Originally published in Realms of Fantasy, April 2002.

• 2002 Nebula Award preliminary ballot (for best short story)
• A recommended story for June 2002, Locus
• Honorable mention, The Year's Best Science Fiction: 20th Annual Collection, edited by Gardner Dozois

Emily Gaines is working late at a rural insurance agency when burglars surprise her.and the night turns tragic. When she awakes in a strange city that's not quite like Manhattan, she discovers that death is only the beginning of the greatest adventure of her life.

The April Realms of Fantasy is impressive, a testament to the skill of Shawna McCarthy, once of Asimov's, in editing a magazine some seem unfairly to underrate. . . . No less credit to William Shunn, who in "The Veil Beyond the Veil"—a sort of metempsychotic tour de force—hurls a woman's soul across the myriad realities, until, with excruciating gradualness, she may look beyond Maya at last. Shunn conveys his wisdom fragmentarily, but it is cumulatively ineluctable, a more sober recasting of Robert Silverberg's classic timeline-hopping story "Trips."

—Nick Gevers, Locus