CHAPTER 1: IN A WORLD LIT ONLY BY FIRE

I guess whoever designed this afterlife waiting room didn't know electricity was ever a thing. At least I've had time to learn how to cook without the aid of a microwave. Or even a gas oven. Why I still need to eat, I'm not sure. Granted, I eat and drink far less than before, but I do need to do so occasionally. Maybe it's just the afterlife's way of easing my transition from my mortal coil or something.

But just as I'm about to pull another day's pot of stone soup off the hearth (hey, don't knock it till you try it), I hear (speaking of knocks) someone rapping on the door. I almost drop the pot - I've been in this place for what feels like years and not had a visitor since Crane said goodbye. I'm so not used to this - it's even worse than the last long-ass time I spent somewhere other than Earth.

Opening the door, I'm surprised, just a bit, to see someone who died not so long before I did. "Joe? How'd you...how'd you find me?"

"Sure as hell took me long enough," he says. He doesn't even try to cross the threshold - he just stands on the porch. Of all the places I had the chance to make my afterlife look like, I could think of none better than Sheriff Corbin's cabin. He'd probably feel just as much at home here - but he's looking agitated, like he wants nothing more than to turn around and leave all over again. "Listen, Abbie...we need to go back home."

"Hey, I wanna go back too," I say, "but...I mean, we spent so long fighting gods and monsters - what happens when we come back as just another monster?" I turn around for a moment, watching the pot continue to radiate heat as it sits on the table. "What do we even need to do, anyway?"

Joe takes a deep breath - didn't know he needed to do that, but maybe it's just a reflexive relic of his past life or something. "First...just one question. How long have you been down here?"

"Dunno. A year? Eighteen months?"

"More like two," says Joe. "Months, that is."

I raise my eyebrows. "You're on the level here, right? You're not just some illusion sent by Pandora or whoever to trick me?"

"Rumor has it Pandora's just as dead as we are," Joe says, "but I could be wrong. Anyway...see, here's the thing. Upstairs, our friends are still doing their thing. Witnessing." He clears his throat. "And that's the problem - yesterday, these guys claiming to be 'federal agents'" - insert air quotes here - "came and took him away."

"I'm guessing they're not?"

"You guess r-" He stiffens, then whirls around, reaching to his hip for a holstered gun that isn't there.

I step up behind him and tiptoe to look over his shoulder, my muscle memory similarly tricking me. Then I see what Joe's looking at - a young woman in her twenties with flaming red hair. She stumbles out of the bushes outside - bushes beyond which I've not yet ventured myself - and looks up at us. "Uh...hi?" she asks in a nervous voice that cracks like that of a teenage boy.

"Hi to you too," I say. "Two visitors? This must be my lucky day."

"Okay..." Redhead scratches her neck. "Uh...could I...I'm sorry, but I'm kinda lost. I need to get back to the Bay Area, and I think I'm way off course here..."

"How'd you get here?" Joe asks, as if she's just an ordinary traveler.

"The same way I always do," says Redhead. "Through the Mission Peak caves."

"'Always?'" I repeat.

"I can visit this afterlife dimension for some reason," she says. "I'm always getting lost, but I always get back home eventually. Except now I've been stuck here for a week...oh God, my parents are gonna kill me!"

I tilt my head at Joe. "Okay, that's cool. She knows exactly what steaming dog crap she's gotten into."

"I have a name, you know," Redhead says with a small smile.

"That name being...?" Joe asks.

She pauses just long enough to come across as melodramatic. "Nikki. Nikki Lass."

Joe and I similarly introduce ourselves, and I tell Nikki, "So you're aware Joe and I are dead?"

"I don't think so," says Nikki. "Your auras aren't the same. The dead usually have black auras, and yours are a little more...blood-red?"

"Maybe it's 'cause we're pretty freshly dead, relatively speaking," Joe says.

"I've asked around enough to know that's not the reason," says Nikki. "Everyone who's dead has a black aura no matter how long it's been since they were alive." She turns around and gazes into the depths of the shrubbery. "Come on, guys, I really do need your help. Seriously, I can't be here forever. And...well, I couldn't help but overhear, but you sound like you've got some unfinished business back home yourselves?"

Joe glares at her for a moment, but then his expression softens. "I dunno, Abbie. What do you think? We help her, she helps us?"

"Sounds cool to me," I say, "except...you still haven't told me who those 'federal agents' are."

"It's the Roosters," he says.

I blink at him. "Never heard of them." A quick glance at Nikki confirms that she's drawing as much of a blank as I am.

"Trust me on this," says Joe, "they're bad news."

"You'll take me home?" Nikki asks.

I step around Joe and close the door behind me, sealing off the smell of my stone soup. "But first, you'll have to help us get outta this place."