In the Bureau of the Sky, forty-nine days earlier:

Aurelia didn’t know what to think. She had no idea how to make sense of the scene before her. She shut off the vision, shook her seal – which, given that it was a block of solid gold, did absolutely nothing to it – and commanded it again to show her Black Sand Creek. The exact same images re-formed before her.

A stretch of river, frozen blue-white with demon ice, gouged and broken by demon hooves and fins and weapons.

A roasted monster of a catfish, lying on its side like a banquet dish, with rock macaque demons leaping at it while a lone wild boar demon stamped and tried to chase them off.

Bright-faced farmers and villagers, dressed in their New Year’s best, singing and playing instruments and setting off firecrackers as they streamed towards the river.

And, on the banks of Black Sand Creek, that impossible alliance of humans and spirits that That Demon had roped together, kicking and screaming, to exercise her will.

Which was also Aurelia’s will.

She didn’t know what to think about it. How to feel about it.

Down Persimmon Tree Lane skipped a little girl with smudged cheeks and two short pigtails tied with red ribbons, chased by a bamboo viper spirit who called, “Taila! Taila! We ssshould wait for your papa and brothers! We ssshould make sssure it’s sssafe first!”

“Miss Ducky said we wo-on!” Cassia Quarta’s reincarnation sang without missing a skip. “I wanna go see-ee!”

Against all odds, That Demon had kept her oath. She’d pulled it off. In fact, she’d gone so much further than Aurelia had expected, even after learning just who Soul Number 11270 was. Not only had That Demon kept the reincarnation of Cassia Quarta away from the river and alive through that starving spring, but she’d also secured a bright future for the girl. Unthinkably for a peasant child, Jek Taila was going to school alongside the other children of the barony, learning to read and write and do sums. She might grow up to be a mage one day, or a clerk, or a scholar, or one of the thousand-thousand avenues that opened up to a smart, ambitious, educated young human.

And she would never, ever, ever get murdered by that catfish demon ever again.

Lord Silurus had eaten his last human. It was his turn to be eaten, by the gathering crowd.

Aurelia sighed, content. She switched off the vision and called through the lattice front of her office, “Lady Dan, please summon Head Accountant White Dawn for me.”

It was time to keep her own half of the oath.

As an afterthought, she added, “And tell the Star of Heavenly Joy that I would like to see him at his earliest convenience.”

After all, Cassius would also like to know that his former daughter’s reincarnation was safe at last.

In the Bureau of Reincarnation, present day:

In between bounces, I pestered Flicker, So, what am I going to be this time? A fox? Am I going to be a fox again?

Even though Stripey had told me it was impossible, it didn’t hurt to ask. It never hurt to ask.

Flicker returned a severe and, in my opinion, entirely unjustified stare. “No, you will not be a fox again. In fact, given the damage you did last time, I daresay that Glitter will never allow you to reincarnate as a fox again.”

Now that was totally unfair. I was sure I could have done just as much damage to Cassius’ court as a different type of creature. Maybe even as a raccoon dog.

Nah, never as a raccoon dog.

But now that I thought about it, I could have made Aurelia swear to order Glitter to reincarnate me as a fox! Curses! It was far too late to amend the oath now. I’d missed the best chance I’d ever get.

I smacked myself against Flicker’s desk, then tried to read my file upside down. Well? So? What am I going to be? Stripey said souls start out in Black Tier as birds – oh! Right! Flicker! What did Stripey reincarnate as? And where?

Lifting off, I floated over to the bookcase and scanned it for Stripey’s file. Before I could find it, Flicker leaped up, grabbed me in one hand, and plonked me back on his desk.

Hey! You squished me! (It didn’t hurt, but I still thought that a pro forma protest was required.)

Flicker sat back down, rubbing his temples. “Please, please, please, Piri, for once, will you just behave yourself and act like a proper soul? You’re Black Tier now! You should be more – better – you know!” Unable to find the word he was looking for, he waved his arms.

Although I didn’t know the specific word he was looking for either, I did grasp the gist. I am “more” now, I informed him. I am better. That soul just now is my friend. And, as such, I am invested in his well-being and would like to know what he reincarnated as and where so I can go assist him in earning positive karma.

“And as his friend, you should recognize that he didn’t want you to know that information, or he wouldn’t have told you not to come in for his reincarnation.”

So many negatives in one sentence made me pulse. Huh? I mean, I beg your pardon?

“He told you goodbye, didn’t he?” Flicker pointed out with too much logic. “He’s moved on to his next life, Piri, free of all the memories and encumbrances of the past. As souls were meant to. Let him go.”

Let him go? Let Stripey go?

But – I hesitated, grasping at our last exchange. But we’re going to meet again. At Honeysuckle Croft. Someday. He promised.

Flicker sighed. “Let him go, Piri. It will be better for both of you. Let this past life go, and look to your next one. It’s how this system was meant to work.”

Let this past life go? Let go of all the people I’d met, from Stripey and Bobo to the Jeks to Den and Floridiana and the rest of the taskforce? Let them go and trust them to live their own lives and make the right choices?

But how would they make the right choices without me to tell them what to do? I was the one with the memories of a millennium and a half, not to mention insider knowledge of the workings of Heaven. They needed me. Whether they – and Flicker – knew it or not.

