The first thing you learn about being dead is that you remember everything. Every breath you ever took, every lie you ever told, every person you ever loved — it all floods back in the space between your last heartbeat and whatever comes next.

For Amara Okafor, the flood came with the taste of copper and a ceiling she didn't recognise.

"No — no, no, no —"

Her voice cracked against the silence. She pressed her palms flat against the cold steel surface beneath her. A mortuary slab? No — softer than that. Leather. Black leather, old enough to be cracked at the seams.

She wasn't dead. But she wasn't alive either. Not in any way she understood.

The room was vast and dim. Cathedral ceilings lost in shadow. Candles — dozens of them — flickering in iron sconces along stone walls. The air smelled of incense and something metallic. Something alive.

"Easy."

The voice came from behind her. Low. British. The kind of calm that only exists when someone has seen enough horror to be bored by it.

"Your body doesn't work the way you remember yet."

"She spun — too fast. The room tilted. Her knees buckled and she caught herself on the edge of the chaise, fingernails digging into aged leather. Her vision strobed: everything too bright, too sharp, too much."