The summons arrived while Felix was preventing Agnes from being felled by a decorative canoe in a garden center.

It appeared in midair with a polite chime and unfolded itself in front of his nose:

PROBATIONER MARR,

Your conduct during the Brimble's Department Store event, the Summer Relief Fair coconut discharge, and the regrettable lawn-sprinkler/chess clock matter has attracted administrative attention.

Attend Review Board 6 at once.

Failure to appear will be interpreted as sulking.

Felix snatched the notice from the air.

"I was busy not sulking," he said. "I was saving a woman from novelty boating equipment."

Agnes, oblivious, steadied the canoe display with one hand and said to the assistant, "No, really, I was just looking for compost."

Muriel appeared upside down from a pergola beam.

"Ah," she said. "You've made Board level."

"Is that good?"

"Not generally."

Felix looked from the summons to Agnes. She was in a home-and-garden warehouse on the edge of town, a place of stacked paving slabs, discount statuary, and enough trip hazards to occupy a medium deity. Ordinarily Felix would never have left her alone. Unfortunately, the notice had already begun counting down in glowing numbers.

ATTEND WITHIN 60 SECONDS

"Can I postpone?"

"Only with supporting documentation from a plague, flood, or active swan emergency."

"What if Agnes is in danger?"

Muriel made a sympathetic face of exactly no practical use.

"She's Agnes. That's assumed."

Felix stared at the countdown. Then he looked at Agnes, who had wandered toward an aisle marked PARTY DECOR, SEASONAL LIGHTING, AND CEREMONIAL THINGS.

"I hate this job," he said.

"No you don't," said Muriel.

"I hate that you know that."

The world snapped sideways.

Felix landed in Review Board 6, a narrow chamber lined with filing cabinets that reached into mist. Seated behind a horseshoe desk were three officials of the Afterlife Probation Office, each with the expression of someone asked to enjoy a meeting they had invented.

At the center sat Director Pindle, a thin woman with silver gloves and a voice like dry envelopes. On her left was Archdeacon Murch, clearly thriving on the occasion. On her right, to Felix's surprise, sat Uncle Bernard, attempting an expression of innocent support and achieving only historical mischief.

"Probationer Marr," said Director Pindle. "Your interventions have been reviewed."

"Then you'll know they were necessary."

"Necessary is not the question."

"It should be."

Archdeacon Murch steepled his fingers. "The question is one of style."

Felix blinked. "Style."

"Guardianship requires tact. Restraint. Minimal mortal disturbance."

"She was nearly killed by an escalator with opinions."

"Yes," said Murch, "and in preventing it you released seventy-three retail placards, one ornamental sword, and a degree of panic measurable from orbit."

Bernard leaned toward Felix and whispered, not quite quietly enough, "Personally I thought the teddy bears improved it."

Director Pindle slid a report forward.

"Mr. Marr, your outcomes are commendably alive. Your methods are increasingly conspicuous."

Felix looked down the list.

BRIMBLE'S EVENT - target preserved, store manager spiritually winded.

SUMMER RELIEF FAIR - target preserved, coconut distribution irregular.

GARDEN CENTER PRELIMINARY - canoe redirected, begonias traumatized.

"This is unfair," he said. "I don't control the materials available."

"You control yourself."

"Barely."

Director Pindle folded her hands.

"If Agnes Wibble begins consciously perceiving intervention before your probation concludes, the assignment becomes contaminated. Mortal awareness creates attachment complications, theological commentary, and forms."

"Everything creates forms."

"Quite."

Felix drew himself up. "With respect, all your rules assume a normal mortal. Agnes Wibble is pursued by circumstances with the determination of trained assassins. I've had to improvise."

For a moment no one spoke. Even Archdeacon Murch seemed forced into reluctant reflection.

Then Bernard raised one finger.

"In the boy's defense, Agnes once survived two unrelated chimney pots before elevenses."

Director Pindle sighed. "Yes. We have the annex."

A bell rang somewhere beyond the chamber. Sharp. Urgent.

