Page 110 of Aftermarket Afterlife

“Of course,” said Candice. “It’s not like I have anything better to do with my time.”

“Candy,” said William, in a chastising tone.

She sighed, and beckoned for me to follow her as she started walking back toward the door we’d arrived through.

We were halfway there when it slammed open and three immature dragons came tumbling through. The oldest would have passed for a human sixteen; the other two were younger-looking, neither more than twelve. All three had been crying, and the middle girl was missing a shoe.

Candice stopped immediately, eyes going wide with alarm. “Girls!” she said. “What is the meaning of this?”

“Mama!” wailed the girl with the missing shoe, flinging herself at Candice hard enough to knock the woman back a few feet. The other two followed her at a slower pace, stopping a few feet away rather than barreling into her.

“What are you doing here?” asked Candice, even as she wrapped her arms protectively around missing-shoe girl, holding her tightly.

“We were at the park? With Madi,” said the oldest girl. “She was getting us some waffles from a food cart, and I was watching the littler ones chase pigeons, and then these two people in funny-looking gray sweaters came to stand to either side of her and they said something I didn’t hear, but she looked real scared, and when she got our food, she left! With those people! She took themandall the waffles with her. She didn’t even get her change!”

That last bit was what sounded like it had truly upset the child, and seemed to upset Candice just as badly. She stiffened, her grasp on the girl who’d called her “Mama” getting even tighter. I could understand her distress. For a dragon to buy waffles from a food cart was just reinforcement that they reallywereexcellent parents, even if their parenting style wasn’t strictly normal by human standards. For her to leave without her change was a sign that she was under extreme duress, and had probably been trying to keep those people from noticing the children she had with her.

I focused on the oldest girl. “Hi. I’m Verity. You are?”

“Alicia,” she said, warily. Then she paused, wariness fading. “You’re Livvy’s mother, right?”

“Right,” I confirmed. If my daughter being the playmate of her younger siblings could make this easier for her, then I would lean into it. “I need to get some clothes that fit me better, and then would you take me back to where those people led Madi away? Can you do that?”

She looked at Candice, clearly waiting for some form of permission. Candy, for her part, nodded.

“Yes,” she said. “You can take Verity back to the park. She’s a friend. Although she’s a friend without socks right now, and we’re going to have to fix that.”

“I still have my gun,” I offered. The staff at St. Giles’s had been unwilling to return my bloodstained clothing, but they weren’t foolish enough to stand between a Price and her weapons. Sometimes having a reputation can be helpful.

“That’s not enough,” said Candice crossly. “Come with me.”

• • •

The dragons had a cavernous—no pun intended—wardrobe off the back of William’s cavern. The floor was less even there, having been smoothed out entirely by erosion and manual effort, with no help from the massive reptile in the next room. Still, it was level enough for us to walk easily, and they had constructed a truly impressive array of racks and shelves. The whole place had the faint closed-in smell I normally associated with thrift stores, detergent, and slowly decaying fabric. No mold or mothballs, and no standing water: it was just entropy unraveling the cloth, one tiny stitch at a time.

I stopped in the doorway, staring, and Candice pulled me onward, into a series of racks of clothing in roughly my size. She never reached for a measuring tape or a size guide, just eyed me somewhat dubiously and began grabbing things, thrusting them into my arms, until I was carrying a full change of clothing. This done, she hauled me to the end of the aisle and virtually shoved me into a small cubicle with a curtain across the front.

“Change,” she said.

I blinked at her, and did as I was told.

Her eye was good: she’d found me a pair of yoga pants in the correct size, with pockets set into the outer thighs and stirrups under the feet to keep them from rolling up around my ankles, and a racerback running top that only had a few expertly darned holes at the bottom. Combined with the bra I already had from the hospital, a pair of socks, and some decent running shoes, I felt almost normal again as I emerged from the changing room.

“You can leave the sweats,” said Candice. “They look to be roughly equivalent in value, and if you do that, you won’t have to pay for borrowing clothing from our supply.”

“Thank you,” I said. Then, because we were about to go back to where the children were, I asked, “Is there any chance this wasn’t a Covenant grab?”

“There’s always a chance, for almost anything you can imagine,” she said. “Now, do I believe it wasn’t a Covenant grab? No. If you tried to convince me of that, I would question your intelligence. They saw one of us alone and vulnerable, and I can only be grateful that they didn’t see her far enough in advance of the waffle truck to realize that she had children with her. This could have been so much worse.”

“Are you trying to convince yourself or me?”

“Myself.” She offered me a watery smile. “How’m I doing?”

“You don’t sound like you believe it yet. Keep trying.”

We walked back into the main cavern, where a cluster of dragon children had formed around Alicia and her companions. One of the boys hissed at us as we approached, tail lashing.

“Stand down, buddy,” said Candice. “We’re not going to take the girls away from you.”

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