Something Deadly This Way Comes (10 page)

Stop time?

“I, uh,” I stammered, then looked at my amulet. It was still silver, like Barnabas's eyes when he touched the divine. A thread of sound was running through me, and when I chanced a look at the time line, it burst into existence so brilliantly that I almost fell.

“I don't know,” I said, instinct making me cover my eyes, though the brightness was in me. Blinking, I dropped my inner sight, and looked up. Barnabas was holding me upright. Seeing me okay, he let go and stepped back. “Uh, how do I undo it?” I asked them.

“Not yet!” Nakita exclaimed, her color high. “Wait until we get out.” She darted past us to the back door, sending her whoops of excitement to echo in the absolute stillness. The clock in the cop's office wasn't ticking when we passed it. The lights from the cars outside weren't moving. The only sound in the entire world was coming from us. It was as creepy as all get-out.
And I did it?

“Let's go,” Barnabas said, clearly subdued.

I followed him down the hall to where Nakita was pushing open the automatic door. Outside was even creepier, with no wind, no noise. It was as if we had walked into a painting. Everything felt flat. Nakita almost danced down the cement steps and to the shadowed parking lot. “Madison, you're getting good at this. I think we should try teaching you how to make a sword from your thoughts when this is done, okay?”

I cringed. All I wanted to do was go home. I wanted to get my body and go home and forget everything that had happened. But if I did, nothing would change. Not in heaven, not in earth, not in me. Nothing.

“How do I start time?” I whispered, confusion so thick in me it made me ill.

“I don't know.” Barnabas scuffed to a halt beside a cop car, turning to look as a ball of light burst out the still-open doors.

“Madison!” Grace exclaimed, darting circles around me. “You stopped time? That's wonderful! And how clever of you to exempt the divine!”

I had been wondering about that, but it wasn't as if I knew what I was doing.

“It would be if she knew how she did it,” Barnabas said, echoing my thoughts. He stood with his hands on his hips, watching Nakita doing her impression of a professional football player after a touchdown.

“What is your problem, Barney?” Nakita said, giving him a little shove as she finished. “Madison is finally getting the hang of this. You look like you just swallowed a scarab.”

Barnabas furrowed his brow, the skin tight around his eyes. “She found her body.”

Nakita's smile hesitated, her eyes becoming confused even as her delight lingered in her expression. “What?”

“She found her body, between the now and the next,” he said again, and even Grace's glow dimmed.

It was if the deadness of the world around us seeped into Nakita. She froze, unspoken thoughts turning her elation into ash. “Nakita,” I said, reaching out, and she took a step back, the sword in her hand dissolving into nothing. Her amulet went dark as the energy was reabsorbed, and her gaze fell from mine.

“I'm happy for you,” she said, not looking at me. “I know it's what you wanted.”

“Nakita . . .” Why was I feeling bad about this? If the seraphs weren't going to give me a real chance to make this work, then why should I stick around and be a part of a system that I didn't agree with? I could be with Josh then, and be normal. But she had turned away, and guilt hit me hard.

“Nakita!” I said more firmly, and she stopped. Feeling like a heel, I caught up with her and tried to get her to look at me. “I don't want to give this up, but what choice do I have?”

“You say you believe in choice,” she said, turning away. “But you don't really. Or you'd stay.”

Again she turned away, and this time I let her go. Grace came to hover over my shoulder, and Barnabas eased up on my other side. “Why does everyone think I should stick around when no one believes I can change things?”

“I believe you can change things,” Barnabas said, but I wasn't listening, and I stomped off. Nakita had found the street and was walking in front of cars that had been going fifty miles per hour, her pace stiff and her arms swinging. “I do,” he insisted as he caught up to me. “That's why I left Ron. I still think you can if you'd stick with it.”

He probably did, which made it all the harder.

“Madison,” he said as he drew me to a stop. We were at the curb, and the lights from the oncoming traffic lit his face, showing his pinched brow and his eyes, pleading with me. “You keep saying that no one is giving you a chance to see if your theories work, but they are. You're trying to change a system that has been in place since people looked up at the stars and wondered how they got there. It works for a reason, and you might make more progress if you'd take the time to see why a system is in place before trying to change it to yours. The seraphs are singing. I can hear them even down here. Change is happening; you simply don't see it. You might have to do something you don't want to for a while before you find the way to make your change happen.”

I couldn't say anything back, I was too depressed. Seeing me silent, he inclined his head, then turned to follow Nakita, walking fast as he tried to catch up.

“Nakita!” he called out, and I stared at him, my hand wrapped around my amulet. I think it was the longest thing he'd ever said to me, and it left me feeling even worse.

“I'm such an idiot,” I whispered to Grace.

