Kim Harrison - Something Deadly This Way Comes

He smelled like soap, and his lips quirked in a soft smile when he pulled away. “Soon as I know what’s up, I’ll call,” he said. “Maybe I can get away sooner.”

“Okay.” I felt soft and squishy, and I let his fingers slip from mine reluctantly. Outside, Nakita was frowning, but Barnabas patiently waited.

Shifting his gym bag higher, Josh leaned toward me again, and after one last kiss, he rocked back, smiling.

“Come on, Buck Rogers,” Barnabas said as he motioned to the door. “Let’s go.”

Giving me a last look, Josh headed for the parking lot. “Who’s Buck Rogers?” he asked as the door opened, Barnabas catching it before it hit the wall.

I slowly sank back down in my chair, still feeling the warmth of those two kisses. Such a small thing, but not really. My smile fading, I watched Barnabas talk to Nakita. The dark reaper glanced at me, then away. I couldn’t help but wonder what he’d said to her as he started walking away with Josh.

Stretching out my leg, I shoved the dryer door shut with my foot, then stood to push the button to get it started again. The soft hum and sliding schlummp , schlummp , schlummp of someone’s jeans slowly filled the steamy room. Head down, I leaned over the adjacent dryer, wondering if Nakita would come in or continue to boycott me. I wished that Josh could have stayed, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that having him at home to help me if I needed it was a comfort. Being two time zones from home made it hard to cover one’s tracks. Even if one was a timekeeper.

The faint humming in my legs grew stronger. Realizing it wasn’t coming from the adjacent dryer, I pulled my head up. The world had gone blue. Like I was in a gigantic fishbowl in reverse, the parking lot beyond the huge plate-glass windows was a sunny, inky blue, but even as I stared, the fluorescent lights in the Laundromat began dripping an insidious indigo. I was going to flash.

We’ve done it! I thought joyfully, eyes alight as I looked for Nakita, her back to me as she watched Barnabas and Josh leave. Why else would I flash forward unless Tammy had indeed changed her fate?!

My hand rose to grip my amulet, shocked to find it more than warm. It was hot! “Nakita!” I shouted, and she turned. Her eyes widened at something she saw in me, and I heard her mental shout to Barnabas echo as it hit the top of the atmosphere and bounced back.

And then the inky black poured from the ceiling lights. It billowed up around my knees, and, like a deadly gas, it hit me hard. My knees gave way, and I fell, one hand still holding the top of the dryer. The heat of it seemed to burn my fingers, and I couldn’t see. The blue stuff had gotten in my eyes and they were tearing. Suddenly I realized I wasn’t crumpled on the floor of the Laundromat with my fingertips warm on the dryer.

I was in Tammy, her fingers burning, and she was terrified.

Choking, hot air burned in my mouth, and my lungs ached. I couldn’t breathe. “Johnny!” I screamed, then hunched over, coughing. I fell, arms outstretched. It was dark, and I gasped when my cheek hit the carpet. The air down here was a blessed few degrees cooler, and I cried as I pulled it into my damaged lungs. I was dying. I had died before, and I knew the feeling though Tammy didn’t—the same blackness edging my vision, and the same lack of pain filled my arms and legs.

No! I thought, confused. I had changed things! We had talked to Tammy! This couldn’t be the future, could it? Was there going to be a happy ending to this? There had to be. But the flash forward said otherwise, and by the lack of any blue haze, it looked like it was going to be tonight, not tomorrow. Damn it, I’d made things worse, not better.

“Johnny!” I cried again, crawling to his door. I found it, reaching up to turn the knob and push the door open. A wave of sound rushed out over my head, and I cowered in the sudden heat.

“Tammy!” I heard him call, and I crawled forward, scared out of my mind. I could smell things burning, and my mind walled the horror away. Everything. Everything was on fire.

And then I found him.

He was blind with terror, but at my touch, he grasped me, and we clung together as the ceiling above us turned into a beautiful, rolling orange and red. It was mesmerizing, even as my eyelashes singed and my nose burned inside.

“Tammy, I’m scared,” Johnny whispered, coughing, and I held him. It was too late. We couldn’t get out. Crying, I rocked him, our backs to the wall beside his bed.

“I’m here,” I whispered, Tammy’s last breath rasping as our twined thoughts were voiced by her alone. “You’re not alone. I’ve got you.”

And then we looked up as a roaring sound of heat sucked a new breath of air into the room an instant before the ceiling gave way. Everything flashed red—

I jumped, feeling as if someone had slapped me. Terrified, my eyes sprang open.

“Barnabas!” I cried. He was crouched before me, his eyes intent. It was over. But what had happened? The memory of my heart was thudding after having been inside Tammy, and slowly it beat one last time and stopped. Her terror took longer to leave me, and I sat there clutching my cooling amulet as Nakita and Josh clustered around me in concern.

“You came back,” I said, thinking it sounded lame, and Barnabas shifted a few inches away. Standing, he extended his hand and pulled me, wobbling, to my feet.

The humid air of the Laundromat seemed cool. Tears were dribbling from me. I slowly leaned back against the thumping dryer, my arms wrapped around myself as I started to shake, the tears steadily slipping from me. It was awful. So awful.

“What happened?” Josh asked, but I couldn’t talk. Not yet. They had died. Both of them. This was so unfair. Johnny and Tammy had died with grace, supporting each other in a way that was beautiful and showed the best of a human soul, but they had died. It wasn’t what I had wanted. Her soul might be saved, but it was the end of her life that had bought its purity.

“Something changed?” Nakita asked, but by her tone of voice, she knew it wasn’t good.

I looked past them at the empty Laundromat as if it was a dream and would flake into nothing and return me to that hell of existence, the fear, the hopelessness, the love for her brother giving Tammy something to believe in. “They both die,” I whispered.

“In a state of grace,” Barnabas finished for me, his brow furrowed.

Josh rocked back, looking worried. I would never tell him of the horror I’d just lived through. “I didn’t save Tammy’s or Johnny’s life,” I said. “All I did was make it so a reaper didn’t have to come out here and scythe her early. God, this sucks!” Depressed, I closed my eyes and wiped a tear away. I couldn’t do this. It was too much. It hurt too much when things went wrong.

“We have to do something,” Nakita said, and my eyes opened. She was standing over the table, her lips pressed in determination. “Now,” she said firmly. “We have to go now.”

“But her soul is safe,” I said, wanting to do just that but surprised that Nakita did, too. “Why do you care?”

Her hand on the door, Nakita paused, looking at me to make me shiver. “Her soul may be safe, but mine is troubled.”

The memory of fire trucks that existed only in the future seemed to haze over my sight as I looked across the busy road to the three-story apartment complex. Having watched—no, lived—Tammy and Johnny dying in a fire had more than shaken me. It had rocked me to my core. I’d thought that I’d made a difference, but all I’d done was make things worse. Josh, at least, got home safely. He’d been gone only five minutes, and I missed him already. I worried that he was going to drift away, looking for someone who wasn’t being yanked across the continent to save someone she didn’t even know, someone who didn’t have to lie to her dad all the time, someone who had friends other than angels—and someone who could eat a friggin’ bowl of popcorn with him. Why couldn’t I just be normal?