Once Dead, Twice Shy (Madison Avery Trilogy #1)(16)
Author: Kim Harrison

My chest hurt, and I took a deep breath to explain. "At least he didn’t kill you. Hey, can you slow down? There are other people here."

"He might follow us," he said. I put a comforting hand on his arm, but it made him jump.

"He can’t track you by your aura because of my amulet – as long as you are close to me, you’re safe."

From the bell came a voice chiming, "It’s the angel, baby, not your amulet."

"Yeah," I shot back, "but he won’t believe that."

Crap. I closed my mouth and cringed. Josh slowed down as a cop car raced past us, heading for the accident. Pulling to the curb, he turned to me. "Who are you talking to? Please, please, please don’t tell me it’s dead people."

My head started to hurt. I was really stupid sometimes. "Uh, my, uh, guardian angel," I said hesitantly. "She’s, uh, on your Harley bell."

"Guardian angel?"

I gave him a sickly smile. "She’s a Guardian, Reaper-Augmented Cherub, Extinction Security, one-seventy-six. Or G.R.A.C.E.S. one-seventy-six for short." I couldn’t call her that. Grace, though, maybe.

Josh began to protest, and Grace made the bell ping. Josh stared at it, white-faced. "Madison?" he said softly.

"Yes?"

"You’re dead?"

I nodded. "Yup."

He swallowed, both hands on the wheel as he looked up through the strip of blue-tinted glass to the sky. "And those aren’t crows?"

Wincing, I noted the black wings were at the horizon again, circling. "No," I said, and Josh let his forehead hit the steering wheel with a soft thump.

"But you’re okay?" he said to his knees.

"Because I have my amulet," I said, holding it. "You’re okay because Ron left me with a guardian angel while he tries to convince the seraphs to let me keep it." Twisting, I turned to look behind us. "Kairos knows your aura resonance from the prom, but he can’t see it if you’re with me. But maybe we should, uh, get moving again."

Not saying a word, Josh checked behind him and put the truck back in gear. We headed through town by way of the side roads. "Uh," I said uncertainly, "you want to come over to my house for a sandwich?"

"S-sure."

I licked my lips, not liking his shell-shocked expression as he made a left to get on the interstate and take the long way to the other side of town. I knew how it felt to have death touch you, realizing you’d be dead but for the whim of something that really didn’t care one way or the other.

"I’m sorry you got involved," I said, remembering Josh’s voice when he slid down the slope that night, trying to reach me even as Kairos cut my thread of life. "You were there. It wasn’t a dream. But I want to thank you. Because of you, I didn’t die alone."

CHAPTER 5

Josh sat uneasily at the rectangular table in the kitchen, his legs stretching from one end to the other. He had made two sandwiches for himself, and the shaved ham spilled out all over. He liked ice in his pop, and barbecue-flavored chips. Me, I had a thin sandwich, a handful of chips, and a glass of iced tea. I enviously watched him slam down half his soda in one gulp. I hadn’t been hungry since I’d hit ctrl/alt/del. Coming up with excuses for my dad as to why I wasn’t eating was getting harder.

The kitchen hadn’t been remodeled since the house was built, and the white-and-yellow-tiled splashboard and the cream-colored walls looked tired. The cupboards were a blah brown, and the fridge was the one I remembered from before my parents separated. But tucked in a corner was a state-of-the-art coffeemaker, proving my dad had his priorities. There was a small lazy Susan with napkins, salt and pepper, and a dusty ashtray sitting right where it would be in my mom’s kitchen – whispers of her still in my dad’s life though she’d been gone for years.

Josh looked at my sandwich as I sat across from him. "Is that all you’re going to eat?" he questioned, and I shrugged.

"I don’t sleep much, either," I said as I fingered a chip and wondered if Grace, currently singing limericks in the light fixture, ate anything. Barnabas didn’t. "Late-night TV gets old after a few months."

Late-night TV, uninterrupted Internet surfing, staring at the ceiling when Barnabas was through with me…not much fun when you had no one to share it with. The info on auras I’d gotten off the Internet hadn’t helped. Neither had the stuff on angels. Barnabas had laughed so hard he’d almost rolled off the roof when I’d brought out my laptop to show him before our nightly – and apparently useless – attempts at teaching me how to touch thoughts. I’ve been failing because I have Kairos’s amulet? I thought, fingering it. Maybe it was like trying to get a U.S. hair dryer to work in a British socket.

"So you’re dead," Josh said around his full mouth.

The iced tea made my teeth ache, and I glanced at the clock. It’s been hours. Where are they? "Yup."

"And that amulet gives you a body," he prompted.

"The solid illusion of one, yes," I said, fidgeting. "It also hides me from the black wings so they don’t suck my soul away. A soul without a body is fair game. That’s why they anticipate reaps, hoping to snitch some. They don’t show up at normal deaths – just when you’ve been marked early." I pulled the crusts off my sandwich, but I didn’t have it in me to eat it.

He eyed the mutilated crust. "Keep your amulet on, ‘kay? Black wings give me the creeps."

"Not a problem." I should have practiced more, I thought. Then again, if I had a dark timekeeper stone, my aura resonance would shift far from Barnabas’s when I tried to use it. More like Nakita’s. Maybe I could touch thoughts with Nakita?

"So…" Josh said hesitantly, bringing my wandering thoughts back. "Where’s your real one? Body, I mean." His brow pinched. "You didn’t bury it in the backyard, did you?"

"Kairos has it," I admitted, a sliver of fear flickering through me. "At least, he stole it out of the morgue when I…ran."

Josh shifted his feet and bumped my chair leg. "That’s ugly. Kairos was that guy in the black car, right? He’s a reaper?"

I winced, not wanting to tell him he was a keeper of time. It sounded so lame. "He’s actually the dark reapers’ head guy," I said, thinking that was marginally better. "Barnabas is a light reaper. He tries to save the people that the dark reapers target."

Josh took another bite and wiped the corner of his mouth. "Like you?"

"Yes, but he messed up because it was my birthday." Fidgeting, I rearranged the chips on my plate. "He thought Kairos was going after you, actually."