"Every person has a Light, it's what makes them alive, a soul, a circle, an aura that surrounds their being. Some people's Lights are small and some are large, it all depends on their place in life, their experiences, and their strength of spirit. This Light goes where they go, it affects the people around them. You have been chosen to become caretakers of the Light." "Special people, the ones that serve and obey, the deserving and the righteous, are trained as guardians to serve the ones left behind on earth. It is a voluntary service. Few chose to leave once joined. Here, at the Reserve, you will acquire all the tools necessary to fight the battle below. As you were once helped, so you will help others in return. Do not be overwhelmed. Do not be afraid. Nothing can harm you anymore." Theodore Duncan has been chosen. Determined, hardworking, dedicated, and (most importantly) dead, Theo now joins the legions of spirits selected to become guardians over the ones left behind. Devoutly religious in life, Theo is eager to continue his sacred mission above. But his eagerness soon becomes his downfall when he finds himself unable to cope with the rules and regulations of the Reserve. In an uncharacteristic act of defiance, Theo forces an assignment to a charge, a girl that even the most experienced guardian would avoid. Her name is Angel. She is depressive, suicidal, and obsessive. Bullied relentlessly at school and abandoned by her alcoholic family, she struggles to survive in a small town full of narrow-minded people who seem determined to make her life a living hell. Angel has nothing, is nothing, and all she wants to do is die. Her fantasies are her only reprieve. In love with a man she can never have, she escapes into a world of poetry and prose, the only place where she believes anyone can love her, unaware that there is already a man in her life who is walking beside her, a guardian who is also falling in love with someone he can never have. Frantically working his way through the nine celestial hierarchies, Theo becomes lost in Angel's world of desire and despair. He soon learns that he is not the saint he once believed himself to be, in fact he does not know who he is at all. He must rediscover himself, his religion, and his sexuality before the clock runs out on his charge, before Angel commits the ultimate sin and takes her own life. Theo died in the beginning and learned to live in the end, but can he save Angel in the in-between?