Once Dead Twice Shy Page 0,11
a hand over his frizzy hair, turning it even more untidy, in a charmingly attractive way. "Few angels transgress, but those who have often take a reaper path to make amends. And when they absolve themselves, they return to their other duties."
Amends? Absolution? Barnabas was a reaper because he'd gotten in trouble? And here I was, getting him in more of it. I suppose saving lives would look good on any angel's résumé. "What did you do?" I asked.
Barnabas crossed his arms and leaned against the wall. "I'm a light reaper out of a sense of moral responsibility, not because I displeased the seraphs. I don't care what they think."
I'd heard Barnabas swear by - or at - seraphs before as we sat on my roof and pitched stones at the bats. I knew all too well he didn't think much of the high muckety-mucks in the angel realm, but I couldn't help but wonder what the seraphs did. I suppose it took a lot to run a universe.
Still not looking at me, Barnabas pushed off the wall and moved to stand at the edge of the light. He wasn't telling me something, a feeling that grew when he put his hands on his hips and stared out at the hot parking lot. "She's right, though. Something smells worse than a black wing in the sun," he said, almost to himself. "Nakita said you have Kairos's stone. That's not possible. He's..." Barnabas turned, chilling me with his expression. "Madison, I've been thinking. When Ron comes, I'm going to ask him to give your instruction to someone else."
My lips parted, and I felt like I'd been socked in the gut. Suddenly it made a lot more sense. He's giving up on me. God, I must be more stupid than I thought. Hurt and not knowing what else to do, I slid off the wall, scraping the back of my legs when I didn't push out far enough. Tears pricked at my eyes, and, grabbing my bike, I started for the distant entryway. I was going home. Ron could find me there.
"Where are you going?" Barnabas said as I swung my leg over my bike.
"Home." Being dead sucked. I couldn't tell anyone, and now I was going to be passed around like a Christmas fruitcake no one wanted. If Barnabas didn't want me around, that was fine with me. But to stand there while he told Ron was humiliating.
"Madison, it's not that you're failing me. I can't teach you," Barnabas said, his brown eyes holding both worry and sympathy.
"Because I'm dead and stupid. I got that part," I said miserably.
"You're not stupid. I can't teach you because of whose amulet you've got."
His words held a scary amount of concern, and I stopped, suddenly frightened. In all this time, Ron had never been able to figure out what kind of amulet I'd taken. "Kairos's amulet?" I whispered, then stiffened at the sudden tickling between my shoulder blades. I froze, my gaze darting to the shadows, wondering if they hadn't just jumped forward. Barnabas's gaze went behind me, and his expression turned to an odd mix of relief and caution.
"I've only got a moment. Let's see your amulets," came the timekeeper's distinctively crisp voice.
I spun to see a small man squinting in the sun. "Ron," I said softly as he strode forward, his loose gray robes just as bad as Barnabas's duster in terms of being totally wrong for the heat. I glanced at the school, hoping no one saw me with them. I had a bad enough reputation already for being weird. Six months, and I was still the new girl. Maybe I should start dressing down. No one else had purple hair.
Chronos - Ron for short - looked like a cross between a wizard and Gandhi, having a martial arts - like robe and brown eyes that gave me the impression he could see around corners. His eyebrows were blond from the sun but his skin and tightly curling hair were dark. Shorter than me, he nevertheless had a huge presence about him. It might have been his voice, which was deeper than one would expect. He had a pleasant, crisp accent, as if he had a lot to say and not a lot of time to say it.
He moved fast, too, and had an amulet that allowed him to tap into the time stream and kept him from aging, since unlike the reapers, timekeepers were human for some reason. Which begged