Muriel burst through the rear door without knocking, which apparently one could do if one had a clipboard and enough nerve.

"Live incident," she said. "High-grade. Party warehouse district."

Felix stood so fast his chair passed briefly through him.

"Agnes?"

"Very Agnes."

Muriel slapped a fresh sheet onto the desk. It showed a sketch of the garden center's adjacent party-supply annex, where a weekend wedding exhibition was underway.

"Helium promotion," she said. "Indoor fountain. Decorative arch. Backup generator. Also a man with a staple gun who should not have one."

Felix didn't wait for permission. "Send me back."

Director Pindle rose.

"If you intervene again with undue spectacle, your probation may be extended."

Felix was already halfway to the door. He turned once.

"If I don't intervene, Agnes may be dead."

There are statements so obvious that even bureaucracy hesitates before opposing them.

Director Pindle made a small motion with one silver-gloved hand.

"Go," she said.

Felix hit the warehouse floor in the middle of disaster.

The party annex had been transformed into a pastel kingdom of ribbons, sample table settings, and floating balloons. Agnes stood on a low platform helping a flustered employee untangle a silver archway while nearby an indoor fountain sputtered ominously beside a stack of extension leads. Above it all, a cluster of giant pearl-white balloons strained at their ribbons against the ventilation fans.

The man with the staple gun was on a ladder.

"No," Felix said at once.

The ladder slipped on a scatter of confetti.

The man grabbed the balloon net.

The balloon net tore free.

Two hundred helium balloons surged upward, wrapped around the decorative arch, and yanked the unstable frame sideways. The frame hit the fountain. The fountain tipped into the extension leads. Sparks jumped. Guests screamed. The staple gun flew through the air like an appalling idea.

Agnes looked up.

"Oh, not again," she said.

Felix had no time for elegance.

He seized every bit of latent influence he had, every saved nudge, shiver, gust, and improbable cloth-movement from three solid weeks of probation, and used all of it at once.

Tablecloths snapped upward. Balloons swerved. The falling staple gun smacked harmlessly into a seven-tier display of fake macarons. A shower of chair sashes whipped across Agnes's face, making her duck just as the arch crashed through the space where her head had been. The fountain water splashed over the leads but, redirected by a violently moving brochure stand, missed the main cable run by inches.

The whole room filled with spiraling ribbons, pink confetti, and enough airborne tulle to suggest a wedding under attack by laundry.

Agnes crouched under the half-collapsed platform, blinking through netting and satin.

"Thank you," she said very clearly to the empty air beside her.

Felix froze.

Muriel, who had appeared near the punch bowl, lowered her clipboard in awe.

Agnes looked directly at him.

Not fully. Not cleanly. More the way one sees someone through rain on a bus window: outline first, certainty second.

"Are you," she said slowly, "the reason I didn't die by fondue fork in March?"

Felix, who had prepared for falling coconuts and celestial litigation but not for conversational acknowledgment, answered the first true thing that came into his head.

"In fairness, the fork set was a secondary threat."

Agnes stared. Then, to his immense relief, she laughed.

"Right," she said. "I was afraid the answer would be something upsetting."

Around them, the annex groaned under the weight of a disaster that had somehow become survivable. Guests crawled out from under table displays. The ladder man sat in a tub of sugared almonds, reconsidering ambition. Somewhere a child clapped wildly because balloons were still involved.

Felix looked upward.

"I assume this counts as undue spectacle."

Muriel checked a new glowing line on her clipboard.

"Extremely. Also successful. Also," she added, squinting, "hmm."

"What?"

"Your probation terms just changed."

Agnes brushed confetti from her sleeve and looked straight at Felix again, not frightened, merely curious in the way some people are when discovering a very odd weather pattern.

"Do I get your name," she asked, "or are guardian spirits like cats?"

Felix opened his mouth.

Somewhere in the ceiling, a final forgotten balloon popped with the tiny, officious sound of destiny clearing its throat.