Kim Harrison - Something Deadly This Way Comes

He sighed. I heard it even though he was probably several hundred miles away in an Arizona desert. “Are you trying to change someone’s fate again?” he asked. “Madison, it was luck the last time. Fate is fate. That’s why they call it that.”

“I thought you believed in choice?” I mocked him, then caught my anger, swallowing it. Paul didn’t say anything, and my worry crept back. “Paul?”

“For God’s sake,” he said, voice hushed. “Do you know what Ron will do to me if he finds out I helped you?”

My hand holding the phone to my ear trembled. “Her name is Tammy,” I said. “Her soul was going to start to die after her brother died in a fire. I talked to her, and her fate changed so they both died, so I talked to them again, and something shifted so that they survived. She listened, Paul, and I reminded her of the good stuff. She wants to change, but she’s not out of it yet. She’s still in danger of letting her soul die. I need to find her. Talk to her again. I know I can fix this.”

Demus was peering at me in question. His eyes met mine and held. “This is a big mistake,” he said, his voice utterly devoid of the devil-may-care attitude he had shown so far.

“She still isn’t making the choice to live,” I said to Paul, but talking to both of them. “But I think she can. I changed her resonance to hide her from the reapers and I can’t find her because my amulet . . .” I took a breath. “Paul, my amulet is tuned to a dead person, not one halfway to heaven.” Or hell . “I can’t find her. Please, just help me find her, and then you can go back to your movie or whatever you were doing. Five minutes, tops.”

“You changed her resonance?” Paul asked, a hint of jealousy in his voice.

“Yes,” I said, feeling a stirring of pride. My eyes flicked to Josh again. He still wasn’t looking at me, and I felt a ping of anger. Save me from the touchy male ego. “Help me find Tammy, and I’ll tell you how I did it.”

“You can’t teach the rising light timekeeper!” Demus exclaimed, and Barnabas shoved him over.

“I can’t see the time lines,” I admitted, starting to get nervous. “Paul, we have to find her before the light reaper does and puts a guardian angel on her.”

Again he sighed. “Or I could sit here and do nothing, and Tammy’s life is saved by a guardian angel,” Paul finally said.

“A guardian angel doesn’t save anything,” I said in frustration, working to keep the irritation from my voice because I was trying to gain his help. “It just means that her life goes on. No meaning, Paul. No grace. She may as well be a painting on the wall. I’m not going to ask the seraphs for help. Grace says they’re ticked at me, and I think it’s because I’m proving them wrong and they don’t like it.”

It felt good to say it, and my face warmed even as I turned from the reapers watching me with varying degrees of hope and disbelief. Paul was silent again, but there was nothing more I could say, and I waited, fidgeting.

“Where are you?” he said flatly, and I took a huge breath of air, thrilled to my toes. Demus softly swore, and Barnabas and Nakita exchanged a high five. Josh smiled softly, and I warmed. “Puerto Rico?” he guessed. “Ron just sent someone out there.”

“Baxter, California,” I said, feeling like this might work even though he hadn’t said yes yet. “I’m not sure where that is exactly. Somewhere south? It’s hot and muggy.”

Paul made a soft mmmm of sound. “I think I know where that is. Let me get my shoes. Ron was griping about one of the reapers not checking back in.”

“Arariel,” I said, and Paul made a grunt of acknowledgment.

“Yes, that’s her. Hold on. I gotta tell Ron I’m going to bed.”

Hold on? I wondered, but the phone made a high-pitched squeal. Yelping, I dropped it, scrambling to catch it and missing. “Sorry,” I said after I picked it up and gingerly put it back to my ear. “Paul? Paul, you there?”

But Paul wasn’t there anymore, and I spun at a bright light that lit the graveyard. Ten feet away, a vertical line split the darkness, widening until a black shadow grew at its center. It was Paul, closing his phone as he stepped from one part of the world to the other as easily as crossing into another room. His smile widened as his unlaced dress shoes found the dew-wet grass and the bright line behind him closed in on itself and vanished.

Nodding respectfully to Barnabas and Nakita, he let his gaze linger on Demus, who was eyeing him with mistrust, then blinked in surprise when Josh pushed himself up from the pillar, obviously the odd man out, not being a reaper.

“Hi, Madison,” Paul said lightly as he tucked his dress shirt back in his Dockers, fully aware that I was as impressed as all hell. “Who are we saving tonight?”

Demus dropped back to take in Paul. “Your aura is green?” he mocked, staring at the luminescent stone around Paul’s neck. The glow of the stone was a reflection of Paul’s aura, and it was indeed a bright, gold-laced green.

Paul dropped his eyes, his lips set tight as he ran a hand over his sandy-brown hair. He was embarrassed, and I didn’t think it was because he was still wearing the rumpled clothes that he’d worn to school today. The stone he used to touch the divine should be shifting up the spectrum to a light timekeeper’s red by now, but it was that sparkly, neutral green, as Demus had so inelegantly pointed out, that ebbed to a flat black even as I watched.

“You shut up.” Nakita threatened to smack him, and I cleared my throat. I thought it odd she was defending Paul, seeing as she didn’t like him, but she had apologized to Paul for knocking him out once, so maybe it was part of her trying to understand. Barnabas, too, looked more uncomfortable now that Paul was here.

“You’re not doing this!” Demus said, ignored, and I didn’t like the look in his eye.

“I can’t stay long,” Paul said, glancing at everyone, his gaze lingering on Josh questioningly.

“The rising light timekeeper should not be here!” Demus hissed, and I jerked when I felt him tap into the divine. Barnabas was already moving, his dark shadow darting across the open area to slam into the redheaded angel.

“Look out!” Nakita shouted, and I found myself on the ground, the air pushed out of my lungs and Nakita on top of me. Damn, she was fast! Blowing the hair out of my eyes, I wiggled to get a better look as Barnabas sat on Demus, a handful of red hair in his grip as he pulled Demus’s head up. Paul had fallen back, knowing to get out of the way when angels fought, and Josh was behind that pillar again.

Barnabas lifted the chain around Demus’s neck until he had his amulet in his possession. “Nakita, do you have any rope in that purse of yours?”

“Get off me, Nakita,” I wheezed. Yeah, my life was so glamorous, out after midnight among the tombstones, sweating and slapping at mosquitoes.

Nakita slipped off, and I took a huge gulp of air, sitting up to brush last week’s dried grass clippings off me. Nice. I hadn’t been in my new dark timekeeper clothes five minutes and I get them dirty. Josh extended a hand to help me up, and I took it gratefully.

“Thanks,” I said softly, my lips next to his ear. “And relax, will you? You look like he wants to be my boyfriend or something. He’s just a guy.”

“Yeah?” Josh said as he watched me brush the last of the dirt off. “Just a guy who can do that amulet thing and walk through space.”

I grinned at him, appreciating that he felt jealous. “He’s not the one who held my hand when I died,” I said, shifting my weight to bump into him. “And he’s not the one who was there when I got my body back.”