Worried, I looked behind us to the school. When I turned back, Barnabas had found his wings as well. His were white, and I wondered if they would eventually change color like his amulet had.

I had less than twenty-four hours to try to help some nameless soul who was about to find himself at the center of a fight for his very life. And we, I thought as Barnabas wrapped an arm around my waist and I stepped backward upon his feet so he could carry me into the air, are the only ones who can save him. We were bringing both his salvation and his death…because if I couldn’t convince him to make a different choice, Nakita was going to kill him.

Two

Fort Banks Mall was a wave of air-conditioned coolness. I could actually feel the heat of the sun leave me as I waited by the information stand for Barnabas and Nakita, who were currently having a hushed argument just inside the double glass doors. Grace, my onetime guardian angel now turned messenger, was humming somewhere above me. The softball-size glowing ball of light had joined us almost as soon as we’d gotten airborne, and it was with her seraph-based help that we’d found this small town in the middle of the cornfields.

I’d only actually seen Grace the few times I’d dissociated from my amulet—and almost killed myself for good, incidentally. Though tiny, she’d been beautiful, with a face too bright to look at. Most times, she appeared as a haze of glowing light, sort of like the spots you sometimes get in photographs. That was exactly how she showed up on film, and it was the only way a normal human would know she was around. I could hear her. My reapers could, too, but humans could not. Lucky them.

“There once was a girl timekeeper,” Grace sang cheerfully as she dropped down to me, bored with playing in the echoes at the ceiling, “who didn’t agree with her reaper. So she fought the good fight, thinking choice just might, get the bad guy to think a bit deeper.”

“Thanks, Grace,” I said wryly.

She brightened, her giggle sounding like falling water. Grace liked her new job of messenger, which she had gained when I first gave her a name. I’d granted her the promotion accidentally, not knowing that names had that much power in the angelic realm. I think the seraphs assigned her to me as punishment, but I’d have it no other way, limericks or not.

“What’s with the reapers?” she asked, going invisible when she landed on the top of the trash can beside me. When her wings stopped, she quit glowing.

“You make a dark reaper and a former light reaper work together and see if they don’t have issues,” I said, sighing as I leaned against the directory and waited. My hand went around my amulet and, in my mind, I reached out to the divine to warp the light around the black stone. Like magic—which it sort of was—the river-smooth stone vanished even though its weight was still heavy in my palm. Making my amulet disappear was one of the first things Nakita had taught me. Someday, I’d be able to make it look like something else, but for now, this was all I could manage.

Grace’s wings blurred into sight at my show of “skill,” then vanished. “At least they’re talking.”

“They aren’t talking; they’re arguing,” I said. This was going to be harder than I thought if they were going to “discuss” everything to death. We were here; it was time to start looking for the mark.

“You didn’t think changing heaven and earth was going to be easy, did you?” Grace asked, and I frowned.

“It’d be easier if I could flash forward in the time lines and see the future,” I complained.

“Give it a chance,” Grace said dryly. “You severely damaged your amulet when you dissociated from it.”

I winced at the accusation in her tone. She’d told me not to do it, and I’d ignored her. Having done so had saved me, but until my amulet fixed itself, it would be the seraphs who’d be reading the time lines and sending out my dark reapers to kill people.

Seraphs reading the time lines was an imperfect proposition in itself. They could do it, but they had a hard time separating past from future, which was one reason why timekeepers were human. Human timekeepers—which, in this case, would be me—also allowed flexibility over the millennia, sort of giving heaven a way to adapt as perfectly imperfect humans changed their relationship with life, the universe, and everything.

Scythings were taking place that I didn’t know about, and it bothered me. The seraphs knew I wanted to change things, and I couldn’t help but feel as if I’d been given this scything as a trial. If I couldn’t get this guy to see a new choice and make a different decision, how could I hope to get my dark reapers to?

Seeing me depressed, Grace hovered closer. “Don’t worry,” she soothed. “It won’t be long before you’re reading the time lines. I think you’re already doing so unconsciously. Your instinct to stop at the mall was a good one. I didn’t know he was here.”

“Is he?” I asked, and she brightened, rising up as Barnabas and Nakita finally came to some agreement and headed our way. Maybe she was right. There had been a faint tickling through my mind as we’d flown over the mall, sort of like the feeling of someone watching me. When I’d mentioned it to Barnabas, he had immediately angled for the parking lot. It had given me a boost of confidence, but now, as I looked over the place, I wondered if it had been a true feeling or simply wanting to get my feet back on the earth. The mall didn’t look very promising.

It was Monday, so there weren’t many people, mostly moms dragging their kids from store to store for school clothes, or kids dragging their moms for the same thing. By an earring cart, a couple of girls were eyeing me. I scuffed my yellow sneakers on the tile, feeling like I fit right in with my punky hair with the purple tips.

“Do you think Josh is okay?” I asked Grace as I fussed with my short-sleeved, red-and-black-checked shirt. If I’d known that I was going on a reap prevention this morning, I might have worn something a little flashier.

“He’ll be fine,” Grace said as Barnabas came to a halt before us. Nakita’s steps were precise and sure, but upon seeing his slouch she lost some of her upright posture, still trying to fit in as she eyed the girls at the kiosk.

“So, Grace,” Barnabas said bluntly, “you sure the seraphs couldn’t give you anything more about this mark?”

I sighed. Mark. That was what reapers called potential victims. As in “he won’t be anything but a mark on a tombstone.”

Nakita smirked, tossing her hair back and smiling at the round haze that was Grace. The original message that had gotten us out of school and out here had been only for her, but Barnabas had listened in. “What’s the matter, Barnabas? Not enough information for you? I thought you were good at this.”

It was positively catty, and as Barnabas and Nakita started right back up again, I sent my gaze roving. A group of guys by the magazine store had noticed us, or Nakita, rather, her midriff showing in flashes as she lectured Barnabas about seraph supremacy. Spinning on a heel, I walked away from their argument to sit at one of the empty tables. The food court felt right, but I couldn’t do this by feel. I had to know.

Immediately their argument switched to who was ticking me off the most, and I heard them start to follow. Grace was favoring them with one of her limericks about “the reapers did fight, with all of their might, till their keeper did leave them behind.” Honestly, I was about to. They weren’t helping at all.

Finding a table that was sort of clean, I dragged out a chair to sit with my back to the doors. Silent at last, the two reapers took their places on either side of me. Nakita set her empty purse on her lap, nervously fingering her amulet as she watched the girls at the earring kiosk. Her expression was worried—not because of my mood, but because the girls were Gothed to the max in black and lace and she was wearing a red shirt. Barnabas was sullen as he slouched in his faded tee, looking good anyway with his curly hair all over the place.