The first bullet struck Rowan in the arm, sending him spinning to the ground. It took him a moment to realize he had been shot. He had to glance at his arm to grasp what had happened. The footsteps grew closer, accompanied by a few more wild shots in his direction. He scrambled to his feet, only for his right leg to go completely numb, causing him to collapse back down.

“He’s down! He’s down!” a man shouted. His voice was loud, yet his tone remained even and dispassionate, as though he were announcing a five percent discount on used coyote skins.

Gabriela stepped around the nearest bush. “Where’s the child?”

“He’s bleeding out,” the man who had been shouting said, then turned to another man. “Sweep the area. They are nearby.”

“Last chance,” Gabriela said, raising her pistol in his direction. She was walking toward him.

Rowan tried to think of a witty response, but everything was happening quickly. Darkness was closing in at the edge of his vision. He started to speak. “Go fuck y—”

He didn’t hear the shot that killed him, but it was his entire universe for a fraction of a second before darkness hit him.

One moment, he was dying in the desert, and the next, he was drifting through the void. Unlike his first death by semi-truck, he kept his wits this time. Maybe one can get better at dying, he mused.

He was gradually falling toward a distant white light. Beyond it were other lights he hadn’t noticed before. One was green, and another was red. Were each of those lights a domain of another immortal?

The last time he had been in the void, he was escaping the goddess of judgment, his ex-girlfriend Ellie. The light that had led back to Earth was white, right? However, he remembered it being a warmer color, perhaps slightly more yellow-orange. The white light he was falling toward now felt harsh.

His instincts told him to resist being pulled in, but resisting the fall is as difficult as it sounds. Like everyone who has fallen from a great height and not wished to, he fought it, but there was no way to slow down or resist. It was pulling him in.

He desperately tried to recall how he had navigated back to Earth. What was different? He had fallen without any control the previous time, too.

The sensation of order and judgment grew as he moved toward Ellie’s domain. Maybe, like a magnet, order and chaos were attracted, and that was why it, of all the domains, was sucking him in. However, he had also fallen when escaping to the mortal realm.

As he fell, he could start to make out details of cathedral windows. He would land right back with her and then be trapped forever.

When escaping, he had seen a thread of chaos and followed it back to Earth, effectively riding it out of the void.

The windows were closing in, and he needed a plan now. He decided to shift to raven form. Maybe he could fly in the void? His raven form had been seriously injured when Gabriela had shot him, but after dying, he felt whole again and instinctively knew that his raven form was also healed.

As he pulled in magic, an act that felt as natural as breathing, he spotted the thread of chaos that came from him and back into the void.

He spread his wings, catching not an air current but a current of chaos magic. He caught that magic and rode it. He gained altitude and began drifting away from Ellie’s domain and back into the void. He knew the distant gold-white light was Earth, and he felt the current of magic he was riding moving that way.

A tidal wave of magic hit him. It felt like the magic of secrets and darkness. It was as if a titan had breathed in, and he was merely a butterfly being sucked into its lungs. He spun wildly and out of control for a moment, and then the absolute dark of the void became murkier. There was air under his wings now, and not magic. He had fallen into the domain of the Veil, the goddess of knowledge.

He blinked, and the murk resolved into a deep purple landscape of rolling hills and stands of apple trees. A river meandered through one valley. The sky shifted from dark purple to light purple blue, as if the world sensed him and wanted him to feel welcome.

A woman reclined on the grass near an apple tree by the river. She waved to him.

He glided down and landed a few feet away from the woman. With an effort of will, he shifted back to human. The typical exertion felt lessened, and he wondered if pulling magic was easier here.

“Nadia!” He held out his arms.

She stood and embraced him.

“Rowan! I’ve missed you.” She pulled away to arm's length and took in his appearance. “You look much the same as I remember you.”

“Whenever I die, I seem to return to the same condition I was when we ascended.” He took in her flowing dark robes, gold necklaces and wristbands, and elegantly woven dark hair. “You look amazing! I see being a goddess only made you more radiant.”

She thumped his chest gently. “No need for flattery!”

Rowan smiled. “Um. Did you intentionally pull me here? I need to get back to Earth. There’s this whole thing going on with a kid who needs help. I suspect she’s one of yours.”

“She is one of mine.” Nadia smiled. “You have a little time yet, and I wanted to speak with you.”

Rowan waited while Nadia walked over to the tree and plucked off an apple, which she tossed at him.

He caught it and took a bite. “Delicious. Tart and crispy, the way I like it. And what might I do for you?”

Nadia smiled. “When planning ascension, we only thought about the challenges we’d have to overcome to do the ascension itself. I don’t think we realized the problems that would come afterward.”

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Rowan swallowed another bite. “I don’t remember any challenges.”

Nadia laughed warmly. “I doubt you remember the planning either, but the rest of us spent weeks making sure we’d succeed at the ascension and avoid being incinerated.”

“Incineration?” He took a final bite and tossed the core into the river.

“Well, as you know, nobody was incinerated, and we ascended, but we didn’t realize that all of the information we had gathered on the process had been from your predecessor, the previous Trickster god.”

Rowan shrugged. “And you were tricked?”

Nadia nodded. “She got us good. The previous immortals were tired of the job—they’d been doing it for thousands of years and were exhausted and wanted to move on, but they couldn’t without somebody else to take their place.”

“Are you trying to give me a history lesson?” Rowan asked. “This is probably why I don’t remember the planning.”

“I’ll try to keep it short and use small words,” she said. Her tone was light and teasing. “We didn’t realize we’d be trapped in our domains with only a few ways to return to Earth.”

“But, you can take over somebody else’s body and return as an avatar,” Rowan said with a move-it-along gesture.

