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blue translucence of new snow. But in one corner of Gillian’s room, by the gilded Italian chest of drawers, the light seemed to have pooled. Coalesced. Concentrated. As if reflecting off a mirror.
    There wasn’t any mirror.
    Gillian sat up slowly. Her sinuses were stuffed up and her eyes felt like hard-boiled eggs. She breathed through her mouth and tried to make sense of what was in the corner.
    It looked like… a pillar. A misty pillar of light. And instead of fading as she woke up, it seemed to be getting brighter.
    An ache had taken hold of Gillian’s throat. The light was so beautiful… and almost familiar. It reminded her of the tunnel and the meadow and…
    Oh
.
    She knew now.
    It was different to be seeing this when she wasn’t dead. Then, she’d accepted strange things the way you accept them in dreams, without ordinary logic or disbelief interfering.
    But now she stared as the light got brighter and brighter, and felt her whole skin tingling and tears pooling in her eyes. She could hardly breathe. She didn’t know what to do.
    How do you greet an angel in the ordinary world?
    The light continued to get brighter, just as it had in the meadow. And now she could see the shape in it, walking toward her and rushing at the same time. Still brighter—dazzling and pulsating—until she had to shut her eyes and saw red and gold after images like shooting stars.
    When she squinted her eyes back open, he was there.
    Awe caught at Gillian’s throat again. He was so beautiful that it was frightening. Face pale, with traces of the light stilllingering in his features. Hair like filaments of gold. Strong shoulders, tall but graceful body, every line pure and proud and
different
from any human. He looked more different now than he had in the meadow. Against the drab and ordinary background of Gillian’s room, he burned like a torch.
    Gillian slid off her bed to kneel on the floor. It was an automatic reflex.
    â€œDon’t do that.” The voice was like silver fire. And then—it changed. Became somehow more ordinary, like a normal human voice. “Here, does this help?”
    Gillian, staring at the carpet, saw the light that was glinting off a stray safety pin fade a bit. When she tilted her eyes up, the angel looked more ordinary, too. Not as luminous. More like just an impossibly beautiful teenage guy.
    â€œI don’t want to scare you,” he said. He smiled.
    â€œYeah,” Gillian whispered. It was all she could get out.
    â€œAre you scared?”
    â€œYeah.”
    The angel made a frustrated circling motion with one arm. “I can go through all the gobbledygook: be not afraid, I mean you no harm, all that—but it’s such a waste of time, don’t you think?” He peered at her. “Aw, come on, kid, you died earlier today. Yesterday. This isn’t really all that strange in comparison. You can deal.”
    â€œYeah.” Gillian blinked. “Yeah,” she said with more conviction, nodding.
    â€œTake a deep breath, get up—”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œâ€”say something different….”
    Gillian got up. She perched on the edge of her bed. He was right, she
could
deal. So it hadn’t been a dream. She had really died, and there really were angels, and now one was in the room with her, looking almost solid except at the edges. And he had come to…
    â€œWhy did you come here?” she said.
    He made a noise that, if he hadn’t been an angel, Gillian would have called a snort. “You don’t think I ever really left, do you?” he said chidingly. “I mean, think about it. How did you manage to recover from freezing without even needing to go to the hospital? You were in severe hypothermia, you know. The worst. You were facing pulmonary edema, ventricular fibrillation, the loss of a few of your bits….” He wiggled his fingers and waggled his feet. That was when Gillian realized