Having been placed on a steady diet of angelica root tea and having salt rubbed into his wound, Michael had found himself recovering at a surprising rate. Not two days after his injury he had been able to stand and walk around and even leave Stella's wagon. (The fortune teller seemed to have set up camp in Central Park; an act of questionable legality.)

A pitch black scab had begun to form over the hole in his chest, which, while horrifying, his nurse assured him was perfectly normal and a good sign. (Then again, Michael had recently learned she also owned seven ghost cats who roamed free about the wagon; a fact which he was supposed to simply accept and that did both nothing and everything to explain the smell.)

On the third day, Michael had shaken the Grim Reaper's hand.

"This is only a temporary covenant," Mortality had assured him. But as soon as they'd clasped hands Michael had felt things inside of him beginning to change, and he still wondered how temporary that could be.

That was also when he started being able to see the cats.

Now, a day later, he was standing in one of the most infamously wicked places in the whole wicked city, with a seemingly slightly-less-wicked angel-man by his side.

"Welcome to Mulberry Bend," Mortality announced cordially, "The worst slum in North America. Famous for its gangs, violence, and...blast, I seem to have spoiled my new shoes."

If any place in the metropolis were to spawn demons from its shadows, Michael thought, it was this place.

One need not be superstitious as he to see that. The place stunk of and bled disease, desperation, and despair.

"Is that a dead horse lyin' in the road?" he wondered, appalled.

Mr. M glanced in the direction he pointed.

"Why, yes, so it would appear."

He placed a bony hand on Michael's shoulder.

"Come, Mr. MacBranain, it's not polite to gawk at the misfortune of other creatures. Remember that my misfortune is our priority at the moment. Now," he pulled Michael around to face him, gripping both his shoulders, "here we are in Dr. Grimm's former hunting grounds; a place of such maze-like quality as to make it the perfect hiding place for a monster's treasure. Tell me, lad, do you sense any hearts?"

What he sensed most was his own desire for personal space.

"Er...h-how am I s'posed to sense a heart?" he asked, politely removing the skeletal hands.

"Well, how am I to know?" Mr. M shot back, "You're the one capable...probably. I deal in corpses, not metaphysical cardiology."

"I deal in sheep," Michael pointed out.

The man lifted a gloved index finger, paused, realized he had a point, and dropped his arm.

"Well, look, try this," Mortality tried again, putting a hand to his chin, "what were you thinking about the moment you were attacked?"

Taken aback, Michael swallowed.

"I...I don't..."

"Oh, I'm not asking you to tell me," the Reaper waved, seeming to sense his fib before it had left his lips, "That would be endlessly awkward and wouldn't help either of us in the slightest. No, I want you to return there in your head."

Michael didn't particularly want to revisit that moment in any way.

Still, he reminded himself, he had a duty to fulfill.

All else might have been frightening and mysterious, but duty at least was something firm and familiar he could wrap his hands around; something to stiffen his back and furrow his brow.

Mr. M also interjected his bit of sound advice.

"Go on," he coaxed, "It's only for a moment. Stiff upper lip and all. Sink back into those depths of despair."

Reluctantly, but with lip properly stiffened, Michael obliged.

Closing his eyes, he revisited all the turmoil and pain of the past number of months. All the guilt, all the fear... He swallowed.

Fingers of ice had begun to creep through his chest again.

And that's when he heard it.

It started as a sigh, a slight disturbance of the dung-thickened air, quiet as, no, quieter than a breath; and then it grew into a melancholy song, a dirge heavier than the smell of death. A man's voice was weeping in the distance.

"Oh God what have I done?" he cried, "Oh God, I don't deserve to live!"

"D'ye hear that?" Michael gasped.

"Hear what?" the Reaper demanded eagerly, almost greedily, "What do you hear boy?"

But Michael didn't care about Mr. Mortality anymore. His heart broke with the man who wept.

Half-dazed by the familiarity, he began to follow the sound. He barely noticed the crook of Mr. M's umbrella slipping around his arm like a hook--not to hinder but to follow, like a hound on a leash. The Grim Reaper had found the scent he was looking for.

