Jim got one last look at the castle walls, and imagined his mother safely and happily on the far side of them. Then a blast of energy blew out of the angel’s hand and he was scrambled down to his molecules and sent flying.

Hard. Cold.

Fuckin’ ow.

Those were Jim’s first thoughts when he woke up again, and opening his eyes, he got another load of milky, diffused light that seemed to come from no particular source. Which made him wonder if Nigel’s flashy palm crap hadn’t fucked up and landed him right back where he’d been.

Except the air wasn’t fresh. And instead of a bed of springy grass, he felt like he was lying on a stretch of pavement—

As a sheet was whipped off his face, Jim nearly jumped out of his skin.

“Hey,” Eddie said. “Ready to go?”

“Fuck!” He clutched his chest. “You want to scare me to death?”

“Little late for that.”

Jim looked around. The room they were in had pale green tiles on the floor, walls, and ceiling and an entire bank of three-by-two-foot stainless-steel doors with meat-locker handles on them. Empty stainless-steel tables with hanging scales and rolling tables were arranged in orderly rows, and the sinks in the far corner were the size of bathtubs.

“I’m in the fucking morgue?”

“Well, yeah.” The duh was implied.

“Jesus Christ…”

Jim sat up, and sure enough there was a body bag with an occupant two tables down, and a sheet-covered corpse with its feet sticking out from the end next door. “So they really do put toe tags on them, huh.”

Eddie shrugged. “It’s not like they can give their name or some shit.”

With a curse, Jim swung his legs off the table he was on, and that was when he saw Adrian. The angel was standing just inside the room by the double doors and he was unusually self-contained: Typically a sprawler, he had his arms linked tightly across his chest and his feet were set right together. With his mouth nothing but a slash, and his skin the color of Kleenex, the guy stared at the tile floor, brows down, lashes dark against his pale cheeks.

He was hurting. Inside and out.

“I brought you some clothes,” Eddie said. “And yes, I went back and got Dog. He’s in our truck, happy as a little clam.”

“So I’m dead?”

“As a doornail. That’s the way it works.”

“But I still get to keep Dog even though I’m…” A stiff?

God, was there a politically correct word for the dead? he wondered. Or was it a case of, if you’d bit the big one, you didn’t have to worry about politics?

“Yup, he’s yours. Wherever you are, he’ll be.”

This was a momentous relief for some reason.

“So you want these threads?”