me jerked.

“Madison!” she exclaimed, and I looked up at her, seeing my fear reflected in her silvered eyes. But it was the memory of Shoe’s haunted look that wouldn’t leave my mind.

A crash pulled my attention from her, and I realized that everything had taken all of an instant. Shoe was getting up off the floor, dazed but determined, holding his jaw. I’d seen this before. Lived it.

“Get up!” Ace was screaming at him. “I’m going to kill you!”

“Madison?” Nakita said, helping me sit up. “Are you okay? I’ve never seen anyone flash forward.”

“I’ll be fine.” Wobbling to my feet, I grasped for anything to steady me, latching onto the rolling gurney. Bad choice, and I stumbled until Nakita caught me. “It really takes a lot out of me.” Crap, I could hardly stand up.

“Get a grip, Ace,” Shoe breathed, staggering as he stood. “We’re talking about real people. What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Wrong with me?” Ace shouted, and my eyes went to the angel above us, right where I remembered seeing her. She was crying as it all played out again. I knew she’d seen everything I had seen during the flash forward. She had bathed in the divine and could live the past and the future all at once. And she was chained by a will not her own, but Ron’s.

Swallowing hard, I leaned heavily into Nakita. “You know what happens,” I said to the angel, and the angel turned to me, surprised. “I never wanted to end his life, and I’m not going to do it now. Fate or choice. They can be the same. As the dark timekeeper, I ask you to do as you would—without breaking the constraints of your previous charge.”

Ace had yanked the cord from the wall, and as Shoe tried to stop him from snapping the CD in half, Ace shoved him into the wall behind the desk, following it with a punch to Shoe’s gut. Exhaling in a puff of pained air, Shoe slid out of sight behind the desk.

And though I couldn’t see beyond the shimmering glow that surrounded the guardian angel, I knew she smiled at me, bathing me in the first feeling of peace I’d had since I stood on a Greek island on the other side of the world and agreed to try to change the world. “Is this the present?” she asked, adding a bewildered, “Sometimes I can’t tell.”

I nodded, and she darted closer, the glow of her seeming to warm my face. “I like you,” she chimed, the words tingling across me in waves. “You use your love to see the world. It makes everything harder for you, but if it were easy, then everyone could do it.”

I had no clue what she was talking about, but I watched her fly into the fray, shifting the phone cord up an inch. As if choreographed to music, Ace stepped back, tripping on it. Shouting in surprise, he went down.

It was all the break Shoe needed. Rising up from behind the desk, he flung his hair out of his eyes, blood from his cheek smearing his hands and face. With a furious yell, he launched himself at Ace, and the two of them slid across the tiled floor, Ace’s head thumping into it. I felt the world hiccup as fate shifted, and I took a gulp of air, feeling like I needed it.

“This isn’t a game, Ace!” Shoe shouted, oblivious to Nakita and me. “These are real people, with families and kids!”

“Why should I care?” Ace snarled, and Shoe hauled off and punched him twice, first in the gut to make Ace lose all his breath in one go, then across the jaw with his left. Ace made a tiny grunt of pain, then went still.

“Because you’re hurting people to make yourself feel good,” Shoe said, staggering up and going to the computer. Above them, the angel cheered, her tears bathing both Ace and Shoe. Something had changed. I just hoped it was for the better.

Leaning heavily on the desk, Shoe plugged the keyboard back in, hitting a few buttons before turning to me with a tired smile. “It’s in there,” he said, then louder, toward Ace, “It’s in there, you sack of toad crap. I’m not taking the blame for this! Not by a long shot!”

Dazed, I stared at Shoe, wondering if it was truly a different future that we’d all be living, or if Ace was going to somehow twist this again.

God help me. Is this what my life is going to be like?

Ace’s arm moved, angling under him as if he were going to get up. Nakita strode over to him and stepped on his back to make him flop back down with a groan. I looked up at his guardian angel, now glowing with a bright, hazy light.

