I

"Shut it, Ben."

My partner and I were sprawled across the couch in our apartment, plastic guitars in hand. We'd been playing the same video game for nearly six hours.

Unfortunately, Benji had been an amazing guitar player in his former life. Too amazing. He was burying me.

"Wait, Kaye, who won? Who won that round? I want to hear you say it."

"I said shut it, Benjamin."

He smiled, smug and satisfied. I rolled my eyes and set my guitar on the coffee table. My gaze drifted over to the clock. "It's almost three, Ben. We're supposed to be at headquarters in less than two hours. I think it's time to call it a night."

He was already intently focused on the TV screen. "Just one more song, and I'll be done."

I rolled my eyes a second time and rose to leave the little den, calling over my shoulder as I went. "I'm going to bed, Ben. See you soon."

My bedroom door slammed behind me, the hinge just a bit too loose. I pretended not to notice it--no use complaining about a door that swung too well. In fact, the annoying details of this place only made it more appealing in my eyes; though predictably imperfect, it was home.

Not that I'd been living here that long. When training had ended three weeks ago, I'd been placed in a different building; it wasn't until we neophytes had been given our partner assignments that I'd been moved here, with Benji.

Ben was just as new as I was. They tried to keep the newbies together, according to the older crew. Less strain on the more skilled--and less patient--Guardians.

From the day we'd been partnered, we'd become one being, one entity. Other Guardians referred to us only as a pair. With very few exceptions, we were inseparable, even on our worst days. I wouldn't have called our relationship that of "best friends," or even that of siblings; it was something entirely different and inexplicable.

He was my other half.

My latest video game loss still weighing on my mind, I threw myself down on my bed and stared up at the ceiling. There was a window to my left, but it didn't face the outside world; no, I had not seen the outside for what felt like years. In all actuality, it had only been fifteen months, but still...

My eyes refused to close. I was exhausted, but there would be no sleep for me tonight. Probably none for Ben, either. The two of us were receiving the instructions for our first solo assignment in less than two hours.

From what I'd heard, it wasn't much of a procedure. We had to report to the Boss, file a few papers, hop in a car, and get on a plane. Nothing too tedious. Of course, the real work began once the plane landed; as soon as our new Subject came into our view, our whole lives would start to change.

The more experienced Guardians called it Revolving. It was something I'd only heard about and never understood, one of those impossibly possible eccentricities of the trade. Supposedly--and I was a bit skeptical about this--the very moment our Subject stepped into our line of sight, everything would appear to revolve around them. My life, and consequently Ben's, too, would cease to have meaning; all matters concerning the Subject were important and everything else was utterly not.

It was also alleged that in that moment, Ben and I would start to age. We would be taken either backward or forward to the approximate age of the Subject and our immortality would begin to spin wildly out of control, pushing us farther and farther down a mortal road until the Subject--to be blunt--kicked the bucket.

The aging was only an external factor, though. Internally, the two of us would forever stay where we were now, at seventeen and nineteen. We were also permitted to Shift--to revert back to our permanent ages--when there were no humans within sight. Just another part of the protocol for active Guardians. Or was that just a technicality?

I covered my eyes with my hands and moaned. There were so many rules I needed to remember, so many regulations that now evaded me. I'd studied the book for weeks before the training exam; why, of all times, would that knowledge start to fade now?

Well, maybe it would be fine. Maybe Ben and I would find that this sort of work--the ultimate test of Guardianship, the solo assignment--was just as natural as all the other tasks we'd faced in training. Maybe, just maybe, this would be easy.

Ha. I doubted it. Just as surely as I wouldn't sleep, I wasn't about to embark on a smooth, effortless journey.

One more hour.

Prologue

I almost didn't believe him when he said I was dead. I was too conscious to be dead; every one of my senses was sharp and attuned to my surroundings, more so than they had ever been while I was alive.

While I was alive. It still sounds so strange. You'd think that you would get used to being dead after awhile, but apparently that kind of comfort takes millenia to accomplish. That's what the others have told me, anyway.

I don't know if I'll ever be entirely comfortable referring to myself in past tense.

The Boss had sat before me, his hands folded on the desk, and told me with deep severity that yes, I was indeed dead. Orphaned since birth, I'd had no one to lose; with no unfinished business, it had been mostly expected that I would "pass on."

But there had been a mistake. An accident of sorts. The Boss had explained very carefully to me that while I'd been traveling "beyond," a reckless agent from the Paranormal department had been coming "back over." We'd collided, and I had wound up at the company's headquarters.

Now here I was, sitting for the last time on the metal bench in the trainees' locker room. Tomorrow, I would graduate from basic Guardian training, finally entering the field in which I so desperately wanted to work.

When the Boss had told me what I'd become--what had happened when I'd been "brought back"--I couldn't have been anything but excited. I'd beaten death, for Pete's sake. My thoughts immediately jumped to delusions of invicibility.

I now knew better than to feel indestructible. And after a year and a half of strenuous effort, there were only five of us left. Five trainees. We'd made it through, and tomorrow, it would be over.

My life, as I'd known it, was already over. My heart still beat, but I was not alive. I was immortal--caught between the realms of the living and the dead--and the only way I could die was by murder.

The life, the world, the era I'd known was gone. It had vanished completely, without my notice. And now, this brand new epoch, full of intense training and startling lessons, would be coming to a close, throwing me headfirst into a position I wanted more than anything and yet dreaded beyond belief.

I was incomprehensibly terrified.