Early to Death, Early to Rise - Kim Harrison [11]
Barnabas’s expression became horrified, and he looked down at his own amulet. Taking Nakita’s arm, I pushed her into motion before Ace drove away. I knew Barnabas wasn’t happy about losing his light-reaper status, but she didn’t have to torment him about it. Since leaving Ron and the light reapers, he was considered a grim reaper, a group of vigilante angels scorned by light and dark reapers alike for their wont to kill without reason. If there was a plague, grim reapers were there. A disaster had them wading into the bodies like they were surf. War was their play yard. It wouldn’t be until Barnabas’s amulet color shifted closer to mine that he might be considered respectable again, but since he’d then be a dark reaper who didn’t believe in fate, he wasn’t truly going to fit in. Heaven probably wouldn’t let him back, either.
“I’ll get you guys some phones next time I’m in the mall,” I said sourly. But if I knew how to use my friggin’ amulet to talk silently with them, then I wouldn’t need to.
Three
“Ace!” I shouted, the hard pavement under my feet sending jolts through me as I ran for his truck. “Wait up!”
Nakita, apparently, saw no reason to run, and she sedately followed somewhere behind me, handbag at her side and matching sandals clicking away. Barnabas was heading off in the opposite direction, probably seeking a quiet place to wait and take wing to follow Shoe. Shoe’s back was hunched as he stomped to a lonely sports car parked by itself in a spot of shade.
Hearing my voice, Ace leaned against his truck and put his thumbs in his pockets. I slowed, not even breathing heavily. Okay, so maybe there were some benefits to this whole being-dead thing. Nakita caught up with me, and I slowed even more. “He’s angry,” she said simply as we matched paces. “Are you sure he’ll tell us anything?”
“Yeah, well, you can be mad at your friends,” I said, remembering how I’d been angry with Wendy, my best friend in Florida, where I’d lived before I moved to Three Rivers. Most of our arguments had stemmed from my trying to get us into the cool crowd, but Wendy was too independent. Even when we fought, though, we remained friends.
“How can you be angry and like someone at the same time?” Nakita asked.
I watched Shoe get in his car and start it up, revving the engine hard. “You just do. You like Barnabas, don’t you? Even when you argue?”
“No,” she said immediately, then hesitated. “He’s smarter than I thought he was. Thinking that he might be right and I might be wrong makes me angry.”
“Same thing here,” I said, indicating Ace, who was now pushing up from the truck and brushing a hand across his wrinkled T-shirt.
She fingered her amulet and asked, “Who’s right?”
I smiled at Ace and said, “It doesn’t matter.”
She sighed. “I don’t understand.”
“It’s a friendship thing.” Shifting my smile brighter, I scuffed to a halt, turning the popular-girl charm on full. It usually got me my way with strangers, so the time I’d spent trying to get in with the cool girls hadn’t been a total loss. I guess.
But my smile faded when Ace almost barked, “What do you want?”
Nakita reached for her amulet, and I “accidentally” came down on her foot. “Uh, nothing,” I said as she shoved me off her, but I was already rocking back. “I wanted to say I’m sorry I got you fired. It was kind of my fault.”
I gave him a sad, big-eyed look, and sure enough, he shifted from P.O.’ed to accommodating. Ah, the power of a pretty face. Too bad he was looking at Nakita’s and not mine. But she was an angel. Why was I even trying to compete?
“It wasn’t your fault,” he said, his voice softening. “Shoe’s an ass.” A flash of anger reddened his face, and he shouted after Shoe’s car, “Dumb ass!”
“Can I scythe him, too? Just for the fun of it?” Nakita asked, and Ace turned, shocked.
“Stop it,” I muttered, but he’d heard.
“What did you say?”
I licked my