I spent most of the pizza fund to rent a boat for the weekend, which meant I had to make a very confusing phone call to Dad. He jotted down the orders for the Za Guard without asking too many questions, though the long, bemused silences on the other end spoke volumes. Hopefully, he'd believe I was taking his advice and throwing a party to decompress. You know, one of those parties with enough food to fuel a Frat house for a week. Honestly, he probably didn't want to know what I was intending to do with it, and I preferred it that way. The less they knew, the less specific their worries could be.

I rounded off the night by completing a quartz crystal prototype, stripping and cutting up the soiled sheets, and showering before bed. It was embarrassing to realize I hadn't done much to my room in the week since Thomas and I were together. It was just a sad, used mattress donated by one of the members of the Ordo, and I rarely slept on it more than a few days a week. I had to remain on the move, constantly assessing threats and dealing with them accordingly. I couldn't always make it back to my main lab before fatigue hit me.

Sometimes I stayed with Murphy or the rest of the gang, but only as a last resort. I didn't want to feel their anxiety, their concern, or their pity. Sure, staying at Castle Marcone meant bumping into the kingpin himself, but it didn't hurt quite so much to feel wariness coming from him. Marcone distrusted everyone, including or maybe especially the woman I'd caught him getting busy with in his office. It made total sense he wouldn't trust me any further than he could kick me, and I respected that in a person. I wasn't sure I was the sort of person who should be trusted. I'd made a lot of shitty choices in my life. Odds were, I'd make more of them while on the job for him.

There was...something else I felt chewing at the edges of his thoughts, but I couldn't put my finger on much. He had his emotions locked down tighter than a Swiss bank, which was actually pretty soothing at the end of the day. I'd take his principled, cold, and calculated aura over the emotion that raked at me every second I was in the room with friends or family. The only times I'd felt a spike of anything more than that cool determination was a brief spike of interest when he'd caught me with my shirt off. Sigrun was stitching me up after she'd dealt with a piece of shrapnel in my side. And at that point, I couldn't blame him. Because, you know, hot. I hadn't met many guys who would let a little blood get in the way of admiring a great rack.

I laid on my back, staring up at the corrugated ceiling and the subtle interplay of wards I'd etched into them since settling here. I was certain I'd lay awake, mind spinning in circles as I tried to figure out what had sent Thomas out on the lake. But the second my eyes closed, I was out like a light.

I expected nightmares. Those were pretty common. I'd had a lifetime of horror to chew on, and I was adding fuel to the fire pretty much daily. But instead, I found myself blinking into the sunlight, staring out at a children's playground. I was sitting in a swing, fingers curled around the metal links.

I vaguely recognized it as the one closest to Mom and Dad's house. Daniel and I used to take the rest of the kids to play here after school if one or both of our parents were sick, so they had a chance at a nap. I could see a pair of children playing in the distance, racing each other toward the slide. The sounds of childish laughter carried on the wind, and I smiled faintly. I'd missed this place.

"They're cute," a male voice remarked from my right. "Though I gotta say, this isn't how I expected to become an uncle."

I twisted in my seat, staring bug-eyed at the man beside me. He was tall and broad, filling out his LA Angel's baseball shirt well. He was leaning against his own swing, watching the children play with an amused smile on his lips, but when he sensed my stare, he turned the smile on me. The warm, open look in his gray eyes seized my heart in an iron fist and tugged. I could have sworn I felt something snap.

"Daniel?"

"Hey, sis," he said. "Sorry to interrupt your scheduled dreaming. Though you might not be. I saw what was on. I think you can skip the rerun of that horror movie."

I couldn't think, couldn't breathe. I saw his face in my dreams almost every night, but he was never this real. Never this whole. In my dreams, I lay on the ground and watched the light leave his eyes and tasted his blood on my tongue. I felt the despair eclipse everything else. I deserved some sort of mark like God had set on Cain. A flashing neon sign that warned people to steer clear.

"You're not here," I whispered. "You can't be. You're..."

"Dead?" he ventured. "Yeah, I know. The angels at the door and in the front office kind of drove that point home when I arrived."

My eyes pricked at the corners. "You're in heaven?"