Unaware of and uncaring for his destination, the young man waded through the filth with a purpose, his employer marching in tow.

Screams, cursing, and gunshots still echoed in the distance, as well as the sound of glass bottles smashing against non-glass objects. Also, a drunk man was now urinating on the dead horse they had seen earlier.

But Michael had become lost to the world; caught up in the stranger's pain. Every step he took, the sorrow intensified, and the memories of his own pain washed over him like the cold, cruel waves of the Atlantic.

"I am a disease! A cancer!"

Saints above, this man was blubbering! Was that what Michael sounded like?

It was with this thought that he walked face-first into a wall.

"Hm," Mortality withdrew his umbrella and regarded the brick surface with a quizzical lift of his brow. "By all appearances, Mr. MacBranain, it would seem as though you had led us into a literal dead-end."

The Reaper was correct to call it "literal", as they were standing at the end of a dark alley.

Michael rubbed his sore nose.

"What are we goin' to do now?" he inquired, "Only, I know for sure I felt somethin'."

The Reaper had begun to strip off his gloves with an air of careless efficiency.

"'Appearance' is the key word here," he replied, "Here, Assistant, assist me by holding my gloves. See to it you don't let any grime reach them, there's a good lad."

Mr. M then proceeded to roll up his sleeves, hook his umbrella around the crook of his arm, and--simply reach through the wall.

Michael watched disbelievingly as Mortality furrowed his brow in concentration and reached around blindly through the solid bricks; looking almost reminiscent of a shop keeper reaching around for the back of the shelf in search of the last can of peas.

Then, giving a quiet "ah" of satisfaction, he ceased his search.

Reaching both arms into the brickwork now, Mr. M withdrew his prize: an actual, beating, human heart.

Michael's throat filled with bile.

It was just the right size to belong to a full grown man. Fleshy and vein-y, it quivered and thumped in the Grim Reaper's hands, valves and muscles still working to pump away at nothing. However, it was different from the sheep's hearts Michael has (regrettably) seen in his time, in that it glowed a faint and steady silver-blue.

Adorning the heart like some sick, twisted jewelry were layers of thick, ebony chain. They wrapped around the organ like webs around a spider's meal, they hung off it like weights on a prisoner's ankles (somehow seeming to disappear the further they got from the heart itself), they even ran under the flesh as though they had become part of the blood flow.

"Excellent work, Mr. MacBranain!" Mortality praised, "Your injury is proving to be more than serviceable! Here, trade with me. I need to break these chains."

Before Michael could register what he was being asked to do, the gloves in his grasp had been replaced by the cold, wet lump of human meat and pain.

He barely stifled a small scream (as any reasonable person would).

Having pulled on his gloves and smoothed down his sleeves, the Reaper removed the umbrella from his arm and gripped it like a weapon.

And then it...ceased to be an umbrella. Black feathers fell away from it like ashen snow, and Mr. Mortality was holding the scythe Michael had seen him wielding not a week before.

Suddenly the Tall Man seemed taller and darker than he ever had, and Michael found the truth of what was happening rekindling in his mind--it was no longer just words and feathers; the man before him really was an Angel of Death. (Or, rather, angel-ish.)

Without another word or glance, and with the elegance and precision of one well-practiced in their art, the angel-man struck his blade at the chains that bound the heart.

Michael winced.

There was an unearthly flash of silver light, and the air rippled and resounded with the metallic clang of heavenly blade against infernal bond.

But when the air cleared and Michael opened his eyes, the chains around the heart remained. Indeed, for a moment, they were more visible than ever; he could see now how they extended in every direction, up walls, over and under garbage, even into the ground. They truly did resemble a spider's web.

And in that moment the air was filled with distant whispering, weeping, praying; the voices of every victim the Jack of Hearts had taken.

The moment faded and they were left again in silence.

Mr. Mortality bore his teeth.

"DAMN IT!"

"What's happened?" Michael gasped.