“But you're
our
idiot,” she chimed out, and I winced.

“What do you think I should do?” I asked as I started to follow them, my sneakers barely lifting from the asphalt.

“First, you need to let go of the time line and start things moving,” she said, “before Ron comes to see what's going on.”

“Yeah.” Okay, let go of the time line. How does one do that?

“And I think you ought to go home and check in with your dad before he realizes I set his clocks back two hours,” Grace added. “He thinks it's . . . like, ten thirty. Same as here.”

“Oh, wow. Thanks, Grace.” The first inkling of hope started to seep back in, and I mentally added
talk to Nakita
to my list of things to do. She looked positively melancholy as she walked beside Barnabas, her head down as he talked to her.

“Well, once a guardian angel, always a guardian angel,” she said wryly, if a glowing ball of light could be wry. “And after that, you can meet us back in the graveyard to figure out how to fix this mess you made with Tammy. The seraphs are ticked. When did you learn how to change a person's aura?”

“Right before I learned how to stop time,” I said, thinking it wasn't right that my learning something had gotten me in trouble with the seraphs. Again.

“Great,” Grace said pointedly. “How about starting it back up? This is getting old. Any tighter of a grip, and you would have stopped your reapers, too.”

I nodded, bringing up the image of the time line in my imagination. It was brighter than usual, and it was starting to give me a headache.
Relax,
I thought, dropping my shoulders. My eyes flashed open when, just that easy, the noise and color rushed back into the world.

“Good job!” Grace said, dipping up and down as car lights flickered over us and a cry of outrage rose up from the cop shop. “Let's get out of here.”

I ran after Barnabas and Nakita, glad time was going again, but that lingering feeling of doubt wouldn't leave me. Yes, I had found my body, but no one seemed to care. Or rather, they wished I hadn't. What did it say about my life when the thing I wanted most of all was the very thing that would cause me to lose the things I loved?

It was almost too dark
to see when Barnabas back-winged and landed me gently on the roof of my house, the threat of rain making it darker than it typically would be. The muffling black was like a blanket, smothering. It seemed to spill out my darkened bedroom window to fill the entire world and make one big nothing. It was sort of how I felt inside.

My short hair flew up as Barnabas settled his wings, and I reached to smooth it, catching a glimpse of his wings before they vanished. Head down, he stood before me as if wanting to say something.

It had been a very quiet flight back—my thoughts on Nakita, his on who-knew-what. Leaving her had been hard, with her stalking to the graveyard to wait for me, probably thinking I was going to abandon her once I got my body back. Demus was somewhere this side of heaven, but since he was looking for the wrong resonance, I had a space of time to regroup. I was going to spend at least five minutes of it convincing my dad that nothing was going on and that I was going to bed.

There was that word again. Nothing. Nothing was exactly how I felt. Empty inside. After having been in my body for even that instant, I remembered what it was like to see, feel . . . to really be a part of existence. Now the shell that my amulet gave me felt like the nothing that it was.

“You sure you want me to leave?” Barnabas finally said, seeing as neither of us was moving from the roof.

I nodded, arms wrapped around myself, the slight chill seeping into me after the steamy warmth of Baxter. “It should only take an hour,” I said, wondering why he'd landed here instead of the front yard. “And I want to see if Josh can slip away. It'd be great if he could come back with us.” He, at least, would be glad I had found my body. And that it wasn't a mass of decayed yuck.

“An hour.” Looking uncomfortable, Barnabas flicked a dark gaze to me, then back to the cloudy skies. “I've got time to go back and get your phone, then. There's no reason to leave it there to trigger memories.”

“Thank you,” I said earnestly. I hoped he'd get it. There was no way to explain to my dad why it was in California.

“Unless you're sure you don't want me to wait for you?” Barnabas asked.

I shook my head. Nakita was there alone. Moving to the edge of the roof, I sat down to make the jump to the ground. Lucy, the neighbor's golden retriever, wasn't in the yard. I hesitated at the scrape of Barnabas's sneakers beside me, and I looked up to his shadowed face.

“What do you want me to say to Nakita?” Barnabas asked, his eyes catching the glow from the streetlamp. “She thinks you're leaving. Are you? You want me to lie to her?”

My depression thickened, frosted with guilt. I didn't know. I wanted to stay, but I couldn't do this if all I was doing was killing people. “Tell her that I'm thinking,” I said, unable to look at him anymore. “Tell her that I'm proud of her, and you, and that I want it to work. I want to stay. I
will
stay if . . .”

Barnabas didn't move, but somehow, he became darker. “What if the seraphs don't allow you to do things your way? They did send Demus.”

