Piper Reilly’s last day alive was remarkably unremarkable. She woke up with half a dozen ambitious plans—clean out the fridge, finally fix the loose cabinet hinge, start a new book—but somehow, by noon, she had accomplished exactly none of them. Instead, she found herself bouncing between unfinished tasks like a pinball machine designed by a sadist.

She'd started with the fridge, pulling out a carton of milk that was questionably in-date before getting distracted by a pile of unopened mail on the counter, plus one opened wedding invitation that made her throat feel tight. One envelope in particular caught her eye—probably another overdue bill, but what if it was something interesting? She tore it open and skimmed a few lines before noticing her laptop was still open from last night.

Right. She'd fallen down another Reddit rabbit hole, reading about how the whole trans thing was being pushed by Big Pharma to get kids hooked on hormones. Her stomach clenched, the way it always did when she thought about Parker. Ugh. "Sarah," as he went by now. The wedding invitation was still on her counter, all cream-colored and elegant, with that fancy script: "Sarah Elizabeth Reilly and David Chen request the honor of your presence..."

David Chen. So what did that make her brother? Gay? But no, Parker—"Sarah"—kept insisting he was actually a woman, so did that make him straight? Her head hurt just thinking about it. It was all nonsense anyway. You couldn't just decide to change what God made you, no matter how many hormones you took or what you called yourself.

She shoved the invitation under a pile of bills. The dishes. She should do the dishes in the sink. Except—

"Where the hell is my coffee?" she muttered, abandoning both the mail and the dishes to check the microwave, then the counter, then the living room. There it was—cold and half-finished next to yesterday's laundry she'd meant to fold. Another unfinished task to add to her list.

Laundry. Right.

She picked up a shirt, intending to fold it, but then she noticed Grim watching her from the arm of the couch. Her black-furred, yellow-eyed nightmare of a cat, who usually pretended she didn’t exist except when food was involved, was staring at her. Not lazily. Not the usual contemptuous glance he reserved for her. Watching. Studying.

“What?” Piper narrowed her eyes. “You want something?”

Grim blinked once, slowly.

Then he licked a paw and kept watching.

Piper rolled her eyes, tossed the shirt back on the pile, and reached for her coffee. She took a sip, grimaced, and set it down again. Maybe she should make a fresh pot. Maybe she should actually start one of the projects she planned today. Maybe she should—

Instead, she stepped out onto the back porch, pulling a crumpled pack of cigarettes from her hoodie pocket. Lighting one, she took a slow drag, the familiar burn in her throat both satisfying and shame-inducing. She’d started smoking in high school, back when it felt cool and rebellious. Now, it just felt like a bad habit she couldn’t shake, a relic of a younger, dumber version of herself. She exhaled, watching the smoke curl into the air. She really needed to quit. But the burn felt so good in her lungs.

Grim followed her outside, slipping through the door before she could stop him. Normally, he had no interest in going out, but today, she just didn’t care. She was still a little amused that he was actually paying attention to her for once. He slinked onto the porch railing, tail twitching, still watching her with that same unreadable intensity.

And then… Nothing.

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One moment, she was standing on her porch, cigarette between her fingers. The next, she wasn’t.

There was no pain. No warning. Just an abrupt absence of everything.

And then, a blink later, presence.

She was somewhere else. A vast, softly glowing expanse that seemed to stretch infinitely in all directions. Not warm, not cold. Not bright, not dark. Just… there.

And standing beside her, still watching, was Grim.

For the first time in years, he leaned against her leg, purring.

And then, just as suddenly as he had appeared, he was gone.

Piper’s stomach clenched. What the actual fuck?

She looked down at herself. She felt… present. Whole. She could see her hands, her feet, felt the weight of her body, but something was off. Like she was a fraction of a second out of sync with herself. And Grim—he had been here. And now he wasn’t.

A being cleared its throat. Or—did it? The sound seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once. Piper turned sharply.

Was it a woman? No, definitely a man. No… what on earth. She struggled to categorize what she was seeing. Every time she thought she had settled on an answer, it shifted, like trying to hold onto a dream after waking up.

“Piper Reilly,” the being said. “Welcome.”

Piper blinked. “Welcome? To what?”

The being gave a pleasant, unreadable smile. “The afterlife.”

Wait. Wait. Wait.

Piper let out a sharp bark of laughter. “Okay, sure. The afterlife. Right. And you are…?”

“I am Asher,” they said. “Your guide.”

Piper stared at them. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but something about them made her deeply uncomfortable. Not in a threatening way—just… frustrating. Her brain needed to categorize people. Man? Woman? Pick a lane.

But then the words actually caught up to her. The afterlife.

Her breath hitched. “No. No, no, no. I’m not dead.”

Asher tilted their head, their expression patient.

Piper let out a nervous laugh. “I mean, come on. I’m forty-five. People don’t just die at forty-five.”

“People die at all ages,” Asher said simply. “Age is not a safeguard.”

Piper shook her head. “I was—I was smoking. But you don’t just drop dead from smoking a cigarette. That’s not how it works. That’s—”

She swallowed hard. What happened?

She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to remember. She had been on her porch. Smoking. Grim had followed her outside—

Her stomach twisted. Grim. Oh, God.

If she was dead… did that mean he was dead too? Something big must have happened. A gas explosion? A freak accident? A meteor strike? Some kind of bizarre, instantaneous death that took them both out at once?

“What the hell happened to me?” she whispered.

Asher watched her, their expression unreadable. “You’ll have time to figure that out.”

Piper’s hands curled into fists. “No. No. I need to know what happened. I need to know what happened to him.”

For the first time, Asher’s expression softened. “Grim is fine.”

Piper’s breath caught. “He’s alive?”

A small, amused smile. “He’s a cat. And cats… well. They have their own ways of doing things.”

Piper exhaled sharply, pressing a hand to her forehead. This was too much. This was insane.

She dropped her hand and fixed Asher with a sharp look. “Okay. First of all—what are you? Second of all—where the hell am I? Purgatory? Because I know I wasn’t exactly a saint, but I said grace before meals, and I wasn’t, like, evil or anything.”

She gestured around at the vast emptiness. “And, by the way, this place is bare as fuck.”