Once Dead, Twice Shy - Kim Harrison [32]
Lonely arcade sounds filtered out from the dark cave set to one side as the machines talked to themselves. Coming from the attached skate arena was the rumble of wheels where skaters tried their nerve and their boards on artificial hills and railings in the
“snake pit.” The sound of skateboards on plywood rose up through me like a second pulse of blood. Grace was at the register, resting in the bell that supposedly rang when someone in the snake pit jumped high enough to trigger it. One of the walls was a thick, scuff-marked sheet of Plexiglas, and hazy images moved beyond it in time with the rumbling.
I turned from the transparent wall and my gaze went back to Josh. My fingers were tingling, but I thought it was because I was gripping my amulet too tightly, not because I was close to figuring this thing out. Perhaps I’d been too optimistic thinking I could learn how to do something useful in so short a time, but I was tired of relying on someone else for my safety, and Josh had been willing to help. “Can you see me now?” I asked hopefully.
Josh’s eyes met mine squarely, and I slumped. “I think you’re trying too hard,” he said. Slowly I let go of my amulet. “We’ve only got a few hours left. It’s not like this thing came with an instruction manual.” Depressed, I ran my fingers over my wax-and-paper cup to wipe the condensation off. Barnabas had been less than helpful the time I’d asked him about it after a particularly frustrating night. He’d only said he “thought slippery thoughts” and that I’d better spend my time learning how to contact him if I needed help. Slippery thoughts. Yeah, and if I thought happy thoughts, I’d sprout wings and fly.
“You’ve only been at it for an hour. Don’t be so hard on yourself. We’ve got a little time yet,” Josh said, but his eyes were squinting in worry.
Time, I thought as I wadded my straw wrapper into a ball and dropped it. Maybe I should have tried to learn how to slow time, but that sounded way harder than going invisible.
“Don’t worry about it,” Josh said, but I could tell he was getting nervous. Meeting death was not something you could easily shake off, and the memory of Kairos standing in the moonlight with his scythe bared as I sat helpless in a smashed-up convertible drifted through me.
My hand went back to my amulet, and I held the stone, seeking assurance that even if it was a dark timekeeper’s amulet, I was here and sort of alive. Waking up in the morgue and seeing myself on the table had been the single most frightening thing in my life. Even worse, I knew it was my fault for having gotten into his car to begin with, mega-cuteness aside. Kairos wasn’t so cute anymore. I couldn’t believe I’d kissed him. I gripped the amulet harder. It had been with me for months now, the weight of it familiar and comforting. Without it, I wouldn’t only be invisible, but insubstantial, able to pass through walls and closed doors. Black wing bait. Ghostlike. Maybe that was the key to it all. Not thinking slippery thoughts, but sort of finding a way to block the stone’s influence.
Staring at the table, I sifted through my thoughts for the memory of that awful moment in the morgue. I’d been able to feel my heartbeat and the air move in my lungs as I breathed from reflex, but my body had been in the black body bag, unable to sense the coldness of the granite or the smoothness of the plastic surrounding it. I’d been divorced from it. The tie to my body had been broken. It just hadn’t been there. And, scared, I’d run. When I’d fled, the air had grown thin in me, like I was becoming as insubstantial as it was—almost equalizing. My knees had gone wobbly. The touch of real objects had hurt, as if grating upon my bone. It was only after Barnabas had come after me that I’d felt normal again. Only then had I been in a position to understand and recognize what I’d lost. With the lack of a body, the universe hadn’t recognized me. That is, until Barnabas’s amulet got close