“Uh,” Barnabas stammered, backing up when Ron stepped forward to get in his face. “I didn’t lie!” he yelped. “You assumed she could when I said she was ready. And she is.”
He thinks I’m ready? Even when we can’t thought-touch?
Ron’s eyes narrowed. “You knew I wouldn’t allow her on a prevention until she could touch thoughts.
Because of it, five memories had to be shifted.Five! ”
My brief elation that Barnabas had thought I was ready evaporated, and I wished I’d kept my mouth shut. Puppy presents on the rug, this sucked.
“It doesn’t matter how much we practice, Madison will not be able to touch thoughts with me,”
Barnabas protested, his face going red. “It’s her amulet, not her!”
“Good God almighty,” Ron interrupted, turning away with a hand in the air. “I can’t keep this from the seraphs. Can you imagine the fervor? You simply haven’t spent enough time with her. Learning how to thought-touch is done slowly, notbang and you can do it.”
Barnabas’s eyebrows furrowed. “I never said she wouldn’t be able to learn how to touch thoughts with someone, just not me. Sir,” he said, glancing at me, “Nakita was the dark reaper assigned to the scything.
She recognized Madison’s stone. Madison has Kairos’s amulet!”
The timekeeper went stock-still. Alarm turned to wide-eyed surprise. Seeing his gaze touch upon my amulet, I put my fist around the stone so firmly that the silver wires cradling it bit deep. It was mine. I’d claimed it and no one was going to get it without a fight. Not even Kairos, whoever he was.
“Kairos?” Ron whispered, and then, seeing my fear, he broke eye contact with me.
“Yes, and if she has Kairos’s amulet,” Barnabas said, “then maybe—”
“Hush,” Ron whispered, cutting his words off, and Barnabas fumed. “I knew it wasn’t a regular reaper’s stone, but Kairos’s? Are you sure that’s what Nakita said?”
Barnabas was standing stiffly. “I was there,sir. ”
Nakita also said I belonged to them, which makes me feel all peachy-keen.I just wanted to be who I was before, blissfully ignorant about reapers and timekeepers and black wings. Maybe if I ignored it, it would go away.
Ron squinted at us, his stiff stance giving off a sudden air of mistrust. He gestured to the edge of the shadow. “Go watch the sky, Barnabas.”
Silent, Barnabas shifted to the edge of the sun and sent his gaze upward. A chill went through me.
Everything had changed in an instant—because of Kairos.
“Who’s Kairos?” I asked, turning my attention back to Ron.
“My counterpart.” Ron had his hands on his hips as he looked uneasily out from the shelter of the tree and into the hot parking lot. “Light reapers, dark reapers. Light timekeeper, dark timekeeper. You didn’t think I was the only one, did you? Everything has a balance, and Kairos is mine. Kairos watches the threads of time weave into possible futures and sends dark reapers to scythe people early. I spend more time trying to second-guess him than anything else.”
He said the last word like it was a curse. My heart was pounding again, and I crossed my arms over my chest as if I could make it stop. Okay. I had swiped a timekeeper’s amulet. Crap, I had to get rid of this thing, but it wasn’t like I could borrow a reaper’s amulet and return this one to Kairos. Keeping it was my only option. I’d never sleep again. Good thing I didn’t need to.
“No wonder Seth hasn’t come back,” I said, trying to work this through to a conclusion. “I bet he’s hiding from Kairos.”
Frowning, Ron shifted deeper into the shadow to lean against the wall beside me. “A reaper wouldn’t be able to use Kairos’s amulet, just as a timekeeper can’t use a reaper’s,” he said. “Nakita must be mistaken. Unless”—Ron’s eyebrows rose in a private thought as he turned sideways to look at me—“it wasn’t a reaper who killed you. Perhaps Kairos was doing a little extracurricular scything on his own.”
Barnabas looked over his shoulder at that, and Ron waved him to be quiet. Again.
“What didSeth look like?” Ron asked, his voice deceptively mild.
Nervous, I levered myself up to sit on the wall, glancing at Barnabas, but he had returned his gaze to the sky. I drew my knees to my chin, not wanting to remember that night, but the memory came back with crystal clarity. “Dark complexion,” I said. “Dark wavy hair. Nice accent.”Good kisser, I added in my thoughts, cringing.Oh, God. I’ve kissed the guy who killed me.