Excerpt: Borrowed Time

Grace just stared at him. "I don't know what the hell you're talking about. Car accidents? I don't remember anything like that, and I'm pretty sure that I would. I don't know what kind of game you're playing, but if an angel was your Halloween costume, you're a pretty poor specimen of one. You don't have a robe or a harp or wings or anything like that. What angel would be dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt?"

"The kind who didn't expect to be pulled out of bed at eight in the morning after a long night of work," Zane snapped in retort. "You need to listen to me, and right now. I mean it. We don't have much time. That car accident that you were in whether you want to admit it or not, you were thrown out the window and you hit your head on a rock. You were dying by the time I got to you. I couldn't save you. More damage had been done than even I could fix."

"So, what, am I like dead now?" she asked sarcastically, finally managing to stand up. She was more than a little annoyed by the weird game this kid seemed to be set on playing, but she figured it couldn't hurt. At the very least, perhaps she could humor him into taking her back to her friends. Miranda would be freaking out, certain that she'd been kidnapped. That thought, combined with the nauseous feeling in her stomach, made her feel as though she was going to topple over at any moment. Grace gave the kid a challenging look, trying to hide how off-balance she felt. "If you're my guardian angel, like you seem to think that you are, then why would I have been thrown out the window of a car in the first place? Isn't it your job to like... guard me?"

Zane visibly twitched, and he shot her a dirty look. "We're very busy on Halloween night," he said stiffly. "There are a lot of kids who go out joy-riding and things like that, especially when it falls on a Saturday night like it did this year. It's usually right up there with Saint Patricks Day and New Years Eve. Because there are so many of humans under the jurisdiction of one angel, we usually don't pay as much attention to the safe ones. You were supposed to stay in your room, not go out partying with your friends! If you had done what you usually do, we wouldn't be in this mess."

"Excuse me, I think I'm entitled to go out and have some fun once in a blue moon!" Grace said angrily. "I spend all my time being 'safe', as you call it. I deserve to have some fun and last night was that chance. Who do you think you are to begrudge me that?"

"I'm the angel whom you nearly got kicked out of heaven!" he practically yelled. "Don't you know what a problem it is for a human to die before her allotted amount of time is up? If you had died today, it would've caused a severe crash in our files, and I would've been held accountable for it. It's entirely possible that I might have been demoted all the way down to fairy. Do you know how long it took for me to work my way up here?"

"Like I care. Whatever. I want to go home now." Turning away from him, Grace took a good look at her surroundings. They appeared to be standing in a large white room with no windows or doors. She couldn't even figure out how the room was lit, because there were no light fixtures. Frowning, she walked over to the wall and touched it, then gasped and jerked her hand away. It felt warm and icy cold at the same time, a confusing mixture that made her fingers throb with pain. "Where the hell are we? What kind of room is this? Open the door!"

"Are you even listening to what I'm saying to you?" Zane said, rubbing his head. "You were dying. I stopped you from dying because I didn't want to get into trouble, and because you have things left to do in the human world. You were not supposed to die yet. You were supposed to remain in your dorm room, where you would have been safe, so that you could have done those things. But you didn't, so you were already partly dead by the time I got to you, and even angels can't bring someone back from the dead. Do you understand?" Moving over to her, he reached out and cupped her chin, forcing her to look into his eyes. "You're not fully alive anymore. You're half dead. A half human, half ghost."