Falling didn't feel like a drop; it felt like being pulled through a straw. The heat of the friction and the cold of the void took turns flaying my skin until there was nothing left but the screaming in my head.

  Then, the screaming stopped.

  I hit a surface that wasn't stone, or dirt, or water. It was soft, like treading on a thousand years of accumulated dust. I tried to inhale, expecting the sting of smoke or the damp rot of the hills, but there was nothing. No scent. No wind. Just a silence so absolute it rang in my ears like a funeral bell.

  I opened my eyes. Or I thought I did.

  The sky wasn't a sky; it was a vast, inverted ocean of grey embers. There were no stars—no "Law" to look up to. Instead, massive, jagged shards of what looked like broken skyscrapers or petrified trees floated aimlessly in the distance, tethered to nothing.

  I tried to move my arm—the one that had been a "heap of broken meat" five seconds ago.

  It moved. I looked down at my hands. They were pale, shimmering slightly at the edges, but the skin was whole. No blood. No asphalt grit. Even my clothes—the oil-stained jacket and the socks worn thin by the linoleum—looked brand new, as if they had been laundered by death itself.

  "Leo?" I croaked. My voice didn't echo. It just died the moment it left my lips.

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  I scanned the grey expanse. Five yards away, a shape lay huddled in the dust. My heart, or whatever was beating inside my chest now, gave a frantic thump. I scrambled toward it, my boots making no sound on the velvet ground.

  It was Leo. He was breathing—shallow, rhythmic puffs that stirred the grey silt beneath his face. He looked peaceful. The trembling in his hands was gone. The grey, sickly tint of the heroin withdrawal had vanished, replaced by a strange, translucent calm.

  He was "somewhere warm."

  "Wake up, Leo. Please." I grabbed his shoulder, but my hand passed through him like he was made of smoke. I tried again, my fingers tingling with a sharp, static sting.

  "He cannot hear you yet, Little Ghost."

  The voice didn't come from behind me. It came from the air itself.

  I spun around. Standing a few paces away was a figure that defied the grey stillness. He was tall, draped in robes that looked like they were woven from the soot of a guttering candle. He had no face—only a smooth, porcelain mask with two narrow slits for eyes and a permanent, painted-on smirk.

  In his right hand, he held a long, crooked staff topped with a flickering lantern. The light it cast wasn't orange or white; it was a pale, sickly violet that made the grey dust crawl.

  "Who are you?" I demanded, moving to stand between him and Leo. My "Clown" grin was gone. I felt raw. Exposed.

  "A collector of debts," the figure said. He tilted his head, the porcelain mask catching the violet light. "You made a very loud noise in the void, Zany of the Vertical Hills. A trade was offered. A soul for a soul. The 'Beginning' usually ignores such trifles, but your spite... it was quite entertaining."

  He gestured to Leo with the lantern. "He stays in the Shallows. He will sleep until his debt is calculated. But you?"

  The figure stepped closer. The violet light hit my chest, and for the first time since the truck hit me, I felt a spark of heat.

  "You belong to the Basement now."