You still haven’t told me what I’m going to be.

Happy to distract me from Stripey’s personal information, Flicker answered at once. “A sparrow.”

A sparrow?

“Yes.”

My sides contracted and crinkled up in distaste. But sparrows are so small. So drab. So common. Also…don’t humans consider them pests?

I vaguely remembered one of the Cassius’ officials reporting that some lord was petitioning for tax relief because a bunch of sparrows had eaten all his grain. They hadn’t even been sparrow demons – just normal, mortal sparrows following their normal, mortal instincts.

Trust Glitter to find the one pest species in Black Tier to reincarnate me as!

Flicker, however, was unimpressed by my objections. “Then don’t be a pest and you’ll be fine.”

Seriously, that’s your idea of helpful advice – oh! The implications of what he’d said dawned on me. Flicker! I’m going to reincarnate with my mind, right?

The clerk raised his eyebrows. “Barring future directives, yes.”

Oh, thank goodness Aurelia hadn’t meddled with the Goddess of Life’s order. Thank goodness Cassius hadn’t countermanded it. Yet.

Have they formally appointed the new Assistant Director of Reincarnation yet?

“No, not yet. Last I heard, it’s still working its way through the committee.”

Good. So now I just had to find a way to reincarnate as a fox before Cassius assumed the office of the Assistant Director with all the rights, responsibilities, and opportunities for revenge thereof – and then I had to stay alive until I awakened. While evading anyone from Heaven who might try to recall me. It would be tricky, but I thought I could do it.

No, I would do it, because I had to.

You haven’t told me where I’m going to reincarnate yet.

“And I’m not going to.”

Aww, why not? Come ooooon, Flicker.

“Because it’s a surprise. Surprises are good for the soul.”

That might have sounded more convincing if he hadn’t been gritting his teeth so hard. But I’d already pushed him as far as seemed reasonable and productive, so I floated into the air.

All right, then. Hit me!

And he did.

Somewhere on Earth:

I awoke – but I couldn’t see. Everything was pitch black, just like it had been when I woke in the archival box and thought I’d been cast into the void. No! Had the reincarnation gone wrong? Was I blind? Deformed?

Or had a god interfered after all?

I tried to scream, but my mouth wouldn’t open. I had no mouth.

Oh no, oh no, oh no.

I tried to thrash, to right myself, but I couldn’t move either. I was trapped, no, crammed into a tiny space. I couldn’t see, hear, taste, touch, or smell a thing.

Nooooo! Let me out! Help! Someone! Anyone! Help meeee!

My world jerked. I was rocking from side to side, wobbling like a drunk noble. Something inside me was thudding. Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump. It hurt. It hurt because…because it wasn’t meant to pound so hard? As I stopped struggling and examined the sensation, the thudding slowed, and the pain eased.

A heartbeat! Was it a heartbeat?

Experimentally, I pictured Cassius’ smug, punchable face, the way he’d looked that time, so many lives ago, when he’d swept into Flicker’s office with his stolen seal and robbed me of my first reincarnation in Green Tier. He’d been so spiteful, so arrogant, so convinced that he could do whatever he wanted to me and get away with it because everyone in Heaven hated me anyway.

The thudding picked up in speed and intensity. It was definitely a heartbeat. I had a heartbeat! The reincarnation had worked after all. Whew!

So that meant I couldn’t see or move because I was stuck inside an eggshell, developing my body. The rocking just now, after I screamed with my soul’s voice, had probably been from my sparrow mother taking flight. Oops. I hoped she came back soon to brood my egg, before it cooled off too much and I died without hatching.

How long did it take baby sparrows to hatch? Again, it wasn’t something I’d ever considered investigating back when I had access to a library. However, a sparrow’s incubation period couldn’t possibly be as long as a turtle’s, if only because sparrows were higher Tier so they had to be better. In this case, “better” definitely meant a shorter incubation period.

Yes. That was the logic I was going with.

And indeed, my fledgling natural philosophy skills were proven correct when, a significantly smaller number of days than I’d spent inside an oracle-turtle egg later, instinct drove me to start chipping at my eggshell. Conveniently, I’d sprouted a little spike on top of my beak to use for pecking. It still took forever, though, because my muscles were weak and floppy, and there was barely any room to maneuver inside the egg. But eventually, I broke into open air.

Argh! So cold!

My sparrow mother immediately covered me with her body, or what I presumed was her body. I still couldn’t see anything. My eyelids refused to open. On its own, my beak did, and the most awful screech tore out of my throat. All around me, fleshy things were bumping me, and a near-demonic racket was rising around me. Feed me, feed me, feed me! we shrieked.

There was more jostling, and then a larger, harder beak was dropping something into my open mouth. Something crunchy. A bug! Eww! Gross! I recoiled, but my sparrow-brain had already overridden my reaction and was gulping it down. The first insect I ate in this life was simultaneously the most delicious and the most disgusting thing I’d ever tasted.

It took four days before I could finally open my eyes, and my first sight in this life was of a feathery, beigish-grey underside. I squirmed, the mother sparrow shifted, and a beam of light illuminated the inside of the nest.

I looked around and screamed.