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just wanted to go home, pop a bag of microwave popcorn in the nuker and have a beer. A really big one.
    A fine mist began to fall and she shivered as the tee shirt and jeans she was wearing dampened. Her sneakers squished as she stepped into a puddle from the earlier rain.
    Great.
    Dead body. Deserted road. Middle of the night. Wings. Oh wow.
    Her mind folded in on itself. Why the hell was she standing out here in the middle of nowhere? This was not going to end well. She was pretty damn sure of that.
    Where’d I leave my phone? I need to call Dad!
    He was probably home by now, wondering when she was going to get off her shift at the diner. Or fallen asleep on the couch.
    She didn’t see her phone, but saw the shovel and bent to pick it up.
    At least I can still touch things. That’s good.
    The unfamiliar voice spoke again. “Are you going to help me, here? Or am I supposed to wait for the next one?”
    “Who said that?”
    “Down here.” A light touch of cold went down her leg as something brushed against her jeans.
    Jess jumped. Standing at her feet was the translucent, silvery form of a beagle. Or, rather, two parts of a beagle. And one was talking.
    “Is this a joke?” she asked.
    “Seeing as how I’m dead and so are you, I wouldn’t say that it was a joke. No.” The beagle glanced over at his body by the tarp. “You need to send me home, okay?”
    “How do I do that?” Jess snorted. “Look for some red shoes and click my heels together?”
    The beagle gave her a cross look. “Didn’t they teach you anything while you were gone?”
    “Um, no. I woke up, I fell, and now I have these ugly gray wings.” She shook her shoulders and said wings flexed and retracted against her back. “Oh, and apparently I’m just as dead as you.”
    The beagle rolled his doggy eyes and dragged the bottom half of its spectral body so it could sit down next to her. “Well, not quite as dead. You’re holding the shovel, aren’t you? That’s something.” At her baffled expression, the beagle cocked its head. “Look, maybe you’re here for a purpose.”
    “What? Wiping up carnage for all eternity. Nice.” Jess scowled and kicked at a rock in the road.
    What am I supposed to do now? My body is lying in the street! Should I call someone? What the hell would I say?
    “You really are a smartass for an angel.”
    “Angel?” Jess laughed harshly. “ Now that is funny. Sorry. I’m a little cranky. Dying will do that to a girl.”
    “Someone’s coming.” The beagle squinted at the bright but distant lights speeding down the deserted street and mewled deep in his throat.
    Jess’s fingers began to tingle. She looked at the headlights and something deep in her gut tightened, fierce and visceral.
    “It’s the same car,” she whispered, awareness flooding through her. “I feel it. The blood. It’s calling me.” 
    She flexed her fingers and made a fist, nails cutting into her palm. The freakishness of the moment should have alarmed her, but instead it solidified everything that had happened.
    “Yeah. You can wash the blood away, but it still connects with you, you know?” The beagle growled under his breath, gazing out into the darkness at the ghostly shapes dotted along the stretch of highway. “He hit me. Most of the others too. Can you see them? Every time he comes this way, we’re drawn to the road. We watch, but there is nothing we can do.” He looked up at her mournfully. “Until you that is.”
    The center of her back itched and her wings grew heavy, aching to fly. She wanted to catch the fucker and make him pay. Rage filtered through her, powerful and sudden.  She stalked toward the road, her stride brisk.
    Her newfound connection with the dead alive in her being, she called to the animals and they came. All shapes and sizes, they crept onto the forbidden territory of the road, the place that had been their unfortunate demise. Their ghostly forms flickered in the darkness, a sea of ghost