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.

“Madison!” she exclaimed, and I looked up at her, seeing my fear reflected in her silvered eyes. But it was the memory of Shoe’s haunted look that wouldn’t leave my mind.

A crash pulled my attention from her, and I realized that everything had taken all of an instant. Shoe was getting up off the floor, dazed but determined, holding his jaw. I’d seen this before. Lived it.

“Get up!” Ace was screaming at him. “I’m going to kill you!”

“Madison?” Nakita said, helping me sit up. “Are you okay? I’ve never seen anyone flash forward.”

“I’ll be fine.” Wobbling to my feet, I grasped for anything to steady me, latching onto the rolling gurney. Bad choice, and I stumbled until Nakita caught me. “It really takes a lot out of me.” Crap, I could hardly stand up.

“Get a grip, Ace,” Shoe breathed, staggering as he stood. “We’re talking about real people. What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Wrong with me?” Ace shouted, and my eyes went to the angel above us, right where I remembered seeing her. She was crying as it all played out again. I knew she’d seen everything I had seen during the flash forward. She had bathed in the divine and could live the past and the future all at once. And she was chained by a will not her own, but Ron’s.

Swallowing hard, I leaned heavily into Nakita. “You know what happens,” I said to the angel, and the angel turned to me, surprised. “I never wanted to end his life, and I’m not going to do it now. Fate or choice. They can be the same. As the dark timekeeper, I ask you to do as you would—without breaking the constraints of your previous charge.”

Ace had yanked the cord from the wall, and as Shoe tried to stop him from snapping the CD in half, Ace shoved him into the wall behind the desk, following it with a punch to Shoe’s gut. Exhaling in a puff of pained air, Shoe slid out of sight behind the desk.

And though I couldn’t see beyond the shimmering glow that surrounded the guardian angel, I knew she smiled at me, bathing me in the first feeling of peace I’d had since I stood on a Greek island on the other side of the world and agreed to try to change the world. “Is this the present?” she asked, adding a bewildered, “Sometimes I can’t tell.”

I nodded, and she darted closer, the glow of her seeming to warm my face. “I like you,” she chimed, the words tingling across me in waves. “You use your love to see the world. It makes everything harder for you, but if it were easy, then everyone could do it.”

I had no clue what she was talking about, but I watched her fly into the fray, shifting the phone cord up an inch. As if choreographed to music, Ace stepped back, tripping on it. Shouting in surprise, he went down.

It was all the break Shoe needed. Rising up from behind the desk, he flung his hair out of his eyes, blood from his cheek smearing his hands and face. With a furious yell, he launched himself at Ace, and the two of them slid across the tiled floor, Ace’s head thumping into it. I felt the world hiccup as fate shifted, and I took a gulp of air, feeling like I needed it.

“This isn’t a game, Ace!” Shoe shouted, oblivious to Nakita and me. “These are real people, with families and kids!”

“Why should I care?” Ace snarled, and Shoe hauled off and punched him twice, first in the gut to make Ace lose all his breath in one go, then across the jaw with his left. Ace made a tiny grunt of pain, then went still.

“Because you’re hurting people to make yourself feel good,” Shoe said, staggering up and going to the computer. Above them, the angel cheered, her tears bathing both Ace and Shoe. Something had changed. I just hoped it was for the better.

Leaning heavily on the desk, Shoe plugged the keyboard back in, hitting a few buttons before turning to me with a tired smile. “It’s in there,” he said, then louder, toward Ace, “It’s in there, you sack of toad crap. I’m not taking the blame for this! Not by a long shot!”

Dazed, I stared at Shoe, wondering if it was truly a different future that we’d all be living, or if Ace was going to somehow twist this again.

God help me. Is this what my life is going to be like?

Ace’s arm moved, angling under him as if he were going to get up. Nakita strode over to him and stepped on his back to make him flop back down with a groan. I looked up at his guardian angel, now glowing with a bright, hazy light.

“No one is trying to kill him,” she chimed cheerfully, then darted to the ceiling when the morgue doors were shoved open and Barnabas came in. Grace was with him, and I watched in openmouthed awe when the two guardian angels dipped and bobbed in a weird display of greeting.

“Is it patched? What happened!” Barnabas asked, looking at Nakita, who was now sitting on Ace, checking her nail polish. Shoe was breathing hard, sitting in the rolling chair and dabbing at his cheek with a tissue.

Nakita shrugged, looking almost disappointed that we hadn’t simply killed him. “Madison has to do things the hard way.”

My sock was across the room, and, blowing my breath out, I went to get it, sitting down right there on the cold tile floor to put it on. Not a whisper of a heartbeat echoed in my thoughts, and after feeling Ace’s, I missed it. Worse, though, I was tired. I felt unreal and thin, as if part of me were still lost somewhere between the now and the next.

“You flashed forward again,” Barnabas said, coming close, only to draw to a confused stop at my feet. I’d gotten my sock on, and I made a grasping gesture toward my sneakers, still on the gurney.

“It was awful,” Nakita admitted while Barnabas fetched my shoes. “It was like she wasn’t there.”

“I don’t feel so good,” I said, my hands shaking as I put first one, then the other sneaker on. Looking at the skulls and crossbones on the laces, I wondered if I could do this. A thousand years of being inside people, watching them ruin their lives. No wonder Kairos had simply sent his reapers to kill the marked. A tear formed and fell, and, miserable, I tied my skull-and-crossbones laces in careful, perfect loops. I thought we had changed fate, but it was hard. Really hard.

“You failed?” Barnabas whispered as I wiped at my eye, and I shook my head.

“I think we succeeded,” I said to make him even more confused.

“Are you okay, Madison?” Nakita asked. Barnabas reached to pull me up, and I couldn’t do anything but try not to cry. I wasn’t doing very well at that, either.

“I’m okay,” I finally managed, wobbling on my feet and trying to imagine a lifetime of crap like this. “I’m just going to go crazy. That’s all there is to it.”

In a graceful motion, Nakita got up off of Ace. The idiot gathered himself to stand, but a pan of morgue tools somehow happened to slide off a nearby counter, beaning him. Groaning, he collapsed again while Grace and the other guardian angel gave each other what looked to be the angel equivalent of a high five. “He’s still alive.” Ace’s guardian angel giggled, and I wondered if I was going to have to do something about this before Ace was accidented to death, but remembering Ace’s hatred that had echoed in me, I decided I wouldn’t worry about it.

“Is flashing forward supposed to be like that?” Nakita asked as she took my other elbow.