Once Dead, Twice Shy

I glanced back and Barnabas gave me a tired look, making me feel like I'd really messed this up. Maybe having to change people's memories was a sign of sloppiness.

"Just relax, Bill," the light reaper was saying. "You hit your head hard."

I gripped the wheel tighter and wondered if Bill's head injury made him less susceptible to having his memory changed. Just how badly had I screwed this up? Jeez, all I'd done was shove Susan out of the way. I wasn't going to just stand there and let her be killed. Susan was blissfully ignorant. She was alive. She would finish her life and probably do something great with it, or she never would've been unfairly targeted by the dark reapers in the first place.

My furrowed brow eased, and I pulled a strand of spray-damp hair out of my eyes. I was glad I'd intervened, and nothing Barnabas could say would convince me it hadn't been the right thing to do. I couldn't help but feel a little sheepish, though. Two years of martial arts practice, and all I'd done was shove her out of the way?

Barnabas left Bill and Susan clustered together on the back bench and sat in the seat across from mine. "I put in for a guardian angel," he said as he leaned close enough for me to catch the scent of sunflowers at dusk. "Susan will be fine."

"Good." I eased the throttle down as we neared the dock, refusing to drop his gaze. "That wasn't so bad, was it?"

Leaning back, he huffed. "You have no idea the trouble you caused," he said. "Saints protect you, Madison. Five people saw her cut right through you. Five people I have to cobble alternate memories for. You think thought-touching is hard, you should try altering memories. I shouldn't have brought you. I knew it wasn't safe."

I clenched my teeth and stared at the approaching dock, thick with people. "I saved her life. Wasn't that the point?"

"You were identified by a reaper," he said darkly. "You said you'd simply observe, and you go and…get recognized! They know the resonance your amulet gives off now. They can follow it. Find you."

I took a breath to protest. Reapers had amulet resonances; living people had auras. Either could be used by reapers to find people both at a great distance and close-up, sort of like a noisy fingerprint or photo. "Are you telling me I should have let her die, Barney?" I said bitterly, knowing he hated the nickname. "Let that reaper cut her down just so I wouldn't get recognized? Call Ron. He can change my amulet's resonance. He has before."

Arms crossed over his chest, Barnabas frowned. I was right, though, and he knew it. "I'm going to have to, aren't I?" he said, sounding like the seventeen-year-old he was masquerading as. "I haven't been pinged in three hundred years. Apart from your reap, that is. I need to get my resonance changed, now, too." Sullen, he stared ahead. A sullen angel. How sweet.

But the more I thought about it, the worse I felt. It seemed that ever since I'd made his acquaintance, I'd been screwing up his life. My special talent. Now he had to call on his boss to fix things, and I knew he hated looking bad. "Sorry," I said softly, but I knew he heard me.

"Until we get the resonance of our amulets changed, we're as vulnerable as ducks sitting on the water," he muttered.

Chilled, I looked for black wings, but they were gone. The water reflected the trees close to the dock, flat in the lee of the wind, and I shifted the engine into neutral. "I said I'm sorry," I said, and Barnabas looked up from the flashing ambulance lights.

His brown eyes were black in the shade, and it was as if I was seeing them for the first time, finding something different in their depths. "There's a lot you don't know," he said as I swung the boat around to dock beside the first. "Maybe you should start acting like it."

Susan was flipping the bumpers out over the side, and Barnabas moved into the bow to throw the front dock line when I cut the engine to drift in. The ambulance crew was waiting with a stretcher, and they seemed relieved when Bill shouted that he was okay. There was an air of efficient excitement, and when I saw the bright polo shirt that said camp counselor more than a laminated tag would have, I cringed. We had to get out of there.

The boat emptied out amid loud chatter and requests for information that Susan was delighted to supply at the top of her voice. I stood, wanting to go home, but Barnabas couldn't simply pop us out in front of everyone. He stepped onto the dock, and I followed, nervous in the crush.

"Keep an eye on the girl," he said as I fidgeted. "I need to find some quiet so the guardian angel can locate me. It's not likely they'll try for her again, but it's possible. Especially if they know you're here. Don't do anything if a reaper shows, okay? Just yell for me. Can you do that?"

Subdued, I nodded, and he wove through the people on the dock. I slowly followed to find a place out of the way near the ambulance. My heart had stopped again. Finally. Barnabas thought it was funny, which only made it more embarrassing. I was always taking in air I didn't need, too. Susan was within earshot with a cluster of girls and a camp counselor. It was an odd feeling, wanting to be close but afraid to be included.

Susan's story was bringing gasps from the surrounding people, but I was glad to hear nothing about sword fights or girls in Hawaiian tops disappearing under the waves. At night, when she was asleep, it might be a different story. I'd seen too many haunted looks on my dad's face that made me wonder if he remembered the morgue. While I was busy stealing an amulet from my killer, my dad had gotten the phone call telling him I was dead. Finding him alone in my room, sifting through my things before he knew I was alive, had been heartbreaking. And his joy when he saw me breathing? I'd never been hugged so hard. Though his memories had been shifted…sometimes, I thought he remembered.

Barnabas had settled himself atop a red picnic table under the pine trees. A vaporous softball-sized light hovered before him, looking everything like the imperfections you see in pictures from time to time. Some people thought the glows were ghosts, but what if they were guardian angels, only seen when the light was right and they were caught on film?

"And then he fell back in the water," Susan said, words slowing when something didn't jive with her memory, and I turned away lest she see me and ask me to back her up. She had mentioned that she worked at a newspaper—maybe a planned journalism career was why she'd been targeted. Perhaps she was supposed to do something later in life, something that would work contrary to the dark reapers' great plan. That's what the whole game was about. That's why I'd been killed. I didn't know what great thing I was supposed to have done, and now that I was dead, it was likely I never would.

Arms crossed, I leaned against the prickly solidness of a tall pine tree, and vowed I wouldn't ever feel bad about saving Susan's life.

Barnabas stood, and I watched him weave his way through the crowd with that ball of light trailing behind him. Susan's friends noticed him, and, giggling, they hushed themselves. Pretending ignorance, Barnabas smiled and shook Susan's hand. As if it was a signal, the hazy light shifted from him to her. She had her guardian angel; she would be safe. A knot of worry eased in me.

"Thanks for keeping him talking out there," Barnabas said, brushing his wet hair aside in a casual show that made someone in the back sigh. "You should go to the hospital with him. He's going to have to stay awake all night in case he has a concussion."

Susan flushed. "Sure. Yes. You think they'd let me?" She turned to the counselor. "Can I go?"

At the chorus of catcalls and a yes, Susan flashed a smile and jogged to the ambulance. The haze of light entered the ambulance before Susan, and Barnabas's faint tension vanished, telling me that he, too, had been worried about her. It just seemed like he hadn't cared.