Once Dead Twice Shy Page 0,22

aghast. "After what I told you?" Ron was going to be royally P.O.'ed if I'd blown Josh's new memory for nothing. Not to mention he'd be mad at me for telling my guardian angel about the amulet. What did he expect, though? I was freaking dead. I think she would have figured it out eventually, first-sphere or not.

Josh was smiling as if it was a big joke. "I'll help you with your bike, Mad Madison. Can you get home from here?"

I stared at his empty seat when he got out, steaming from the nickname. I hated it. Hated it passionately. The first time I'd been sent to the principal's office it had been because I'd shoved a girl down for singing it. I'd been six, and it took most of my elementary school career to live it down.

My eyes closed in a long blink so I could find my temper, and I followed him. "Josh!" I exclaimed as I met him in back. "I'm not making this up. You know that's what happened! You were there!"

"It was a dream," he said as he put the tailgate down.

Frustrated, I put a fist on my hip. He didn't want it to be real, because if it was, he'd feel like it was his fault, like he should have insisted he take me home. "A dream that you keep having and I know all about?" I prompted, stepping back as the bike scraped across the liner.

"Sure," he said around a grunt as he lifted it free. "My mom would say it means I have a psychological hang-up about you. I'll get over it."

"You'll get dead!" I exclaimed, then lowered my voice as cars passed us not ten feet away. "Reapers can't find me, but they can find you."

"These are the guys with the scythes, right?" he asked, laughing.

I took my bike as he rolled it between us. "Josh, you were there the night I crashed. Kairos has seen you. He's looking for me, and he's going to use you to do it. The only reason you're safe right now is because you're with me."

He smiled, squinting in the sun. "A regular Wonder Woman, are you?"

"Stop laughing at me!" I said, imagining what was going to happen when school started back up. He and his friends were going to have a good laugh over this. If he survived. "It's the amulet that protects you, not me!" I couldn't tell him about my guardian angel. Not yet. He'd laugh his butt off.

His eyes flicked to the stone resting against my lower neck, and his amusement dimmed.

A black shadow ran over the parking lot and sent a spike of fear through me. I looked up to see a black wing. It kept moving, but there were three more across the street. This was so not good. In the ten seconds he'd been away from me, they'd gotten a whiff of him. "Just stay with me until Barnabas gets back, okay?"

"Barnabas?" he questioned, then shoved his tailgate up. "That's the guy from the prom."

"Yes." Wings, amulet, can't miss him.

His face was thoughtful as he took my bike from me and pushed it toward the shop.

"Look," I said, thinking he was starting to believe. "Do you see those things?"

I pointed to the slime-coated sheets of black slumped atop the post office's roof, and his smile quirked again. "The crows, Madison?"

I put a hand on my bike and stopped him from taking it inside. "They only look like crows, and I think the fact that you can see them at all means you've been marked." Susan had seen them yesterday too, from the boat. "They're called black wings. Reapers can use them to zero in on their victims. If you get too far from me, death is going to be knocking on your door." And where the devil is my guardian angel? I thought, suddenly realizing she was absent.

"Reapers," he said, chuckling, and I yanked the bike to a stop when he pushed it forward.

"Kairos knows your aura resonance. He can find you. Listen to me."

I wouldn't let him move the bike, and he suddenly shoved it back at me. "You are one weird chick, Madison."

"Josh, I'm serious!"

He didn't even turn around as he opened his truck door, saying over his shoulder, "What you are is seriously messed up. Don't talk to me, okay?"

A noise of frustration escaped me as he cranked his music and backed his truck up. His neck was red as he put it in gear,