Early to Death, Early to Rise - Kim Harrison [6]
“Grace,” I asked, wondering how I’d become the cool head in this circle. “What exactly did the seraphs tell you?”
This time the reapers stayed quiet, and the messenger angel dropped down to the table, her haze vanishing as she came to a rest.
“Not much,” Grace said, her ethereal voice seeming to insert itself in my mind. “Seraphs aren’t very good at giving physical descriptions. Apart from the town’s location, I know he’s good with computers.”
Leaning back in the plastic chair, I mentally crossed off the guy at the magazine kiosk reading Guns & Ammo.
“The seraphs never said he was a computer geek,” Barnabas said dryly.
Nakita bristled. Her hand dropped from her amulet, and my eyebrows rose as I saw that the gray stone had shifted to a Gothic cross. “The seraphs foretold a computer virus being released into a school as a prank,” she said to me as she glared at him. “I’d say that would make him good with computers. It’s when it gets into the local teaching hospital that people start to die. The seraphs say he finds so much pleasure in the anonymous notoriety that he goes on to do more of the same, intentionally harming people the rest of his life. So you can see why it is in everyone’s best interests, Barney, to take his soul early, before it’s so sullied and turned that he won’t ask for redemption.”
Gritting his teeth, Barnabas stayed quiet, and I shifted nervously on the chair. Funny how she could make death sound like a good thing.
My spider sense had stopped tingling, and I put my elbows on the table, thinking that this was as about as productive as the study hall I was currently skipping. I’d be willing to bet the guy in the Harley shirt striding through the mall with a girl talking on a phone beside him was out. I needed to find someone with a pocket protector.
“Computer geek,” I murmured, squinting as I looked up at the bright windows in the ceiling. I supposed I should be grateful for whatever information the seraphs could give, but, frustrated, I dropped my head onto the table. It hit with a thump, cold against my forehead.
Barnabas put a comforting hand on my shoulder. “Madison, it’s okay,” he said, making me feel even worse. “We’re trying to find this guy incredibly early. The time lines are harder to read the farther out they are from the present. Even Ron is incapable of giving a description before he flashes forward, and that’s usually just hours before the mark makes his fatal choice, not an entire day. We’re relying on angelic interpretations of what might happen, so relax.”
I pulled my head up, still staring at the table. The light timekeeper was not my favorite person these days, but I felt better that Ron was likely unaware we were out here trying to save this guy. Once he knew, it would make things more difficult.
“Madison, you’re doing fine! You got us here, didn’t you?” Barnabas said, his hand falling away. “I can feel that the mark is here, too. Your instincts are good. We’ll find him.”
Looking up, I read first his hope, then Nakita’s doubt. On the table, Grace was silent, listening. “In time?” I asked. “Before Ron flashes forward and sends someone to stop us? I don’t think a light reaper will believe I’m trying to save this guy with Nakita standing beside me, ready to kill him if I can’t make him change his mind. Would you?”
Barnabas darted a glance at Nakita, and her grip on her red purse tightened. “Sure I would,” he said, but he was lying. “Madison, don’t worry. We’ll find him. It’s just first-prevention jitters.”
“It’s a reap,” Nakita said, looking at her black nails, and then at the Goths. “Not a reap prevention.”
“It’s whatever Madison makes it,” Barnabas shot back, his face turning red.
“Well, I gotta go!” Grace said, the soft glow that was her wings rising up and sending the scent of strawberries to me. “I was told to get you here, then back off.”
“You’re leaving?” I asked, worried, but then something in Grace’s words caught my attention. “Back off?” I repeated, and her glow above the table turned almost a sickly green. “Not leave? Darn it, Grace, are you spying on us?”
Barnabas