This felt like a real reap. I had flashed forward. I had found the place. I was trying to find the mark. If I wasted my head start, a light reaper would show up to stop me. It didn’t matter that our goals were the same—save the mark’s life—because if I couldn’t, Nakita would be there to kill Tammy. Sacrifice the body to save the soul. It was a sucky reason to die.

“Barnabas,” I said, still wondering about Grace. “Do you think I should call Grace?” I liked Grace, but she was my contact with the seraphs, and if she wasn’t here, it might mean they wanted to see if I could do this without her help. She was too close to the divine for me to see more than the glow of her wings most of the time. Nakita, Barnabas, and I could hear her chimelike voice, but no one else could. Grace thought she was a poet. Which might be why Josh seemed to be the only one glad when she was around.

“I wouldn’t,” Barnabas said, his expression closed and worrying me all the more. “I’ll go check the apartment.”

“Thanks,” I said softly, and he walked away to find a quiet place to find his wings, and then, the air.

“I thought he’d never leave,” Nakita said.

“Oh, come on,” I coaxed, walking backward to the high fence between us and the street. “Barnabas is okay. Admit that you’re mad he’s turning into a dark reaper, and get over it.”

“Him?” She laughed. “The day Barnabas becomes a dark reaper is the day that I’ll kiss his amulet.”

Silently we watched the kids pouring out of the school, each seeming to know exactly where they were going. Whether she knew it or not, Nakita’s own views of the world were changing. When we had first met, she had been a typical dark reaper, ready to scythe people at a moment’s notice to save their souls. To her, the body wasn’t important. Life wasn’t important. The soul was. It had taken me ages to get a grasp of that. Dark for heaven’s fate, unseen; light for human’s choice to glean.