He frowned. "No, not exactly. The afterlife is not the sort of binary thing we were taught in Sunday school. I guess you could call what I'm doing a sort of purgatory. I'm in the Between, doing what needs to be done. Uriel's department deals with preventing imposition on mortals' free will. I wouldn't have normally been able to appear to you like this, but something changed."

"Lasciel is up to her usual fuckery?"

Daniel threw his head back and laughed. The sound was filled with real, unfettered feeling, and his aura exuded only warmth. I hadn't felt him this happy or unburdened in...well, ever. My sensitivity had reached its peak when I was away from home, so I'd never felt an untainted version of Daniel, nor had he felt an unscarred version of me. Thinking of it that way sort of explained his hostility toward me during family functions. We were both in a lot of pain, and adding each other's burdens was simply too much. We'd hurt each other without meaning to.

"The Fallen's fuckery never ends, but I can't say if it was Lasciel's doing this time around. Maybe it's her, maybe it's not. I'm not privy to that sort of detail. I'm still the rookie. Plus, they don't really spell things out like that up here. It's like solving a Sudoku puzzle trying to figure out what every mission means."

"So..." I began, thinking over the implications. "Someone is bending my mind again? Because at this point, it's a pretzel. I'm not sure how much more damage it can take."

"Not yours."

I let that sink in for a moment. "Thomas. Someone got to him. They're forcing him to act this way."

"Force is a strong word since it's ultimately up to the person how they interpret the push but yeah, pressure has been applied."

"Is he...alive?"

Daniel raised an eyebrow. "Do you think I'd be here if he wasn't?"

The relief was so instantaneous and profound that it made well in my eyes. I wiped them away with a sleeve and sniffled. I hadn't realized just how much the answer meant to me. Justine was right. I loved Thomas in my own twisted way. I wasn't sure that either of us had the capacity to give more than what we already had, which was the only reason we could continue on as we were. We could love, but not be in love, and that made all the difference.

"Thank you," I whispered.

"Don't thank me," he said. "You still have to find him and try to correct what's been done."

"I know. But...thank you anyway. For this. I kept thinking..."

"That you sent me to hell?" he asked wryly. He reached out and flicked the end of my nose with a taunting smile. "As if that's got anything to do with you. I know you're arrogant, sis, but I didn't think you were that full of yourself. You didn't make my choices for me. Whatever happens next is on me. You did what you had to do."

"I killed you," I said. The sound came out so strangled with remorse that it barely sounded like English. "I stabbed you and I watched you die."

Daniel leaned forward and gave me a scratchy kiss on the forehead. He needed to shave. Did they even have razors and aftershave in purgatory?

"Thank you. I know those aren't the words you want to hear, but I mean them. Thank you. It hurt to be like that. I can't convey just how much agony I was in. You set me free. So stop sulking. You have kids to take care of now."

I followed his gaze. The children were on the seesaw now, engaging in the age-old tradition of trying to launch the other off of their end. I could tell that the girl had wildly curling red hair, even from this distance. The boy's hair was dark and slightly wavy. I couldn't make out much else from this vantage point.

"Are they...?"

"Yours and Lasciel's. You really should go over and talk to them. They want to meet you."

I swallowed thickly. "I...I'm not sure. They're Lasciel's kids. What if they're...you know...evil? Couldn't engaging with them hurt me?

Daniel snorted a laugh. "They're babies, Molls. They don't have any concept of who and what they are yet. You're the one shaping them, not Lasciel. And you forget, she didn't start out bad either. Evil is learned, not inherited."

"I'm not ready. There's too much to think about right now. I'll try contacting them after this thing with Thomas is resolved."

He shrugged. "Suit yourself. Just be careful out there. Your kids need you, and I don't want to see you on this side of the divide anytime soon."

I leaned my head against the metal chain and sighed. "How do I know this isn't just a dream?"

Daniel stooped and dipped a finger in a nearby puddle. He ignored my half-hearted attempt to pull away when he traced a muddy heart onto my hand. He smiled at me, and simply said, "You'll know."

We watched the children play until darkness fell and it was time to trudge home. And when I woke, there was drying mud on my palm.