And maybe it would finally be useful as something other than a set piece for brooding.

I pulled Sir Stuart’s vanishing trick and realized that I couldn’t jump much farther than maybe three hundred yards at a hop. Still, I could do it a lot faster than running, and it didn’t seem to wear me out the way I would expect such a thing to do. It became an exercise like running itself—repeating the same process over and over to go from Point A to Point B.

I blinked through the front gate of Graceland, took a couple more hops, trying to find the right spot by this big Greek temple–looking mausoleum, and arrived, in a baseball player’s slide, at the gaping hole in the ground. My incorporeal body slid neatly over the white snow that ran right up to the edge of the grave, and I dropped into the cool, shady trench that had been prepared for me.

Sunlight washed over the world above a few heartbeats later. I heard it, felt it, the way I had once felt a minor earthquake through the soles of my shoes in Washington State. There was a harsh, clear, silvery note that hung in the air for a moment, like the after-tone of an enormous chime. I closed my eyes and scrunched up against the side of the grave that felt most likely to let me avoid obliteration.

I waited for several seconds.

Nothing happened.

It was dim and cool and quiet in my grave. It was… really quite restful. I mean, you see things on television and in movies about someone lying in a coffin or in a grave, and it’s always this hideous, terrifying experience. I’d been to my grave before, and it had disturbed me every time. I guess maybe I was past all that.

Death is only frightening from the near side.

I sat back against the wall of my grave, stretching my legs out ahead of me, leaning my head back against it, and closed my eyes. There was no sound but for a bit of wind in the cemetery’s trees, and the muted ambient music of the living, breathing city. Cars. Horns. Distant music. Sirens. Trains. Construction. A few birds that called Graceland home.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt so…

Peaceful. Content.

And free. Free to do nothing. Free to rest. Free to turn away from horrible, black things in my memory, to let go of burdens for a while.

I left my eyes closed for a time, and let the contentment and the quiet fill me.

“You’re new,” said a quiet, calm voice.

I opened my eyes, vaguely annoyed that my rest had been interrupted after only a few moments—and looked up at a sky with only a hint of blue still in it. Violet twilight was coming on with the night.

I sat up, away from the wall of my grave, startled. What the hell? I’d been resting for only a minute or two. Hadn’t I? I blinked up at the sky several times and pushed myself slowly to my feet. I felt heavy, and it was harder to rise than it should have been, as if I’d been covered in wet, heavy blankets or one of those lead-lined aprons they use around X-ray machines.