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.