Once Dead, Twice Shy

"Stop. Stop!" I said, frantic as I tried to get her to rise. She was so beautiful. She was an angel. She shouldn't be kneeling before me. "D-don't do this," I stammered. "I'm not the dark timekeeper." I looked at Ron, standing with his hands clasped before him.

"You are the keeper of unseen justice," Nakita said, smiling at me, "sanctioned by seraphs. Able to track time and bend it to your will."

"No I'm not!" I insisted, glancing at Kairos's body. Nakita had just killed him!

Ron sighed heavily enough for me to hear. "Yes, you are."

My gaze went to him, and I stiffened. A figure was behind him, hard to see against the rising sun. Ron saw where my attention was and turned. A strangled sound escaped him, and he scrambled out from between us. It was a seraph. It had to be.

"Blood has been spilled in the home of a timekeeper," the seraph said, its voice both musical and painful. It carried the power of the tides and the gentle caress of the waves upon the beach, and I almost cried to hear it. I couldn't bear it. It was too much.

"A sacrifice so you will hear my plea." Nakita stood before the seraph with her head bowed, but her sword was still at my feet, and I picked it up.

The seraph nodded, and I wondered if I should bow or curtsy or kneel or something. Oh, God. It was a freaking seraph, and here I was in yellow tights and skull earrings.

"She has taken her place," Nakita said. "I present her to you and ask a boon. I want to be as I was. I'm damaged." She looked up, tears marring her beautiful face. "I fear, seraph."

"That is not damage, Nakita," the seraph said gently. "That is a gift. Rejoice in your fear."

The seraph turned to me, and my mouth went dry. "I'm not the dark timekeeper," I babbled, shoving Nakita's sword back at her until she took it. "I can't be! I don't know anything!"

"You will. In time," the seraph said, wry amusement in its voice. "Until then, I will keep everything running smoothly. Don't be long. My voice is already missed from the chorus."

"But I don't believe in fate!" I exclaimed. My gaze shot to Ron; I was thinking I was having doubts about choice, too.

"To believe in fate is not a requirement," the musical voice said, the seraph seeming to take up the entire world, though it wasn't much bigger than I was. "Kairos didn't. Apparently." I took a quick breath when it looked away from me and fixed on Ron. "You do, though. For all that you say otherwise."

Ron didn't move until the seraph looked away; then he sagged in relief.

"But I don't want the job!" I said, frantic that what I wanted didn't seem to matter. "Please, can't I just have my body and go back to the way things were?"

The seraph blinked, looking shocked—if such an emotion could be applied to the divine. "You don't want this?" it asked, and Ron took a step forward as if to protest.

"No!" I said, hope filling me. "I just want to be me." In a rush, I pulled the stone from around my neck. Gathering my courage, I darted forward, pushing the amulet into the seraph's hands. My heart was pounding again, and, embarrassed that I couldn't control it, I backed up, wondering if I'd broken a rule by getting that close. I couldn't look up at its face. It hurt.

The seraph looked at the amulet in its luminescent fingers as if holding a great treasure. The stone was blazing an infinite black, the silver wires now a hot gold. "You already are you."

"Please," I begged, darting a glance at Kairos, dead on the tiles and forgotten. "Can you just make me as I was? Put me back in my body?"

Hope buoyed me up when the seraph smiled so brightly that I squinted. "If you choose so," it said, an unexpected humor in its voice. "Where is it?"

My ecstatic shout died in dismay. "Kairos had it," I said, feeling ill when my gaze landed on Nakita, then Ron, quiet in the background. He was no help, and I turned to the seraph.

"It's got to be in the house," I said, turning to it and feeling naked without the amulet around my neck.

"It would have rotted by now," said Ron.

Horror lifted through me, and then fear. Had Kairos let my body rot? Had all of this been for nothing?

"He's right," the seraph said. "Your corporeal self is not here on earth."

I staggered to the table, sitting down heavily, my legs unable to hold me upright anymore. My elbows went onto the tiled table, and I knocked Kairos's cup over. Scrambling, I righted it, wondering why. No one is going to drink it. It's a dead man's drink.

"He said it was close," I whispered, numb. Where was my body if it wasn't on earth?

The sun was eclipsed, and I looked up to see the seraph sit before me, a situation both shocking and mind-numbing. "Your body is most certainly somewhere between now and the next."

My heart felt like ash, and I blinked, trying to see the angel's features. But there had been hope in its words. "Between now and the next? What does that mean?" I'm sitting at a table with an angel on the other side of the world. How freaky is that?

"It means that your body is lost, but the lost can be found," the seraph said. "Kairos would have put your body in the only place it would remain hidden yet be immediately accessible. Between now and the next."

Licking my lips, I snuck a glance at Kairos's dead body. "Can you take me there?"

Again, the seraph smiled, and I had to drop my gaze. "There is no there to go to. It just is. Within time, you'll be able to see between the now and the next." Clearing its throat in a very human gesture, the seraph extended my amulet back to me. "Do you choose to take this or will you choose to perish utterly?"

Like I really have a choice?

The wind off the ocean shifted my bangs, and I glanced at Nakita, looking lost and beautiful as she rubbed the slickness of her tears between her fingers, trying to figure them out. "Can I sort of accept it?" I asked. "Just until I find my body?"

The seraph laughed. The beautiful sound shook the air, and the table between us cracked. "And you do not believe in fate!" it said merrily, reminding me of Grace somehow.

"I'm serious," I said roughly, trying to cover up my shock at the broken table. "Can I do this until I find my body, then give the amulet back?" To be alive again was all I wanted.

Nakita had come forward, purpose replacing her confusion. Seeing her, the angel shifted its expression to one of calculation. "If that is what you choose," it said slyly.

"Choice?" I asked sourly. "I thought you were all about fate."

"There is always choice," the seraph said.

I glanced at Kairos and stifled a shudder. "Kairos said there's only fate."

"And Chronos said there is only free will," it said with a devious lilt to its voice.

The seraph was up to something. Talking to it was very odd. Its emotions were as easy to read as a child's, but powerful beyond belief. Licking my lips, I turned so I couldn't see Kairos. "Which is right? Choice or fate?"

"They both are," it said. With a hush of sliding fabric that sounded like sunshine, the seraph knelt before me, the amulet held out in supplication.

I bolted to my feet, scared. "Don't do that," I whispered, wanting everyone to just ignore me. I'm going to get sick. I'm going to get sick right here on this beautiful floor.

The seraph looked up, and pain sliced through my head as our eyes met, almost blinding me. "I honor you. You can do something I cannot," it said softly. "For all I am and all I have been, you are human. You are loved for your inventiveness, both good and bad. I can kill, but you can create. You can even create…an end," it said wistfully. "That's something I will never be able to do. Accept this. Create."

I stared at my amulet. It was beautiful, the black stone glinting with tiny silver lights at its center like stars. I couldn't look at the seraph's face, it hurt so much, but I felt like it was smiling at me. "Madison, fate—not choice—sent Kairos to kill you. Fate gave you courage to claim his amulet. Fate caused Chronos to hide you from us. It has been fate that angled a hundred moments to bring you here. And yet, you have to choose to accept your place or return as you were."