Nadia nodded. “Yes, but most of us are unwilling to destroy a human being just to walk on Earth.”

“Except Marcus Ramirez,” Rowan said.

“Except Ellie’s boyfriend, Marcus,” Nadia said.

Rowan blinked. “Wait! Ellie and Marcus were—together?”

Nadia nodded. “I’m pretty sure you’re the only one in the group who would find this surprising. They grew pretty close while researching the ascension process. That’s probably why Ellie dumped you.”

“Why did you guys include me at all? It’s not like I wanted to become a god.”

Nadia shrugged. “That’s probably why Ellie kept you around. You weren’t much of a threat, and they needed somebody with enough power to ascend and who wasn’t motivated to be an issue later.”

Rowan rubbed his face, trying to make sense of the new bits of information. “Sure, but what about Abby. I thought she was my friend.”

“Abby is your best friend,” Nadia said, “but I was her lover and wanted to be with her forever. I convinced Abby that even though Ellie and Marcus might be using you, she and I would protect you, and you’d be glad later that you had become immortal.”

“So, everybody used me,” Rowan said, one eyebrow quirked.

“To be clear, Abby only ever had your best interests in mind,” Nadia said.

Rowan clenched and unclenched his teeth and then nodded. “Abby would never betray me.”

“She is your most loyal friend,” Nadia said. “And because of her love for you, I have done my best to help you.” Nadia tilted her head and examined Rowan. “What’s that feeling? You’re irritated, but I can’t feel why.”

“Of course, the goddess of knowledge and secrets can tell what I’m thinking and feeling,” Rowan said.

“It’s not as clear-cut as you think,” Nadia said. “I can tell you’re upset now, but before that, were you feeling—jealous?”

“I’m irritated that my best friend ended up with a hot girlfriend for eternity, and I ended up sleeping in a desert for 25 years.”

Nadia smiled sadly. “Well, I won’t point out that I also ended up with a hot girlfriend thanks to your sacrifice. There is an issue with our relationship that only you can fix.”

Rowan sighed. “I’m not sure I want to know.”

Nadia chuckled. “No, nothing like that. The problem is that we can’t see each other or speak directly.”

“You can’t even speak to each other? There’s no spell for that? I’ve had some lady in my head for days now. She moved in, and I can’t evict her.”

“Ah, I think I know who that is,” she said. “That’s another one of mine, but she hasn’t moved in. She’s praying.”

Rowan shook his head as if trying to clear it. “What?”

“A human can talk to a god under a few specific conditions, but the primary way is through prayer. You must be allowing it, though.”

“I could block her?”

“You could,” Nadia said. “Though, I think she is one of the few people who have ever prayed to the Trickster god. I’d be jealous if it weren’t that she’s trying to save one of mine.”

“Why doesn’t she just pray to you?”

“I can’t leave here. The most I can do is offer advice and strengthen her spells, but she is up against forces that only a god who is present could fight. If you didn’t help her, she’d likely beg me to take over her form as an avatar.”

Rowan looked sick. “You’d kill her?”

“I don’t think I could do that to her,” Nadia said. “Not unless it was a matter of stopping Marcus, but we don’t have to worry about that because we have you.”

“Um. I’m here, not there, and so far, I’ve died twice in a week.”

“I don’t want to minimize your suffering, but you can’t die, and you can get back there.”

“Dying is a terrible experience. Both times were a trauma that may stay with me… well, not for as long as I live, because we know that will be like in a week at this rate, but… I’ll be traumatized forever.”

Nadia nodded. “I haven’t died, but I can imagine death is traumatic.”

Rowan held up a hand and waved it. “We’re off-topic. You wanted relationship help from me. Even though I’m single, my ex-girlfriend is trying to torture me, and my life expectancy can be measured in days. What could I possibly do for you?”

Nadia produced two small, dark crystals, each slightly larger than a quarter. “I haven’t wasted the past two decades. I’ve created a magical artifact that I hope will allow Abby and I to see and hear each other again. We might be trapped in our separate domains, but maybe we can be together again.”

“You reinvented the telephone. Sort of a phone-a-god?”

“Better,” Nadia said. “Here, take one.”

Rowan accepted one of the crystals and examined it. It was beautiful, but he wouldn’t have known it was a magical artifact.

“Imagine my face while you hold it out,” she said.

Rowan smirked. “Shouldn’t be hard since you are right here.”

He held up the crystal and imagined Nadia’s face. A zing of magic leaped from him and shot straight to the crystal that Nadia held. She raised it to eye level, and both crystals came to life.

Before him stood two Nadias, each appearing solid and real. Beside Nadia, the one he recognized as the true Nadia, was a copy of himself.

The Nadia copy reached out and touched his hand, and he felt it and understood. He was aware that, in his periphery, the same scene was playing out between his clone and the real Nadia.

“This is wild,” he said.

Nadia closed her hand, and the extra Nadia and Rowan disappeared.

“Will you bring it to her?”

Nadia had created one of the most incredible artifacts he had ever heard of, and she trusted him to bring it to Abby.

He looked away. “You know that I can’t navigate the void. If you hadn’t pulled me in, I’d be visiting Ellie now.”

“I know that you are the only one of us who can freely visit any domain and that if you had studied, you’d know how to.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t study,” he said. “I’m not a great messenger.”

“You are the only messenger, and this might be my only chance to ever speak to her again.” Nadia put a hand on each of Rowan’s shoulders. “Please, do this for us.”

This was a terrible idea that would likely get him imprisoned or killed.

“I’m an idiot.” He resisted screaming and ranting about how dumb he was. “Fine. I’ll do it. Only because it will make Abby happy.”