Early to Death, Early to Rise - Kim Harrison [61]
I was still in the morgue, still in Ace. The police were here, and the guy I’d locked in the closet was standing by the lockers, looking bewildered. Shoe was sitting on the floor with his head down, cuffs on his wrists. And I was feeling pretty damn good even as I was aching in despair. I had to get out. I was trapped in Ace’s head—feeling his satisfaction mixing with my pain was driving me insane.
“So when I found out what he was doing,” I heard myself say, thinking I was damn clever for thinking up this plan, “I followed him from the school to the hospital. He snuck in, locked the guy in the closet, and put the virus in the morgue’s computer. Isn’t that sick? Trying to kill people from a morgue computer?”
The cops were nodding, and the one holding Shoe’s shoulder gave him a disgusted look.
That’s a lie! I thought, not feeling a twinge in Ace’s conscience.
“I told him not to,” Ace lied, and Shoe’s jaw clenched as he refused to say anything. “It was just lucky that I had the patch. I put it in place, and then he hit me! Broke the keyboard over my head. He’s crazy, I tell you. Nuts! He did the same thing at the school. He could have killed someone!”
The cops turned to the orderly. “Is that what happened?” they asked him, and the shaken man looked up blankly.
“I don’t remember,” he said, and I recognized his confused expression as one I’d seen on my dad’s face too often. He remembered something, but logic said it was impossible. My reapers had come and gone, leaving broken lives in their wake.
He’s lying! I shouted in Ace’s mind, and the guardian angel in the corner looked up from her weeping. Then I hissed into Ace’s thoughts, You’re a liar. A disgusting liar. I should have let Nakita scythe you. This was so unfair. It looked like the patch had gone in, but somehow, by trying to set things right, I’d put Ace into the perfect place to do the most damage to Shoe’s credibility and secure his own. Especially when no one seemed to remember my being here. Except perhaps the guardian angel.
I gathered myself to try to change a future that hadn’t happened yet, but the blue tint overlaying everything seemed to hesitate. For an instant, everything went normal, colors, sounds, everything. In that second of clarity, Shoe looked at Ace, but I think he was seeing me, his expression bewildered and betrayed. And then…the world flashed red.
With a wrench hard enough to make me groan, I felt myself tear from the fabric of time. Gasping, I took a breath that was wholly mine. There was no thudding in my chest. No blood in my veins—and Nakita’s grip on me was so tight it hurt.
“I’m back,” I whispered, and her hands on me jerked.
“Madison!” she exclaimed, and I looked up at her, seeing my fear reflected in her silvered eyes. But it was the memory of Shoe’s haunted look that wouldn’t leave my mind.
A crash pulled my attention from her, and I realized that everything had taken all of an instant. Shoe was getting up off the floor, dazed but determined, holding his jaw. I’d seen this before. Lived it.
“Get up!” Ace was screaming at him. “I’m going to kill you!”
“Madison?” Nakita said, helping me sit up. “Are you okay? I’ve never seen anyone flash forward.”
“I’ll be fine.” Wobbling to my feet, I grasped for anything to steady me, latching onto the rolling gurney. Bad choice, and I stumbled until Nakita caught me. “It really takes a lot out of me.” Crap, I could hardly stand up.
“Get a grip, Ace,” Shoe breathed, staggering as he stood. “We’re talking about real people. What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Wrong with me?” Ace shouted, and my eyes went to the angel above us, right where I remembered seeing her. She was crying as it all played out again. I knew she’d seen everything I had seen during the flash forward. She had bathed in the divine and