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
Fort Banks Mall was a wave of air-conditioned coolness. I could actually feel the heat of the sun leave me as I waited by the information stand for Barnabas and Nakita, who were currently having a hushed argument just inside the double glass doors. Grace, my onetime guardian angel now turned messenger, was humming somewhere above me. The softball-size glowing ball of light had joined us almost as soon as we’d gotten airborne, and it was with her seraph-based help that we’d found this small town in the middle of the cornfields.
I’d only actually seen Grace the few times I’d dissociated from my amulet—and almost killed myself for good, incidentally. Though tiny, she’d been beautiful, with a face too bright to look at. Most times, she appeared as a haze of glowing light, sort of like the spots you sometimes get in photographs. That was exactly how she showed up on film, and it was the only way a normal human would know she was around. I could hear her. My reapers could, too, but humans could not. Lucky them.