“Why?” she said as she approached. “If someone should stop us, I’ll simply smite them.”

Smite? I thought, wincing. She hadn’t been on earth very long. Barnabas fit in better, having been kicked out of heaven before the pyramids were built because he believed in choice, not fate, but Nakita once told me rumor had it he’d been ousted for falling in love with a human girl.

“Nakita,” I said, pulling at her when she got close, and she obediently dropped to a crouch, her long hair swinging. “No one uses that word anymore.”

“It’s a perfectly fine word,” she said, affronted.

“Maybe you could try smacking people instead?” Josh suggested.

Barnabas frowned. “Don’t encourage her,” he muttered. Nakita stood.

“We should go,” she said, looking about. “If you can’t get the mark to choose a better path before Ron sends a light reaper to keep him alive, I’m going to take his soul to save it.”

With that, Nakita started walking for Josh’s truck. “Take his soul” was a nice way of saying “kill him.” The enormity of what I was trying to do fell on me, and my shoulders slumped.

I was the new dark timekeeper, but unlike the dark keepers who came before me, I didn’t believe in fate. I believed in choice. The entire situation was a big cosmic joke—apart from the bit about me being dead. The old dark timekeeper thought that killing me, his foretold replacement, would give him immortality. No one had known who I was until it was too late to change anything, and I’d been stuck with the job until I could find my real body and break the bond with the amulet that kept me alive without it.

Josh rose, peering at the parking lot’s entrance through the Mustang’s windows. “Come on. Let’s get to my truck before she takes the front seat. I’m not driving with her riding shotgun.”

Knees bent and keeping in a crouch, we started after her.