“No one is trying to kill him,” she chimed cheerfully, then darted to the ceiling when the morgue doors were shoved open and Barnabas came in. Grace was with him, and I watched in openmouthed awe when the two guardian angels dipped and bobbed in a weird display of greeting.

“Is it patched? What happened!” Barnabas asked, looking at Nakita, who was now sitting on Ace, checking her nail polish. Shoe was breathing hard, sitting in the rolling chair and dabbing at his cheek with a tissue.

Nakita shrugged, looking almost disappointed that we hadn’t simply killed him. “Madison has to do things the hard way.”

My sock was across the room, and, blowing my breath out, I went to get it, sitting down right there on the cold tile floor to put it on. Not a whisper of a heartbeat echoed in my thoughts, and after feeling Ace’s, I missed it. Worse, though, I was tired. I felt unreal and thin, as if part of me were still lost somewhere between the now and the next.

“You flashed forward again,” Barnabas said, coming close, only to draw to a confused stop at my feet. I’d gotten my sock on, and I made a grasping gesture toward my sneakers, still on the gurney.

“It was awful,” Nakita admitted while Barnabas fetched my shoes. “It was like she wasn’t there.”

“I don’t feel so good,” I said, my hands shaking as I put first one, then the other sneaker on. Looking at the skulls and crossbones on the laces, I wondered if I could do this. A thousand years of being inside people, watching them ruin their lives. No wonder Kairos had simply sent his reapers to kill the marked. A tear formed and fell, and, miserable, I tied my skull-and-crossbones laces in careful, perfect loops. I thought we had changed fate, but it was hard. Really hard.

“You failed?” Barnabas whispered as I wiped at my eye, and I shook my head.

“I think we succeeded,” I said to make him even more confused.

“Are you okay, Madison?” Nakita asked. Barnabas reached to pull me up, and I couldn’t do anything but try not to cry. I wasn’t doing very well at that, either.

“I’m okay,” I finally managed, wobbling on my feet and trying to imagine a lifetime of crap like this. “I’m just going to go crazy. That’s all there is to it.”

In a graceful motion, Nakita got up off of Ace. The idiot gathered himself to stand, but a pan of morgue tools somehow happened to slide off a nearby counter, beaning him. Groaning, he collapsed again while Grace and the other guardian angel gave each other what looked to be the angel equivalent of a high five. “He’s still alive.” Ace’s guardian angel giggled, and I wondered if I was going to have to do something about this before Ace was accidented to death, but remembering Ace’s hatred that had echoed in me, I decided I wouldn’t worry about it.

“Is flashing forward supposed to be like that?” Nakita asked as she took my other elbow.

On my other side, I felt more than saw Barnabas shrug. “I don’t know. Ron never said. How about Kairos? Did he ever look this tired to you?”

Nakita shook her head, her expression worried. Sighing, I leaned heavily on them. It was over, but there was still a lot to do. I’d gotten rid of my file, but there was probably something upstairs. And the guy in the closet. And Shoe…

“I’m really hungry,” I said, the memory of being inside Ace making me feel ill. “Can we go get a burger?”

Nakita turned to me, her surprise mirrored by Barnabas’s. Sighing, I sent my gaze to Shoe and Ace. “All of us?” I added. “I’m starving,” I said, shocked to realize I was. “Besides,” I said softly so Shoe couldn’t hear, “we can take care of their memories there and leave them maybe as friends or something.”

Instead of answering me, Barnabas looked over the morgue. “Is the patch in place?” he asked Shoe.

Shoe rolled his chair over to the computer. His expression was relieved, and he pocketed the disc. “Yes.”

Barnabas straightened, gesturing for Nakita to get Ace. “Burgers sound good to me,” he said with a startling amount of enthusiasm. We’d probably have no problem getting out of the hospital even with letting the guy out of the closet. Not with two reapers and two guardian angels.

Thoughts of salty fries and cold pop made my mouth water as I followed Barnabas, Ace, and Shoe out into the empty hallway. I was tired and depressed…and hungry. This wasn’t the ending I had expected. Had I won? I really didn’t know.

Time would tell, I supposed.