Once Dead, Twice Shy (Madison Avery Trilogy #1)(5)
Author: Kim Harrison

From the corner of the boat, Susan asked, "Did you just shove her in the water?"

Whoops. This might be kind of hard to explain.

Barnabas grimaced, and with his hand gripping his amulet, he calmly said, "Who?"

Bill was staring at the sky, his gaze clearly tracking the dispersing black wings.

Susan’s expression became confused. "There was a girl," she said, sitting up. "She had black hair." Susan looked at Bill. "And a knife. It was a knife, wasn’t it? You saw it, right?"

Taking the towel from his head, Bill looked at the red stain and said, "I saw it."

Barnabas walked with perfect balance through the boat and dropped to one knee before Bill. "I didn’t see anything." Still holding his amulet, he peered into Bill’s eyes as he put the towel back against his cut. "You hit your head pretty hard. You feel okay? How many fingers am I holding up?"

Bill didn’t answer, and I looked over the water, avoiding Barnabas’s gaze. His eyes had gone silver again, and I thought to look now would be a mistake. "Bill hit his head," Barnabas said calmly. "He needs to go to the dock and get it looked at."

Like magic, the fear and confusion turned to concern as everyone rearranged themselves on the two boats. My knees were shaking as Barnabas got our boat started, and in the sudden noise, I leaned into him. "They won’t remember?" I asked, not realizing he had the skill to change memories.

Barnabas slid out from behind the wheel. "You drive," he said shortly. Putting a hand on my shoulder, he pushed me into the seat. "Hurry up before someone remembers you didn’t drive out here."

He sounded peeved and I started fiddling with the levers. Yeah, I could drive a freaking boat. I’d grown up in the Florida Keys and had been able to put a boat in a slip before I could ride a bike.

Barnabas was stowing the skis and wet ropes when I shifted into a slow crawl. The other boat had taken off fast, and I followed its path to make the ride easier. Susan was on her cell phone, shouting, "He hit his head on the ski jump! Camp Hidden Lake. The one with the big red canoe over the road? We’re headed for the dock. He’s awake but needs stitches, maybe."

Edging into a faster speed, I pressed into the cooling vinyl and felt my shoulder go cold where Barnabas had touched it. The black wings were gone, apart from a single smudge skirting the edge of the lake. The scythe had been prevented, but Barnabas wasn’t happy.

Closing her phone, Susan wobbled back to sit beside Bill at the back of the boat. "Hey," she said, shouting over the engine noise. "I’ve got an ambulance coming. You doing okay?"

He was flushed and he looked confused. "Where’s the girl with the sword?" he asked, and I caught Barnabas making the «crazy» sign, twirling his finger beside his ear.

"Take it easy," Susan said, softer, but still almost yelling. "We’ll be there in a minute."

The lights of the ambulance at the dock gave me a point to aim at, and I slowed our speed as we closed in. People had gathered, and I hoped Barnabas and I could make our escape before we were noticed.

"Where’s the girl with the sword?" Bill asked again, and Barnabas went to sit on his other side.

"There is no girl with a sword," he said tightly.

"I saw her," he insisted. "She had black hair. You had a sword too. Where’s your sword?"

I glanced back and Barnabas gave me a tired look, making me feel like I’d really messed this up. Maybe having to change people’s memories was a sign of sloppiness.

"Just relax, Bill," the light reaper was saying. "You hit your head hard."

I gripped the wheel tighter and wondered if Bill’s head injury made him less susceptible to having his memory changed. Just how badly had I screwed this up? Jeez, all I’d done was shove Susan out of the way. I wasn’t going to just stand there and let her be killed. Susan was blissfully ignorant. She was alive. She would finish her life and probably do something great with it, or she never would’ve been unfairly targeted by the dark reapers in the first place.

My furrowed brow eased, and I pulled a strand of spray-damp hair out of my eyes. I was glad I’d intervened, and nothing Barnabas could say would convince me it hadn’t been the right thing to do. I couldn’t help but feel a little sheepish, though. Two years of martial arts practice, and all I’d done was shove her out of the way?

Barnabas left Bill and Susan clustered together on the back bench and sat in the seat across from mine. "I put in for a guardian angel," he said as he leaned close enough for me to catch the scent of sunflowers at dusk. "Susan will be fine."

"Good." I eased the throttle down as we neared the dock, refusing to drop his gaze. "That wasn’t so bad, was it?"

Leaning back, he huffed. "You have no idea the trouble you caused," he said. "Saints protect you, Madison. Five people saw her cut right through you. Five people I have to cobble alternate memories for. You think thought-touching is hard, you should try altering memories. I shouldn’t have brought you. I knew it wasn’t safe."

I clenched my teeth and stared at the approaching dock, thick with people. "I saved her life. Wasn’t that the point?"

"You were identified by a reaper," he said darkly. "You said you’d simply observe, and you go and…get recognized! They know the resonance your amulet gives off now. They can follow it. Find you."

I took a breath to protest. Reapers had amulet resonances; living people had auras. Either could be used by reapers to find people both at a great distance and close-up, sort of like a noisy fingerprint or photo. "Are you telling me I should have let her die, Barney?" I said bitterly, knowing he hated the nickname. "Let that reaper cut her down just so I wouldn’t get recognized? Call Ron. He can change my amulet’s resonance. He has before."

Arms crossed over his chest, Barnabas frowned. I was right, though, and he knew it. "I’m going to have to, aren’t I?" he said, sounding like the seventeen-year-old he was masquerading as. "I haven’t been pinged in three hundred years. Apart from your reap, that is. I need to get my resonance changed, now, too." Sullen, he stared ahead. A sullen angel. How sweet.

But the more I thought about it, the worse I felt. It seemed that ever since I’d made his acquaintance, I’d been screwing up his life. My special talent. Now he had to call on his boss to fix things, and I knew he hated looking bad. "Sorry," I said softly, but I knew he heard me.

"Until we get the resonance of our amulets changed, we’re as vulnerable as ducks sitting on the water," he muttered.