Kim Harrison - Something Deadly This Way Comes

“I don’t know,” I admitted, and her expression fell as if I’d told her I was leaving this moment. “Nakita, I’m trying, but nothing seems to be working,” I pleaded with her. “You can see it better than I can. I don’t want to think about it, okay? I just want to do right by Tammy. Then, when it’s over, we can think about what comes next.”

She seemed to accept that, her head down and the wind shifting her long black hair into her face. “I’m sorry the seraphs aren’t listening to you,” she said. “Barnabas found Demus. He went to find you, and found Josh instead. They are both waiting for you in the graveyard.”

“Josh!” I exclaimed, glad he was going to be there.

“You need to talk to Demus,” Nakita said tightly, “or he’s going to kill Tammy the second he sees her.”

A faint smile came over me. “And that would be wrong, huh?” I asked her, and she blinked at me. Slowly her smile grew, and she looked almost embarrassed.

“It might be,” she admitted, stretching her wings to put us both in the shade. “If there is a chance we can change her fate. We should go. I had forgotten how peaceful it is here.” Her eyes met mine, holding not peace but at least a lack of fear. “Or maybe I never noticed before.”

Nodding, I hoisted my pants back up and minced across the black marble to her. Nakita’s arm went around me, and I stepped up on one of her feet, standing next to her, rather than in front. One push of her huge wings, and we were airborne. My stomach dropped, and I clutched at Nakita’s arm. Looking down at the small island, I shivered. Flying was a lot scarier now that I was alive again.

“Close your eyes,” Nakita warned me, and I screwed them shut. The muffling softness of her wings pressed against my ears as she enfolded us, and the scent of feathers and wind filled my nose. I gasped when the world seemed to turn inside out, but I was expecting it. Nakita had flung us across space, moving us from high noon to nearly midnight in an eyeblink.

A warm breeze shifted my hair, and I opened my eyes just as Nakita unfolded her wings and we dropped into space. Below us were the scattered lights of Baxter. Descending in a slow spiral, Nakita angled to a very dark part of town. It was the graveyard. A fitting spot, I thought, for a dark timekeeper to meet with her reapers.

“A reaper, Nakita, once saw, death comes to the big and the small,” came Grace’s faint voice, but I still couldn’t see her. “Alone she once stood, thinking no one else would, but the truth empowers us all.”

“Hi, Grace,” I said, putting a hand to my stomach as we descended in the humid blackness. Man, we were a long way up. And the ground looked really hard.

“I’m not going to drop you,” Nakita said as if she could read my thoughts, but it was probably my grip on her arm that gave me away.

I stumbled as she made the last wing-flapping movements in the air and my feet finally touched earth. My oversize shirt was slipping, and I yanked it back into place, warming as everyone looked up. Barnabas looked uneasy, clearly having guessed I had my body back, but Josh, standing beside him, grinned. Demus was leaning indolently against a large stone, his arms over his chest and his expression cross until he noticed what I was wearing, upon which he straightened to attention as if my clothes gave me status. Nakita had hidden her wings and was moving to stand hesitantly beside Barnabas. Grace, I’m sure, was somewhere about, but she wasn’t moving, so who knew where her bright glow was.

“Hi, Josh,” I said, and he ducked his head as he came forward, giving me a quick hug.

“You feel the same as before,” he said, smiling with half his mouth as he gave me a squeeze.

“Thanks,” I said, meaning for about six different things.

Barnabas cleared his throat, and Josh stepped back. “You scared the life out of me when you just vanished like that,” Josh accused, then added proudly, “I knew you could do it. Some warning would have been nice.”

“Sorry,” I said, fidgeting as I turned to Barnabas.

“Congratulations,” Barnabas said as he handed me my phone, his tone not giving me a clue as to what he thought about me getting my body back, and my smile started to fade.

“Yes, well, nothing has changed,” I said as I fumbled for a place to stash it before I handed it to Nakita to put in her purse. “Except I’m hungry.”

Demus pushed himself from the tombstone, squinting as he approached. “You’re wearing Kairos’s clothes and his amulet, but you don’t look anything like him.”

“And we’re all glad of that,” Nakita said, earning a chime of laughter from Grace, who was hiding somewhere.

“There was a cross-dresser from France,” she started, and Nakita threw a rock at her. It went clattering into the dark, and I swear I heard a cat yowl.

I looked down at my clothes. The reapers seemed to be making more out of me wearing them than I’d intended. “I, uh, was in that old prom dress. It was kind of icky. This was the only thing that remotely fit.”

“You look fine,” Barnabas said, but his eyes were on the dark school behind me.

“Well, I think you still smell funny,” Grace whispered right next to my ear, and I jumped.

“Grace, flap your wings a little,” I said. “It’s eerie not knowing where you are!”

I was just in time to see the worried look exchanged between Nakita and Barnabas. “You can’t see her?” Barnabas asked, and I flushed again. Man, I was starting to miss being dead.

“I’ve never been able to see her very well. It’s dark out here,” I said, wondering if I was seeing the tip of my new iceberg. First I wasn’t able to contact Nakita or Barnabas, and now I was having a hard time seeing Grace. It didn’t help that Nakita was still looking at Barnabas like I was broken.

My stomach growled, and I levered myself up to sit on the nearest tombstone. “Okay, the seraphs are mad,” I said.

“Understatement,” Demus said bluntly as he tossed his amulet up and caught it.

“They sent you to scythe her,” I added, making sure we all knew where we stood.

“The moment I find her,” Demus said, throwing his amulet up again into the inky black.

Barnabas reached out, and the dark stone smacked into his hand. Demus sat up fast. “I won’t let you kill her,” Barnabas said. “She might be able to keep her soul alive, rekindle it. You don’t know.”

“They never do!” Demus shouted, lunging. Barnabas sidestepped him, smacking his butt with the flat of his sword, brought into existence in the time it takes for an electron to spin. Josh grabbed my elbow, and I slid from the stone, putting it between us and the reapers.

Demus caught his balance, his face twisted into an ugly snarl. “I will kill her,” he vowed. “I will save her soul from butchers like you, breaking seraph will. Choice is nothing compared to fate. Nothing! Or you’d be able to change it, and you can’t! Give me back my amulet!”

My eyes were wide, and I gripped the stone I was standing behind, Josh firmly next to me. Barnabas had taken the stone to keep Demus from having the ability to kill Tammy, but that wasn’t how I wanted to change things, and I gave a directive head-toss in Demus’s direction.

Barnabas’s lips pressed together disapprovingly, but he lobbed it back to the angry angel even as Nakita scoffed. “But we have changed fate, dark reaper,” Barnabas said as Demus caught it. “The seraphs just don’t want you to know about it.”

“If the seraphs don’t tell me, then I don’t need to know,” Demus said, cradling his amulet as he hunched protectively over it. “Soon as I find her, I take her soul to save it,” Demus said, then turned to Nakita. “Why are you even listening to this? Are you going grim, Nakita?”