The Grim Reaper didn't answer but instead banged the staff of his scythe against the ground. As though in answer to his summons, and despite the shelter of the three walls surrounding them, an arctic wind whipped through the alleyway.

Michael shielded the heart with his arm as at the touch of the gust his employer's pale flesh and dark clothes seemed to rip away from him in the form of black feathers until he was engulfed in them.

When the wind had calmed, where Mr. Mortality had once stood there now towered a giant green dog.

"Leave the heart and get on my back," the dog barked ("bark" here being a descriptive term; he actually spoke English because he was Mortality and also a dog, a "Mortalidog" one might say), "Hurry, we haven't a moment to waste!"

Michael, confused though he was, obeyed (being careful to set the heart down gently of course), and in a flash, they were bounding out of the alley and down the street. Faster and faster they ran, and then they were flying; first as the Mortalidog leaped onto a cart, then the roof of someone's shanty, then onto higher and higher roofs still, until they had long left Mulberry Bend behind and it seemed the whole city were passing under them with each four-footed jump.

Michael held on for dear life.

"I don't understand," he dared to cry at last, "What went wrong? Where are we goin'?"

"I seem to have misjudged the situation," Mortalidog called back, "I assumed that if I found a heart I could simply cut the chains and all would be finished!"

"But you could'nae break the chain?"

"Not even close. I may have underestimated our enemy's power. And worse still, I think my scythe interacting with those chains may have alerted Dr. Grimm that we found a heart!"

A chill ran down Michael's spine.

"What does that mean?"

"It means he'll know his anchors are no longer well-hidden," Mr. M replied, "It means he'll be on high-alert regarding every heart in his hoard. Worse still, it means he'll be coming after the one who can sense his victims. The heart that got away."

Michael would have liked to have gone back to bed now. And it got worse:

"As for where we're going," the Reaper continued, "Dr. Grimm's house on _____ street."

"WHAT?? WHY??"

"I have a hunch," he replied, "and time is of the essence to see if it's correct!"

Instead of shouting the many choice words that had popped in his head, Michael tightened his grip on his employer's canine neck and began to pray silently and desperately to God and every saint he could remember.

Every leap the Mortalidog took knocked the wind out of the boy and his heart into his throat.

The city rushed past below him, all brick-buildings and cobble-stones and steeples and clotheslines full of clothes hung by families from around the world. In the distance, the Hudson river glistened like a glass pane in the sun, and the Statue of Liberty stood small as an ant yet queen of all she surveyed. Michael wondered if Mr. Mortality saw this often on his rounds. Somehow the smallness of the city from on high only served to remind Michael how much smaller he was himself.

Still, he had to be brave he reminded himself, or at least less cowardly.

And besides, he had an angel by his side...sort of.

"We're nearly there, Mr. MacBranain," he called, "Only a few more..."

KA-CLANG!

Michael looked back just in time to see the black chain that had narrowly missed him and his employer, stabbing phantom-like through the roof of the building like a knife through butter.

Equally startled, the Mortalidog's pace faltered slightly as his head snapped around to see the source of the metallic noise; then sped up as he focused like a machine on the rooftops ahead.

"BlastblastblastblastblastblastblastBLAST...!!!"

With each step and leap the Reaper took, a new chain burst from somewhere ahead; arcing through the sky like a giant black snake, always narrowly missing them but getting closer all the time.

Mortality seemed to try to compensate for this with a zigzagging motion, which did some small good; but no sooner had he begun his final leap onto the Brooklyn Brownstone with a triumphant cry of, "We're here!", then a dark chain had clamped around his canine throat.

Cracking like a whip, the chain pulled the Reaper down, and he skidded painfully across the roof on his belly, throwing Michael off him in a pivot that left him flat on his back and knocked the wind out of him.

A burst of adrenaline temporarily obscuring the pain, Michael scrambled to his feet and looked around. What he saw made his heart stop.

In the center of the roof, floating in place like a giant toy balloon, and glowing the same shade of silver-blue as the captive heart, was the man from the papers. Dr. Nathaniel Grimm. The Jack of Hearts.