I couldn't say I was happy about returning to the world after I'd just been chased out of it by a rabid dog, but I couldn't see that I had much choice in the matter. I followed Leon once more, frightened of becoming lost in the labyrinthine corridors and on the train if I fell behind. Each of his long strides amounted to several of my small, scurrying steps. He didn't glance back at me, and I couldn't decide if he was annoyed that I was with him or if he was too focused on the task at hand. Either way, it was unsettling to think that my afterlife was in the hands of a man who wanted to be a million miles away from me.

Jane sat behind her desk in her St. Pancras office, the door of which Leon remembered to knock on, and curled her lashes around her pen. She didn't acknowledge Leon. Instead, she smiled at me as we approached and asked, "Is everything sorted out, now?"

"I'm stuck with her," Leon answered for me. "And now we need a name."

"Heading out on your first collection?" Jane blanked the rude Reaper to address me directly.

I nodded in reply. "Is that – is it okay for me to go back out there if I'm – you know – dead, but not meant to be dead?"

"You were definitely meant to be dead," Leon said irritably. "I saw the state of your body, remember?"

I remembered. I wasn't sure I'd ever forget that my first encounter with Leon was in a morgue. As far as first impressions went, it was memorable, to say the least. In fact, it might have been the most memorable of all the first meetings I'd had with anyone in my entire life and death, which was saying something when I'd once met a guy at a party shortly after I was legally allowed to drink by puking over the stairs and directly onto his head.

Jane noted the details of our collection and pushed the paper through the slot for Leon. He scanned the information quickly and turned without thanking Jane for her assistance. I smiled at her briefly before following him to the door.

"So, where are we going?" I asked. "Back to the hospital?"

"No. Our share of hospital duty has been reassigned to Anna and Lola."

"So...?"

"Does it matter?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe?"

"Not far from where I collected you. Any other questions?"

"Do we have to travel through the toilets again?" I asked.

"No. We'll walk through the door closest to the location of our target."

"Why can't you just teleport there?" I pressed. "Wouldn't that be faster?"

"Yes, and physically impossible. I'm a Reaper, not a magician."

"Not like I know," I muttered, feeling foolish for suggesting it.

"I could fill a book with what you don't know, which is why I'm going to teach you these things. If you're that interested, stop asking questions and watch."

Leon's attitude was difficult to move past. There had been flashes of humanity from him when he'd smiled briefly when he'd expressed some humour, and in the way that he'd saved my life, which I was starting to think was more for his sake than mine. Other than that, he was proving to be just about the worst human being it had ever been my misfortune to encounter. The only time I'd thought well of him was during those few moments in the park when I'd recalled that he'd been the only person whose touch I could feel since I died. How we were meant to work together I would never know. In life, I had been an eternal optimist. I was yet to figure out what kind of person I was in death, but I was sure that whoever that person was, she was not the sort of person to put up with someone like him.

Ignorant of my inner ramblings about his unlikeable nature, which lasted until our return to the open doors through which we'd arrived after my death. I was hesitant to leave in case we came out in the same spot and the dog was still waiting. Leon had no such reservations. He stepped through the vortex without a thought as to where he might appear, and I could do nothing but follow him into the unknown.

The unknown, in this case at least, was a large, sunlit park. It was an almost perfect day. It must have been about noon from the position of the sun in the sky which was a pastel blue tone. Thick, soft clouds hung in the sky in such a neat formation it was as if they'd been painted onto it. Birds flew en-masse through the air, turning together, catching their wings on the breeze, and climbing ever higher into the sky. Amongst them were kites flown by young children playing with their parents and siblings, kids kicking footballs to each other, and adults enjoying one another's company on the grass.

The thing about England, that you must understand, is that perfect, sunny, blissful days are incredibly rare. They are even rarer on weekends, and as such the general population is ready to charge out of their houses in force when such days occur, armed with picnics, blankets, and suntan lotion so that they might enjoy it before we return to the haze of grey misery to which we have become accustomed. I guessed that it was a weekend from the sheer volume of people and surmised then that at least a few days had passed since I had died.

"Perhaps I should have mentioned," Leon said as we walked side by side across the grass which didn't bend beneath our feet, "that time passes differently in the afterlife."

"So, how long have I been dead?" I asked despite being sure I didn't want to know the answer.

"For you? Hours. For the people you know? I'd say a little over a month by now. I suppose it's sort of like dog years, in a way. Belle figured out it's about six days here to every hour in the afterlife."

