"Meet him?"
The Marrow's borrowed face tilted to the side, the shadows beneath its eyes stretching like spilled ink. It looked at Jason the way a man looks at a dog that has just asked to drive the carriage.
"You are dying," it said flatly. "Your body is lying on a frozen street with ice inside your lungs. Your heart has skipped four beats since we started speaking. And you want to meet the being who brought every realm in existence to its knees."
"Yeah," Jason said. "But not like this. Obviously. I'd like to be wearing pants, at least."
He looked down. He was wearing pants. They were the cheap jeans from the night the truck hit him, the knees still torn from where he had slid across the asphalt.
"See? Manifesting already."
The Marrow did not laugh. It never did. Jason was beginning to suspect it physically couldn't.
