Once Dead, Twice Shy

Feeling better, I looked at him and smiled, glad it was over. The reaper's face went blank and my smile faded. He turned on a heel and walked off, expecting me to follow.

Head down, I wove through the diminishing crowd after him, my satisfaction at having saved Susan stilling to a gray ash. If I had had another way home, I'd have taken it. Barnabas looked ticked.

The air in the upper reaches had been frigidly cold, and my wet hair felt frozen when Barnabas landed us right where we'd started this morning: New Covington High's rear parking lot. As usual, his wings had vanished in a swirl of back wind before I got a good look at them, replaced with dry jeans, a casual black T-shirt, and a gray duster totally inappropriate for the hot weather but totally suitable for making him look good. The soft color reminded me of his wings as it draped over his shoulders and fell to his heels.

Unsure, I wove through a few cars to get to the bike rack. The vehicles hadn't been here this morning, and I wondered what was up. It took me two tries to get the combination right, and I slowly wheeled my green ten-speed back to the shade and Barnabas, propping it against the waist-high wall between the steep hillside and the main road before I slumped against it to wait for Ron, Barnabas's boss.

I missed my car, still back in Florida with my mom, but the lack of a vehicle had been more than made up for by the chance to get to know my dad again. Mom had sent me up here because she'd had it with teacher/principal/parent chats and worrying when the phone rang after dark that it would be a cop. Okay, so maybe I had been a little enthusiastic in "exerting my freethinking tendencies," as the school counselor had told my mom, right before he privately told me to quit acting out for attention and grow up, but it had all been innocent stuff.

A cicada whined from somewhere, and I scrambled up onto the wall beside Barnabas and crossed my arms over my chest. Immediately I put them down, not wanting to look pensive. Barnabas looked pensive enough for both of us. His grip on me on the flight back had been uncomfortable. He'd been quiet too. Not that he ever talked much, but there was a stiffness now, almost a brooding. Maybe he was annoyed that he got wet jumping into the lake. My entire backside was damp now, thanks to him.

Uneasy, I pretended to fix my shoelaces so I could shift an inch or so away from him. I could've asked him to drop me off at home, but my bike was here. Not to mention I hadn't wanted nosy Mrs. Walsh to catch sight of Barnabas sprouting wings and flying away. I swear, the woman had binoculars on her windowsill. School had been the only place that I'd thought no one would see us. Why there were cars here now was beyond me.

I dug my phone out of a pocket, turned it on, checked for missed calls, and tucked it away. Glancing at Barnabas, I said, "I'm sorry I got you identified on your reap."

"It wasn't a reap. It was a scythe prevention."

His voice was tight, and I thought that for someone who'd been around for so long, he could sure act childishly. Maybe that was why he was assigned to seventeen-year-olds.

"I'm still sorry," I said as I picked at the top of the cement wall.

Leaning against the wall, Barnabas put his squinting gaze on the sky and sighed. "Don't worry about it."

I drummed my nails on the hard cement as again the silence descended. "It figures the beautiful one would be the dark reaper."

Barnabas brought his gaze back to me, affronted. "Beautiful? Nakita is a dark reaper."

My shoulders went up and down in a shrug. "You guys are all gorgeous. I could pick one of you out in a crowd just by that." His face showed surprise—as if he'd never noticed how perfect they all were. When he looked away, I added, "You know her?"

"I've heard her sing before, yes," he said softly. "So when she used her amulet to make her scythe, I could put a name to a face. She's been a dark reaper for a long time to have a stone so deep a shade of violet. They slowly shift color with experience, light reapers going down through the spectrum from green, to yellow, to orange, and finally a red so deep it's almost black. Dark reapers go the other way, up through the blues and purples to violet. The color of your stone is reflected in your aura when you use your amulet. But you can't see auras yet, can you?"

That had been positively catty, and if I hadn't been thinking about my own stone, black as space, I would have told him to shut up.

"So she's been at this longer than you," I said, and he turned to me in wonder.

"How do you figure that?" he asked, sounding insulted.

I glanced at his amulet, a flat black now that he wasn't using it. "It's like a rainbow. She's violet, and you're orange, a step away from red, way on the other side of the rainbow. You're not red yet. You get red, and you'll be as experienced as her."

He looked me up and down, his stance going stiff. "My amulet is not orange. It's red!"

"No it isn't."

"It is so! It has been since the pyramids."

I waved a hand dismissively. "Whatever…I still don't get how hearing her sing comes into it."

With a huff, he turned to the parking lot and away from me. "Amulets make it possible to communicate beyond earth's sphere, and I've heard her. The color of the stone and the sound of her singing match. Sort of like hearing an aura instead of seeing it. From there, it's not hard to guess who's singing because there are so few of us within the earth's sphere to begin with. And although I can hear dark reapers, I can't make out what they are saying. Nakita would have to shift the color of her thoughts to match my aura for that, and we are so far apart in the spectrum that it would be almost impossible. Besides, why would I want her thoughts in mine?"

My eyebrows rose. That bit of information might have been helpful as I spent the last four freaking months trying to learn how to use my amulet. "Huh. I thought you just…popped up to heaven or something when you wanted to talk."

His head drooped. "It's been aeons since I took up an amulet and became earthbound."

He's earthbound? "Whoa," I said, gravel grinding under my shoes as I shifted to face him. "Reapers are earthbound?"

"No, only light reapers are earthbound," he said, flushing in what looked like embarrassment. "Nakita is free to come and go. She touches the earth only long enough to kill; then she leaves."

That had sounded rather bitter. "I thought all angels lived in heaven."

"No," he said shortly. "Not all of us."

Making a face, he ran a hand over his frizzy hair, turning it even more untidy, in a charmingly attractive way. "Few angels transgress, but those who have often take a reaper path to make amends. And when they absolve themselves, they return to their other duties."

Amends? Absolution? Barnabas was a reaper because he'd gotten in trouble? And here I was, getting him in more of it. I suppose saving lives would look good on any angel's résumé. "What did you do?" I asked.

Barnabas crossed his arms and leaned against the wall. "I'm a light reaper out of a sense of moral responsibility, not because I displeased the seraphs. I don't care what they think."

I'd heard Barnabas swear by—or at—seraphs before as we sat on my roof and pitched stones at the bats. I knew all too well he didn't think much of the high muckety-mucks in the angel realm, but I couldn't help but wonder what the seraphs did. I suppose it took a lot to run a universe.

Still not looking at me, Barnabas pushed off the wall and moved to stand at the edge of the light. He wasn't telling me something, a feeling that grew when he put his hands on his hips and stared out at the hot parking lot. "She's right, though. Something smells worse than a black wing in the sun," he said, almost to himself. "Nakita said you have Kairos's stone. That's not possible. He's…" Barnabas turned, chilling me with his expression. "Madison, I've been thinking. When Ron comes, I'm going to ask him to give your instruction to someone else."