“You’re dead,” Jack said. “This is between.”

I frowned. “What, like… purgatory?”

Jack shrugged. “If that works for you, call it that. But you aren’t here because you need to cleanse yourself. You’re here because there was an irregularity with your death.”

“I got shot. Or drowned. Ain’t exactly rare.”

Jack lifted a big, square hand and waggled it back and forth. “It isn’t about the physical. It’s about the spiritual.”

I frowned. “Spiritual?”

“The opposition,” Jack said. “You died because they cheated.”

“Wait. What opposition?”

“The angel standing guard at the elevator is what we cops think of as a clue. You need me to draw you some pictures?”

“Um. Hell, you mean? Like… actual Fallen angels?”

“Not exactly. But if you want to think of it that way, it works. Sort of. What you need to know is that they’re the bad guys.”

“That’s why I’m here,” I said. “Because they… broke some sort of cosmic rule?”

“You were getting in their way. They wanted you gone. They broke the law to make it happen. That makes you my problem.”

I frowned at him and looked down at myself. I noticed idly that I was wearing jeans, a plain black T-shirt, and my black leather duster—which had been torn to shreds and consigned to the waters of the lake an hour or three before I got shot. I mean, my duster had died.

But I was wearing it, whole and good as new.

Which was when it really, really hit me.

I was dead.

I was dead.

Chicago, the White Council, my enemies, my friends, my daughter… They were all gone. Obsolete. And I had no idea whatsoever what was going to happen to me next. The room felt like it started spinning. My legs started shaking. I sat down on a chair opposite Jack’s seat.

I felt his steady regard on me, and after a moment he said quietly, “Son, it happens to all of us. It’s hard to face, but you gotta relax and focus, or there’s nothing I can do for you.”

I took some deep breaths with my eyes closed—and noticed for the first time how absolutely incredible I felt physically. I felt like I had when I was a kid, when I was full of energy and the need to expend it doing something enjoyable. My limbs felt stronger, quicker, lighter.

I looked at my left hand and saw that it was no longer covered in scar tissue from the burns I’d received years ago. It was whole, as if it had never been harmed.

I expanded the logic and realized that I didn’t actually feel all that incredible—I was simply missing an entire catalog of injuries and trauma. The faded, years-old scar I’d given myself on my right forearm, when my knife had slipped while cleaning the fish my grandfather and I had caught, was missing also.

The constant, slowly growing level of aches and pains of the body was simply gone. Which made sense enough, since my body was gone, too.