It was exactly what I was worried about, but I gave him a fake smile, my feet dangling into the black between heaven and earth. “Hey! I'm the dark timekeeper. What are they going to do? Kill me? They already did that.” I looked away, fear making me drop my eyes. They could take my amulet away and let black wings destroy me. A soul without an aura was fair game, and mine came from my amulet right now. But I wasn't going to take the job of dark timekeeper and send reapers out to kill people to save their souls if the reason I was doing it was because I was afraid. Even if I was.

“I'll talk to her,” he finally said, clearly seeing my fear.

“Thanks, Barnabas.” I pushed myself off the roof, my knees bending to absorb the impact of the fall. I looked up to try and see him wing out, but there was nothing except the barely moving black branches between me and the heavy clouds. Head down, I walked to the front door, looking at my shoelaces. Skulls and hearts. Maybe I should grow up.

A sliver of self-preservation made me hesitate before I went in. Grace said she'd fixed things with my dad, but it was still hard to grab the doorknob and turn it. Reaching for it, I felt a prickling through my aura. My fingers curled under, and I waited, breathing in the feeling.

“It's almost like . . . I'm being watched,” I said, then spun as my amulet grew warm.

My breath hissed in, and I watched a vertical line of divine silver crack the night. A somewhat short, thin man seemed to step through it sideways, the light making a silhouette of his tight, graying curls and his billowy clothes.

“Ron,” I hissed, exhaling everything I'd just taken in.

It was the light timekeeper himself, standing on my front lawn in the dark. My first thought to call Barnabas lit through me and died. I could stop time, damn it. I didn't need Barnabas's help. Besides, he was probably shielding his resonance and wouldn't be able to hear me. Cocking my hip, I stared at Ron as he finished materializing.

“What do you want?” I shot out, and he jerked his head up, seeming to be surprised I knew he was there. It was a brief flash of satisfaction in an otherwise sucky night.

The small man quickly recovered his pompous attitude, shaking out his billowy robes that were more suited to the back lot of a Hollywood set than anything that had to do with reality. And he thought what I wore was funny? “To know what you're up to?” he said, filling those few words with more sly bile than one would think possible. God help me, he knew everything.

My arms crossed over my middle. I didn't care if it made me look vulnerable. My day hadn't gone well, and there was no hiding it. “I'm trying not to get grounded,” I said lightly. “Maybe you should leave before I yell for help and get you thrown in jail for being a pervert.”

Ron only smiled that same, infuriating smile. “You learned how to stop time. Congratulations.”

Funny how it didn't sound like “congratulations” when he said it, and I looked at the porch light, wishing Grace was here to make a tree branch fall on him. “Yeah? So what?”

Ron took a step closer, head cocked as he lost his smug air. “I had a reaper out there.”

“So I noticed.” I rocked back toward my door, not liking this.

“So I wonder what you're doing . . .” he drawled as if I'd fill in the blank.

“Blah, blah, blah,” I said, making talking-hand motions. “Don't start monologing, Ron. I'm not doing anything.” I turned to go inside, gasping when Ron grabbed my arm. Spinning, I yanked out of his grip, shocked that he had touched me.

“Back off!” I exclaimed softly as I stared down the two steps at him, not wanting to explain to my dad who he was. My heart gave a thump and settled.

“You changed the mark's resonance,” Ron said, clearly angry as he looked up at me. “My reaper can't find her.”

Wahh, wahh, wahh,
I thought.
Madison isn't playing fair!
But what came out of my mouth was a short “Good.”

“You're going to get her killed!” Ron said.

My eyes narrowed. “Did that,” I said shortly. “Made a video. Posted it online. It's over, Ron. Go home.”

“It is not over,” he insisted, looking both angry and confused. “She isn't dead. You wouldn't kill her. Though I don't know why. What are you trying to do? You can't change things. They are what they are.”

I took a breath, feeling the disappointment of the entire day fall on me. But this time, it only made me mad. I didn't have to explain myself to him. Yanking my door open, I went inside, grimacing at him standing at the foot of the steps before I shut the door in his face.

Exhaling, I leaned back against it. I could hear my dad on the phone in the kitchen, his voice holding a hint of strain as it rose and fell. I pushed myself up and peeked outside through the narrow window beside the door. Ron was gone. Thank you, God.

The house looked quiet and normal, and my dad stepped from the kitchen with the landline phone stuck to his ear. My first thought was he was on the phone with Josh or Josh's mom, wanting to know where I was, but then he gave me a finger wave and I knew he thought it was still before my curfew.

“Bev, she's fine,” he said somewhat crossly, and I realized he was talking to my mom. “It was just a prank phone call.”

Oh, jeez. The cops at the juvie center had reached her. Worried, I glanced out the window for Ron, then came in, trying to hear her end of the conversation.

