I stood between cars and watched, unbelieving as Officer Levy seemed to forget all about us, escorting Josh back to the school as if he were the only one she’d seen. Reaper magic—you gotta love it.

“The woman will remember,” Nakita said with a huff, hip cocked and watching, too. “You used so little of the divine that the false memory won’t stick.”

“It will stick long enough for us to leave, and that’s all we need.” Josh clearly forgotten, Barnabas took my elbow and directed me to the field at the edge of the parking lot, but my eyes were on the school behind us and the open windows. “And when she comes back to look and she finds nothing, then there will be doubt in her. A week from now, she won’t remember it because it will be easier for her to forget.” A week, I thought, hoping he wasn’t making a mistake. I had thought it would be more certain than that. Nakita, too, seemed unconvinced.

Shoulder-to-shoulder, we turned and left the cars behind us to walk out onto a long-fallow field thick with bees and tiny flowers. I couldn’t help but feel odd as I walked between the two angels, one light, one dark, as if I were somehow connected with all the past that had happened before me and the future yet to be. If I hadn’t known the school was behind us or smelled the pavement and hot metal, I could have been walking in Eden.

Nakita looked to the sky and shook her hair back. A smile so beautiful that it hurt came over her. As she stretched her arms to the heavens, her wings—her glorious, black-feathered, impossibly big wings—melted into existence, glistening in the sun. Dark reaper, dark wings.

Worried, I looked behind us to the school. When I turned back, Barnabas had found his wings as well. His were white, and I wondered if they would eventually change color like his amulet had.

I had less than twenty-four hours to try to help some nameless soul who was about to find himself at the center of a fight for his very life. And we, I thought as Barnabas wrapped an arm around my waist and I stepped backward upon his feet so he could carry me into the air, are the only ones who can save him. We were bringing both his salvation and his death…because if I couldn’t convince him to make a different choice, Nakita was going to kill him.

Two