"An hour is – and – and a month? So, they'd have had my funeral and everything already?"

"Yes. Were you hoping for an invitation?" he asked. "It's not as if you could have gone home to comfort them or hung around watching people moving on with their lives."

"Why couldn't I?" I asked. "What's wrong with that?"

"It's not healthy."

"Some people must choose to stay though, right? Like, there are ghosts and things, aren't there?"

"They don't last very long. Ghosts are human souls trapped behind the veil. Hell Hounds and Reapers are constantly on the lookout for them in order to move them on. Believe me, you're better off with us in the afterlife than you are over here."

That was a matter of opinion. I wasn't sure that I was better off with Leon. Had my partner been someone like Anna or Lola then I might have been inclined to agree. I couldn't imagine any of the other Reapers would be willing to swap partners with me when they were going to have to put up with him, especially not when Anna had made it sound as if Leon had a habit of losing the people he worked with. This point had been playing on my mind since the first time I'd heard Jack's name, and not only because I thought it was funny that he was Jack the Reaper.

"What happened to the last guy you worked with?"

"He's gone."

"Yeah, I heard that much. But what actually happened to him."

"He saw someone about to commit suicide and went to collect on the soul. I told him not to, but he didn't listen."

"Why wouldn't you collect someone who commits suicide? Is it a sin or something?" I asked.

Leon winced and I remembered that he was a suicide. It must've been a painful memory. I couldn't imagine that we'd ever be good enough friends that he'd tell me the whole story, or that I'd be so inclined to hear it. Still, I probably should've been more sensitive to the fact that it might be traumatic for him to talk about it and insulting for me to call it a sin. It wasn't my place to judge how or why people left the world.

"Nothing like that. If you live a good life, you deserve to go to Heaven regardless of how it all ends. And if you live a bad life, we're still waiting to put you on the right train on the other side."

"So, what was the problem?" I pressed. "Wasn't he just trying to do his job?"

Leon stopped walking to explain. "A suicide victim ends their life before their time. Therefore, they're not on any of our lists. We find them by chance, and when we do, they're always surrounded by Hell Hounds. They can smell the negative energy from them, and they feed off the unspent years the human should have had. If we can get to them first, great, we'll take them. This guy had a pack of Hell Hounds waiting. Jack was too stupid to notice and ran into a massacre."

"You could've saved him, couldn't you?"

"From five Hell Hounds? No." Again, he looked pained. Maybe he did regret what happened to Jack, after all. "I'm good, but I'm not that good."

"How did you notice they were there?" I asked. "I mean, if he didn't, then how did you?"

"I have a sense for these things."

"Because you're the boss," I said sarcastically.

"Exactly. Now you're getting it." Leon either didn't understand how sarcasm worked, or he didn't feel he should acknowledge it. I imagined it was the latter. Changing the subject back to the task at hand, he asked, "Do you notice anything out of place?"

"The two dead people standing here that no one else can see?"

"Besides us."

There wasn't a lot that could be considered out of place outside of the weather. Honestly, talk to the British about their weather, and you will find yourself in a long, arduous discussion about how there's something wrong with it. It's always the first thing we notice about any day. It was difficult for me to think of anything but the unseasonal pleasantness of the sunshine. If I'd been able to feel it the way that living people could, I'd have said that it was too hot or something. I was about to tell him that I didn't see anything unusual when I noticed a pair of joggers cutting their way through the park.

I don't know if you've ever seen photographs which have been edited so that it's all in colour except for one person, but I felt like I was in one. The woman was wearing a lurid pink velour outfit, a tiny water bottle in her hand and headphones in her ears. Her brunette ponytail swished from side to side with each bound. She practically radiated health and life.

Her partner, on the other hand, didn't seem quite so alive. Although he was keeping pace with her, his skin had turned grey, the colour had drained from his face and clothes as if he'd escaped from a fifties movie. His breathing was laboured, the sweat streaming down his forehead as he fought to continue. The man looked as if he was on the brink of death.

"Philip Cartwright," Leon said when he was satisfied that I'd located our target. "Aged thirty-seven. Undiagnosed heart condition. He's headed upstairs despite a dubious childhood. He turned his life around when he met that woman over there and realised the full weight of his sins."

"What, and that just cancels it all out?"

"Feeling true remorse is enough to warrant forgiveness. A lot of people will say they're sorry when their time comes, but very few mean it."

"One question," I said.

"Shoot."

"Do we have to run to keep up with them?"

"No. We're good. He'll be going in four – three – two – aaaaaand... there we go."