"Cough — you absolute bastard, Constantine—"
Constantine was in the middle of a cigarette and a silence that had taken on the particular quality of grief when Jude sat up.
The cigarette nearly went sideways. Constantine caught it, then stumbled back half a step, staring.
"Holy—"
"Keep your voice down." Jude pulled the cigarette from between his own lips and held it out at arm's length with the expression of a man who has just found a spider in his shoe. He was blinking, squinting, running a hand over his face like he was confirming it was still there. "I told you I don't smoke. Did you light this while I was dead? What is wrong with you?"
Constantine stared at him. Then, with the dawning suspicion of someone who has been tricked by the universe, he looked Jude over properly. The skin that had been drawn tight over bone for the past seven days had filled back out. The eyes that had gone dry and clouded were clear. The voice, which had reduced itself to a hollow rasp and then to nothing at all, was back to its full and irritated volume.
He looked, Constantine thought, fine.
SYSTEM NOTIFICATION
Item Activated: Totem of Immortality — $250,000
Triggers automatically upon death. Restores health to 1 point, removes all status effects, and grants: Level 1 Fire Resistance, Level 2 Health Regeneration (40 seconds), Level 2 Damage Absorption (5 seconds).
Note: When the icon appeared in front of you, that was the activation. Yes, it is shaped like a phone charm. No, we don't know who thought that was appropriate. At least it's always on your wrist.
"You came back to life from a cigarette?" Constantine said.
"I died because of the cigarette," Jude corrected. "I wasn't dead before you lit it. I had a pulse — it was faint, but it was there. What kind of person skips checking and goes straight to the commemorative smoke?"
"You didn't have a pulse. I checked."
"You checked wrong."
"I am a trained occultist who has dealt with death in a professional capacity for thirty years—"
"You checked wrong."
Constantine opened his mouth. Closed it. Looked at his cigarette. Looked at Jude.
"What is this?" he said finally, with the genuine bewilderment of a man whose categories are failing him. "Seven days. You died — I watched you die — and now you're sitting there complaining about secondhand smoke. Is this a miracle? Am I watching a miracle? Are you the Son of God? Is this the resurrection? It's been seven days, that's one over the three-day threshold but still—"
"Constantine." Jude rubbed his eyes. "I'm Japanese. And an atheist. If someone like me is the Son of God, it means God has absolutely no one else available and is in genuine crisis."
"There's precedent," Constantine said, still slightly wild-eyed. "That Hong fellow — the one who killed the Heavenly Brother—"
"Do not start a theological war at one in the morning."
"I'm just saying—"
"I'm telling you—"
Constantine unlocked the basement door, still eyeing the back of Jude's head as if checking for a halo. He circled Jude once on the stairs. Peered. Jude ignored him.
"At the moment you died," Constantine said, as they reached the ground floor, "did you see anything? Light at the end of a tunnel? Man with wings? Anyone with a beard and a general air of authority?"
"I smelled cigarette smoke," Jude said. "That was the last thing. Just smoke."
"Hm." Constantine filed this away with visible reluctance.
They came up from the basement and walked directly into Lester.
He was coming through the front door with cigarettes and a bottle, in the way of a man who had been running errands at midnight to avoid sitting with his own thoughts. He looked up. The three of them stood in the hallway and stared at each other.
The silence lasted approximately twenty seconds.
Then Lester screamed.
It was a sustained, structural scream — the kind that starts in the chest and evacuates everything. It went on long enough that Constantine, despite himself, took a small step back.
"—Jesus Christ what the—"
"There's a reason you two get along," Jude said to Constantine.
Constantine shook his head. "The safe house is finished. Once you scream like that in a building, it's just a house."
Lester eventually stopped, having worked through several registers of pure vocal panic. He stared at Jude with the focused intensity of someone reassessing fundamental assumptions about reality.
"I checked on you at noon," he said, slightly hoarse. "You were — you looked—"
"Dead," Jude confirmed. "I got better."
"The shaman told me the vessel was doomed." Lester's voice had gone reverent and confused in equal measure. He sank, slowly, to one knee. "Are you — is this — did God send you? Are you a saint?"
"Last week," Jude said patiently, "the roof of a church in Texas collapsed while thirty-four people were inside singing hymns."
Lester processed this. Then he stood up quietly.
"That's a bit much," he said.
"He's not a saint," Constantine said, draping his coat over the banister. "He's the other kind. I've met Lucifer, and Lucifer doesn't have an Asian face — but I've also met people who hate God more than Satan does, and they tend to have a similar energy."
"I don't hate the idea of gods," Jude said. "I hate false authority. I hate people who use divine names to dress up their own interests and call it faith. Those are different things."
Constantine considered this. "Fair enough. Next time I'll introduce you to Gabriel — that sanctimonious, preening little — you can tell him exactly that while I watch."
"Gabriel has significant force behind him regardless of his personality."
"I know, I know." Constantine waved a hand. "It's still a good image though."
Constantine's phone rang.
He glanced at the screen, then answered it without moving away. Midnight's voice came out of the speaker clearly enough for the room to hear.
"Constantine. Seven days. Has Mnemoth self-destructed?"
Jude raised his hand and made an OK sign.
"Dead," Constantine said. "Completely and entirely dead. You can rest easy. Is there anything else?"
A pause on the line.
"Constantine." Midnight's voice shifted into something more considered. "We are what we are. Powerful people. Grief is a luxury we cannot afford — as practitioners, we have to let go of our humanity, or it breaks us. You know this."
"I don't want a lecture, Midnight."
"Lester survived," Constantine said. "As I told you he would. That old shaman's technique is worth more than anything in your armoury on his own ground. I've seen it. Don't condescend to it."
"So the shaman saved the addict."
"He did. And if you die fighting something next week, he might even arrange flowers for you. It'd be a first."
"No one's lucky forever, Constantine. You'll understand what I'm saying eventually."
"I'd rather die than turn into what you are, Midnight." His voice was perfectly even. "Goodnight."
He hung up and looked at the other two with the satisfaction of someone who has placed a very specific punctuation mark at the end of a conversation.
"Masterclass," he said, and pocketed the phone.
"Glad someone's having fun," Lester said.
Jude stretched, slowly and carefully, testing the returned structural integrity of his skeleton. Everything seemed to be where he'd left it.
"Right," he said. "Now that this is done, I need to go back to Gotham."
SYSTEM NOTIFICATION
Mission Complete: Tears of the Despicable
Special Skill Acquired: Smuggling
Welcome back.