Once Dead, Twice Shy (Madison Avery Trilogy #1)(37)
Author: Kim Harrison

He didn’t care about Josh. Not really. Warning was thick in me, and I pulled out from under his grip. And why was he blaming Barnabas? Barnabas said it was my amulet that prevented me from thought-touching, not my lack of skill or lack of trying – and Ron should have known that. He was hiding something. "Grace said I cracked it," I said warily, but I wouldn’t pull it from behind my shirt to show him.

Behind Ron, Barnabas stood stiff and tense. I saw a hint of the avenging angel in him as his eyes silvered. "I’m going home," he said to Ron, pain showing in his brow. "They’ll let me in. They have to. I have to tell them about the black wings. They can get them out of her."

Home? I thought. As in heaven? Why wouldn’t they let him in? He wasn’t just earthbound, but barred from heaven? Just who were the bad guys here?

Fear slid through me like a knife, born of the sudden realization that everything I thought was true probably wasn’t.

"Barnabas, shut up," Ron said as he rose between us, smaller than Barnabas but deathly serious. "I’ll send word, and Nakita will be fine. They won’t let you back, and I’ve got work to do. Stay with Madison. Try to keep her out of trouble. And keep your mouth shut!" His eyes were almost black, carrying a mix of anger, frustration, and…uncertainty. "You understand me? I can’t fix this if you interfere. Keep your mouth…shut."

The image of Nakita arched in pain, white wings stretched high as she screamed, lifted through my memory. I had hurt one of heaven’s angels. Who was Barnabas? Who had I been spending my nights with on my roof?

Scared, I watched Ron stride from the building, vanishing as he found the sun. I turned to Barnabas, shrinking back when he made a sound of anger and flopped into the chair next to me, his brow furrowed and his expression cross. He didn’t move. Not one fidget or blink.

"She was trying to kill me," I said. "She was trying to kill Josh! She was going to – "

"Take you to Kairos. You said that," he said abruptly. There was a hint of fear in him. It wasn’t fear of me, but fear for himself. He wasn’t going to shut up as Ron had told him, and I shivered.

"So many religions, Madison," he said, "but only one resting place, and she was going to put you right back on that path that you skipped off when you claimed Kairos’s amulet."

"Nakita’s not from hell," I guessed, knowing my face was white. "You are."

Barnabas jerked straight. "Me? No," he said, coloring as if embarrassed. "Not hell. I don’t even know if there is such a place other than what we make for ourselves. But I’m not from heaven…anymore. I left because I disagreed with seraph fate. They won’t let me back. They won’t let any of us light reapers back." Jaw tight, he exhaled, putting a hand to his head and rubbing his temples. "I should have told you, but it’s embarrassing."

"But you’re a light reaper!" I said, confused. "Light is good; dark is bad."

He scowled at me. "Light is for human choice, easily seen. Dark is for hidden seraph fate, no choice to glean."

"Oh! That would have been nice to know!" I shouted. "How come no one bothered to tell me that?!" I added, frustrated, scared, and a little relieved that Barnabas wasn’t from hell, just kicked out of heaven. There was a difference, right?

The receptionist peeked out from a doorway, disappearing when she decided I was upset about Josh, not a little misunderstanding about light and dark.

Barnabas’s thoughts were clearly somewhere else. "I don’t understand what Ron is doing," he said to himself, gaze distant, and unaware that I was having a meltdown. "I believe in choice, but after what’s happened, I don’t know. You’re a nice person, Madison, and I like you, but you put black wings in Nakita. That’s…a terrible thing. Maybe the seraphs are right. Maybe you need to go where you belong. Maybe fate has a place in the world. Fighting it has only made things worse."

Where I belong? Does he mean like home with my dad, or like dead? I swallowed hard. I was not the one who’d been kicked out of heaven. "It was an accident."

"Was it an accident that you worked to learn how to go invisible?" he asked earnestly. "Was it an accident that you used that knowledge to break the hold Nakita’s amulet had on you? Was it an accident that she fell through you? Or was it fate?" His head slowly shook back and forth, dark curls shifting. "I should’ve realized what Ron was doing sooner." His eyes narrowed. "I still don’t believe it. I didn’t want to believe it."

My mouth was dry. Just what was Ron doing? Barnabas knew something I didn’t, and by God, I was going to find out. "Barnabas," I started, but the phone at the desk hummed and the nurse came back to answer it. She gave me an encouraging smile when she sat down, telling me that Josh was okay. Or at least not getting any worse. Distracted, I settled back in my chair, and, hearing a dry leaf crunch, I picked it out of my hair. I held it for a moment, then set it on the nearby table. Did I really want to know the truth? Yeah. I do.

I watched the line Barnabas’s duster made against the dull carpet as I screwed my courage up, wondering if the coat was his wings in disguise. My mind shifted back to Ron dragging Barnabas away from me at the school’s parking lot, and then just now, when Ron cautioned Barnabas to keep his mouth shut so he could fix things, the awful feeling of Ron’s hand on me when he tried to comfort me. "Barnabas," I whispered, "what’s Ron not telling me?"

Looking up, I saw his jaw clench. "It’s not my place."

Fear made my heart give a thump, but then it stopped. "You want to tell me. You tried at the school parking lot, and I see you want to tell me now. If you believe in choice, tell me so I can make a good one."

His eyes lifted, falling first upon my amulet, then my eyes, and I shivered.

"Ron is hiding who you are from the seraphs so he can shift the balance between fate and choice by misleading you," he said flatly. "That’s what I think he’s doing."

"He said he was talking to them!" I argued, then hesitated. "Misleading me? Why?"

Eyes fixed on mine, Barnabas quietly said, "You’re the new timekeeper, Madison. The dark one."

I blinked. "I am not," I said belligerently.

But instead of arguing with me, he smiled bitterly. "I told you there’s a reason you can’t touch my thoughts," he said, his gaze alighting on my amulet. "You’ve got a dark timekeeper amulet. If it were otherwise, our resonances would be close enough that we could talk, but they are on opposite ends of the spectrum. Ron knows that. Ron knows everything. He’s just not saying anything."