“I said, she's fine!” my dad said, rolling his eyes at me. “She's upstairs asleep, or I'd put her on the phone so you could see for yourself.”

I reached for the receiver, and he shook his head.
Why is my dad lying to my mom about where I am?

“Bev,” he said, his voice taking on that tightness that I remembered from when I was growing up. “Listen to me. Madison is fine. I am fine. We are getting along fine, and I think
you
have a problem with that. I can raise our daughter just as well as you can. She's a wonderful girl, and I honestly don't know where you come up with this stuff. I'll have her call you tomorrow. I'm not going to wake her up because someone is yanking your chain. Go take a valium or something.”

My eyes were wide as he hung up and exhaled, looking at the phone like he wanted to throw it at the wall. “Mom?” I asked, though it was obvious.

“She thinks I can't take care of you,” he said, the skin around his eyes wrinkling to make him look tired.

A sick feeling seemed to steal around my heart, and seeing it reflected in my eyes, he forced the irritation from his expression, smiling, though I knew he was still upset and likely would be for a few days. “Dad, you're taking care of me great,” I said, feeling lost, and I gave him a hug, my guilt rising high. My dying was not his fault, and I couldn't bear it if he thought it was.

He gave me a squeeze, then he stepped back. “Thanks,” he said softly. “Call your mother tomorrow. Trust me, you don't want to talk to her now,” he said as he went back into the kitchen to hang up the phone. “Someone told her you were on the West Coast in jail, having been accused of setting fire to an apartment complex.”

“Really?” I said, forcing a laugh as I wondered how a call had gotten past Grace.

My dad carefully hung up the phone, but his fingers were shaking, and the click seemed unusually loud. “Maybe if your mother would get into the twenty-first century and get caller ID, she wouldn't have to put up with cranks like that.”

Yawning, he covered his mouth with the back of his hand. “I can't believe how tired I am,” he said, dropping his wrist to look at his watch. “I tried to call you but you're either out of minutes or your battery is dead.” His eyes met mine, annoyance in them. “Again,” he added.

I couldn't bear lying to him, and I went to the fridge, pretending to get a glass of apple juice. I dumped out about a gallon of it every week. “Um, it's probably the battery,” I said as I stuck my head in the fridge and breathed in the cold air. “I, uh, kind of loaned it to Barnabas.”

“Madison!”

The exclamation was like a whip, and I pulled back out of the fridge, my eyes downcast. “I'll get it back tomorrow,” I promised.

“Use mine until you get yours back, okay?” he said as he handed me his. “Where did you and Josh eat?”

The heavy black phone felt funny in my grip, different from my slim pink one. The time was more than two hours off, but as soon as I looked at it, it magically shifted to the right time.

“Um, The Low D,” I said, scrambling to remember our cover story. “Nakita and Barnabas were with us. After Josh's track meet stuff.”

“You ate, right?”

“As much as I always do.” Smiling, I got a glass out of the cupboard and poured myself some juice. He wasn't saying anything, just looking at me with concern. “I might have something before I go to bed, though,” I added, and he seemed to lose much of his worry. “Can I go over to Nakita's tomorrow? We took a lot of pictures at the meet and I want to help her organize them.”

“Sure, but get your chores done
before
you leave this time,” he said. “I might not be here when you get up. I've got to go in tomorrow to close out a trial. I hate those ten-day biological runs. Half the time you either have to start them on the weekend or end them on one. Don't forget to empty the dishwasher. Take out the recyclables. And I want the porch swept before you leave. Front and back this time.”

It was the usual list, and I recapped the juice, hoping he would leave before I had to drink some. “Yes, Dad,” I almost groaned.

Again he yawned, looking at the clock over the stove. “I can't believe how tired I am. I must not have had enough coffee today.”

“I'm going to bed, too,” I said, leaving my juice on the counter and going to give him a hug good night. His arms went around me in a blanket of security, and he kissed the top of my head.

“I'm serious about calling your mom tomorrow,” he said softly, still holding me. “She's worried about you.”

“I will,” I promised.

He let go and I dropped back. Turning to leave, he hesitated. “You smell like smoke.”

I didn't know if he meant from the fire, or the cigarette stench from the police station, and I fumbled, saying, “I got a ride home with one of Josh's friends. The car stank.”

My dad accepted that, smiling faintly as he rubbed the top of his head, leaving his hair mussed. “Did you set your stops right?” he asked, meaning the photography stops.

“You know it!” I said cheerfully.

“I want to see the pictures when you're ready,” he said as he turned and shuffled into the hall. “I know it's the weekend, but don't stay up too late!” he said from the stairs.