Early to Death, Early to Rise - Kim Harrison [17]
I looked up when the light was eclipsed for an instant, only to blind myself when a pair of white wings blinked out the sun. In a gust of air, Barnabas landed before us, his brown eyes shining with delight. “Madison, you did it!” he said, his wings arching up, the tips crossing an instant before they vanished. Striding forward, he exclaimed, “I knew you could. When your thought slipped into mine…I am so proud of you!” But then he jerked to a halt upon noticing Nakita’s and my worry. “What’s wrong?”
Nakita took a firm stance, eyes on the sky again. “Her message echoed into Chronos’s mind as well as yours.”
“He’s probably coming,” I said miserably.
“How?” Barnabas said, looking confused. “His resonance isn’t anywhere near mine.”
Nakita’s eyes were darting everywhere. “They are both timekeepers,” she said. “You don’t think the seraphs created them such that they could talk if they wanted to?”
“I saw through his eyes,” I added.
“Sweet updrafts!” Barnabas cursed. “Are you shielding her?”
“Of course I’m shielding her, you broken feather!” Nakita snapped. “But I’m sure he got a glimpse of where we are before I got my shield in place. You did, didn’t you?”
Barnabas grimaced. Taking my elbow, he pulled us off the road, almost into the hissing cornstalks. “Fine. We leave,” he said to Nakita. “Let’s get out of here before he does show up.”
Nakita nodded and her amulet blazed as she shrugged her shoulders and her wings appeared. In an instant, I was between two angels, one with light wings, one with dark, both worried. “Why can’t I ever do anything right?” I asked, not expecting an answer, but when I got scared, I talked.
Barnabas stretched his wings again—they ran from one edge of the road to the other. “It’s not right or wrong,” he said, gathering me close to carry me into the air. “You did it, and now you need to learn how to focus. Why do you expect yourself to be perfect the first time? I’d have you try it again right now, but we have to stay shielded from here on out, and a shielded mind is a closed one.”
Silent, I leaned back into him, breathing in the smell of sun and feathers. Although he said it was okay, it would still be my fault if Ron figured out we were up to something.
“You did well,” he said as his arm slipped around me. “You’ve worked hard for this skill, and you should be happy.”
“Thanks,” I said, feeling slightly better as I stepped back onto his feet.
But he didn’t move. Actually, nothing was moving—not Barnabas, the wind, or the corn—and I jerked when I felt a nebulous something touch my amulet and claim a portion of it.
Instinct kicked in, and drawing on hours of practice, I brought up my inner sight of my amulet, placing it among the fabric of time.
The “now” was a shimmering line stretching to infinity. On it was my soul sending out thoughts into the future, pulling me along as they fastened me to the future an instant before it became the present. Behind me in my inner sight I could see my past, interweaving heavily with Barnabas, Nakita, and even the bright silver thoughts of Ace. But it wasn’t just my thoughts that were attaching my amulet to the present, as was normal. There were someone else’s.
Ron, I thought in a panic, wiping a theoretical hand over the fabric of time to destroy his amulet’s ties, and only his amulet’s ties, to me.
I opened my eyes…. The entire process had taken less time than a bubble bursting.
“Barnabas?” I quavered, seeing his arm still around me. I slid from his unmoving grip. Panic slipped between my thought and action. Ron had stopped time. Son of a puppy.
Heart pounding, I turned in the absolute stillness of stopped time. There, right in the middle of the road, was Ron.
Ron wasn’t a tall man, not much more than my height, which wasn’t surprising, since he was born a thousand years ago. I think his height bothered him. His tightly curled graying hair had once been