You are currently freed of the shackles of mortality. Your limited brain no longer impedes access to that record. The only blocks to your memory are those you allow to be.

I remembered the door. The cabinet.

I remembered the past.

Sanya had insisted that they keep me on the backboard when they carried me into St. Mary of the Angels, after my apartment burned down. The dark-skinned Knight of the Cross carried me from his minivan and into the church alone, toting the board and my couple of hundred pounds and change on one shoulder, as if I’d been a big sack of doggy chow.

Molly had gone ahead of him, worried, speaking rapidly to someone. I wasn’t sure who—one of the priests, I guessed. I hurt everywhere I could feel. And in the places I couldn’t feel, I only wished I could hurt.

My body, from the waist down, had stopped talking to me altogether.

I’d fallen off a ladder while trying to get some of my elderly neighbors out of the burning building and landed on a stone planter. Landed bad, and on my back. I’ve gotten lucky occasionally. This time I hadn’t. I knew what the fall, the point of impact, and the lack of sensation in my lower body meant.

I’d broken my back.

The Red King had my daughter. I was the only one who was going to do anything about it. And I’d fallen and broken my back.

Sanya carried me into the utility room that was mostly used for storage—particularly for storing a battered wizard and his friends when they needed the refuge the church offered. There were a number of folding cots in the room, stored for use. Sanya set me down, rolled out a cot, put some sheets on it, and then placed me on the cot, backboard and all.

“Might as well leave me on the floor,” I told him. “I’m lying on a board either way.”

“Pffft,” Sanya said, his dark, handsome face lighting up with a white grin. “I do not care to clean the floor after you leave. Someone else can do the sheets.”

“Says you,” I said. “You smell like burning hair.”

“Some of it was on fire,” he said cheerfully. His eyes, though, were less jovial. He put a hand on my chest and said, “You are badly hurt.”

“Yeah.”

“You want a drink?” he asked. One hand hovered near his jacket’s breast pocket, where I knew he kept his flask.

“Pass. Maybe I’ll just cope instead.”

He made another disgusted noise and produced said flask, took a swig from it, and winked at me. “I was never clear on the difference. Da?”

Molly appeared in the doorway, and Sanya looked at her.

“He’s on the way,” Molly said. Her voice was strained. Her day hadn’t been as bad as mine, but she still looked shaken.

Sanya offered Molly a pull from the flask. She shook her head. “Very good,” the big Russian said. “I will talk to Forthill, tell him what is happening.”