It didn’t help that in the last few weeks his entire world had been turned on its ear.

For seven long years he’d believed that his beloved wife, Gabrielle, had escaped the pain and suffering of this world and had moved on to another, better place. He’d taken comfort in that belief, had found safety and solace in the fact that something good, something pure, had emerged from that horrific July afternoon when the supernatural entity that he called the Adversary had invaded their home and stolen her life away, that her death had not been the last and final act in the beautiful performance that had been her life.

Then had come that night seven months ago, when she’d first appeared to him in the darkness of an aircraft cabin high above the eastern seaboard, and his hard won equilibrium had been shattered like so much stained glass. She’d returned to him several times since, both here and in the Beyond, and he’d gradually begun to understand that she wasn’t at rest, wasn’t at rest at all, that she was trapped in some sort of limbo existence, neither here nor there, unable to return to the living and incapable of moving into the gentle peace of the dead.

It was a horrifying realization.

To think that she had been trapped in that hellish existence, alone, for all of those years, made him want to rail at the heavens and hang his head in shame. He’d failed her earlier, when he was unable to prevent the Adversary from taking her away from him, and he’d apparently failed her again, leaving her to languish in that strange half-life on the other side of the Veil.

But last night’s events had been the final blow to whatever equilibrium he had managed to maintain over the years in the wake of his wife’s death. The discovery of Gabrielle’s body, perfectly preserved after seven years in the grave, had struck Cade with all the delicate finesse of a sledgehammer. It made it unmistakably clear that Gabrielle was an important part of whatever plan the Adversary had set in motion, just as Cade himself was.

The question was why? What had the two of them done to deserve being targeted in such a fashion? What made them special? Out of all the billions of people in the world, why had the Adversary chosen them?