“I don’t care if you believe me or not,” I said. “I’m trying to save someone’s life. Why don’t you just go away?” Smiling, he slid his gaze to Nakita. She was there to kill Shoe if I failed, and a calculating gleam came into his eye. No matter what, he would always see me in a bad light—chained by what he had believed because it was all he had known.

“You’re trying to save someone,” he echoed, mocking me. “With a traitorous light reaper who’s gone grim and a dark reaper beside you in case you fail.”

“I am not a traitor to what I believe!” Barnabas said, and I lifted my chin high.

“We’ll find him first,” I stated.

Ron chuckled, starting to fall back with a slow toe-heel, toe-heel motion. “We’ll see,” he said knowingly. “You don’t know who you’re looking for. You’ve not flashed forward, either. I can tell. You’re far too confident. The seraphs giving you information? Good luck with that. They are so farsighted that they can’t see what’s under their stuck-up noses. You don’t have a clue what you’re doing.”

“Yeah?” I shot back at him, ticked. “Whose fault is that?”

A huge smile came over his face. “Mine,” he said, and still looking at me, he vanished.

The world jumped into motion with a whoosh of sound, and I started, shocked by the sudden burst of new light and noise. My focus blurred as I found myself trying to wipe threads from an amulet that was no longer there.

I’d seen him go this time, folding in on himself to vanish in a bright, soundless pop. I’d never be able to do that.

“God help you, Nakita,” Barnabas said as he strode out to the middle of the road. “Why didn’t you just draw him a picture of who we’re trying to save?”

Nakita spun on her heel. “You’re still laboring under the assumption that I’m trying to save Shoe,” she said, pointing her purse at him as if it were a weapon. “If I so much as see a black wing, light reaper, or guardian angel other than Grace, I will kill him. I will not have that cretin of a timekeeper put a guardian angel on such as Shoe!”

“Ron is not a cretin!” Barnabas shouted, still feeling a smidgen of loyalty, apparently.

“Yes, he is!”

I sighed, sitting down in the middle of the warm road with my back to them, waiting for them to finish yelling at each other. At least Ron had left thinking we didn’t know who was marked.

“You are not going to kill Shoe!” Barnabas said. “I won’t let you!”

“Careful, Barnabas,” she mocked. “Your grim is showing.”

That was low, and I turned to see her with a hand on a hip, standing inches from him. He was scowling, feeling the shame of the derogatory term. Barnabas wasn’t grim. Sure, he had left Ron, but he wasn’t a vigilante who existed only for the thrill of killing someone.