Once Dead Twice Shy Page 0,60

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."

Reaching down, I touched the black stone, then dropped it. "Maybe it doesn't work because I'm dead."

Barnabas turned away, and his chest rose and fell in a heavy sigh. "The only reason you succeeded in claiming a timekeeper's amulet is because you are one."

"No!" I exclaimed. "I was able to claim it because I was human."

He shook his head. "You could touch it because you were human, but you claimed it because of who you are. You went on to teach yourself how to dissociate yourself from it and still hold that claim. You commanded Grace, gave her a name that bound her and broke the charge that Ron put on her. You're a rising timekeeper, Madison, one of two people born to this millennium with the ability to survive the bending of time."

I stared at him, panic starting to wind its way through my spine. Me? A dark timekeeper? I didn't believe in fate. He had to be wrong. "Has Ron said so?" I whispered.

He shifted his feet in their dirty sneakers and scooted forward. Leaning over his knees, he eyed me from under his mop of curls. "No," he admitted, and I exhaled in relief. "But you are. Madison, timekeepers are mortal for a reason. The earth changes, people change, values change. To ask a human who was born in the time of the pyramids to understand someone who takes for granted that man can see the earth from space isn't reasonable, and so when change spills over itself in its rush to happen, new timekeepers take over."

He glanced at the receptionist and inched closer. "I've seen it before, like the turning of a wheel. Rising timekeepers are found and taught, learning until the amulet is passed on and the old timekeeper resumes aging, picking up where his or her life was disrupted by the divine. That you're dead complicates things, but this is who you are."

"No I'm not!" I protested. "I'm just me. And even if I was a timekeeper, I wouldn't be the dark timekeeper. I don't believe in fate. I just took Kairos's stone to stay alive!"

Frowning, Barnabas shot a look at the busy receptionist. "Taking it might have been a choice, but fate put you there to do it. If you were an innocent scything, Ron would have given you to the seraphs that first day. But he didn't." Barnabas's frown deepened. "I should have known then, but I never guessed he'd stoop so low as to keep you in the dark with lies."

"Ron said he told the seraphs about me, to ask them to let me keep the stone," I said, bewildered. "If he didn't, why do I still have it?"

"Because Kairos hasn't told them you have it, either."

"Why?" I asked. I couldn't think. I was numb. I needed an answer, and I couldn't grasp enough to guess it for myself.

Barnabas shifted in his chair, pulling his coat around himself. "I'm