Page 112 of Aftermarket Afterlife

She looked stricken. “I didn’t mean—”

“I know, kiddo. You’re what, sixteen? You didn’t know that you were saying something really mean.”

“I did, though,” she said. “I was trying to be mean, because I didn’t want to go somewhere with a human, not after humans took Madi away.”

So dragons had mean girls too? Well, that made sense. But I still wasn’t going to get into a fight with a sixteen-year-old, regardless of her species. I had somestandards. “Look, I’m not mad or anything. Let’s just find Madi and get her home, and then if you want, you and I can have a talk about humans sometime.”

“Why would I need to talk about humans?”

“Because they’re the dominant species on this planet, and like Candy said when I tried to explain how humans grieve, you don’t have the luxury of not knowing how humans operate. So maybe there are things that confuse you about the way we do things, and maybe you’d like to ask a human about them, in a safe place, where the answers won’t be life-or-death.”

Alicia nodded, thoughtfully. “That might be nice. Can I bring some of my friends?”

The image of me trying to teach a class on human cultural norms to a room full of adolescent dragons flashed across my mind’s eye. I shrugged it away, and nodded. “Of course you can.”

We had left the deep tunnels for a shallower system, one that doubtless ran much closer to the surface. It was still wide enough for us to walk side by side, and like so many of the sewer tunnels I’d seen, it was dry, making me wonder where, exactly, the city put its waste, but the lights overhead were strong and steady and no longer appeared to be under draconic control, bearing more of the hallmarks of the New York City Public Works Department, including cobwebs and the occasional missing bulb. I glanced at Alicia.

“Where are we?”

“Passing through bogey territory, almost to the park,” she said, as carelessly casual as any city teen explaining their route to a popular hangout. “We have a good-passage agreement with them right now, and we’re allowed to use this path.”

That explained the lack of sewage, the presence of NY Public Works, and the speed with which she was moving. A good-passage agreement didn’t mean the right to linger or loiter, especially not when she was accompanied by a human. Knowing both dragons and bogeymen as I did, I wouldn’t have been surprised if the passage agreement had been monetary in nature, and escorting me through could come with extra charges. Candy had ordered her to take me back to the park, but if she got in trouble while she was doing it, the fees would come out of her pocket.

Like I said, I know dragons and bogeymen pretty well.

We followed the tunnel to a ladder set up against one wall, which Alicia and I both climbed easily, finding ourselves in a tunnel that somehow managed to seem gloomier than the ones below it. There was nothingmateriallydifferent, except that this one had boxes and old equipment piled against the walls, turning it into a sort of storage area. I frowned as I followed Alicia to a door in the far wall, and realized the difference as she unlocked it.

The tunnels below had been part of people’shomes. Hallways, maybe, rather than living rooms, but still homes where people lived, where they spent their time and energy. This room wasn’t anybody’s home. This was a storeroom, a place where things were put to be forgotten, and no one cared about it enough to think about the place when they weren’t present. Of course it was gloomy. Places carry the impressions of how they’re used.

Maybe that sounds like so much metaphysical nonsense, but consider the fact that my babysitter and my favorite aunt are both ghosts; I’m allowed a little metaphysical nonsense. Besides, it’s true. A single good or bad event won’t color a place, but pile up enough of them, and the walls start to remember. It lingers, like juice stains on your fingers after you’ve been picking blackberries for an entire afternoon. The tunnels below felt like homes, and this felt like a place you passed through on the way to somewhere that mattered.

The door opened in a narrow white-tiled hall that looked like the sort of thing that led into a hospital parking garage. It smelled, rather strongly, of urine. Alicia waited for me to exit, then locked the door behind me and pocketed the key before gesturing for me to follow her to a bank of elevators. I blinked.

“Where are we?”

“Mall parking garage,” she said easily, pressing the call button. A few moments later, the elevator light came on, and the doors slid open. The smell from inside the car was even worse than the smell in the rest of the hall. Alicia stepped on as if she hadn’t noticed.

“This level is supposed to be for management only,” she said, waving for me to join her. “But someone cloned the override key a few years back, and now all sorts of people can get down here. They sleep in the storeroom sometimes.”

“No deeper down?” The door we’d taken from the bogeyman stretch of tunnels hadn’t been locked, either on their side or this one. It would be easy for someone looking for a private place to sleep to slip on through.

Alicia looked at me like I’d just said something profoundly stupid. “Deeper down is bogey territory,” she said, in a slow and patient voice. “Most of them wouldn’t risk it.”

I stepped into the reeking confines of the elevator, fighting the urge to vomit on my newly acquired shoes. “Mmm,” I said, to avoid opening my mouth.

Alicia’s expression turned amused. “You mammals are such whiny babies about a little excrement,” she said, and pressed the button for the ground level.

The elevator slid up more than a single floor—the parking garage was apparently at least two levels down—before opening on a busy urban street. The people hurrying by didn’t spare us a second glance as we stepped out and joined the throng, letting it sweep us toward the corner.

No one’s ever going to call the air in Midtown Manhattan fresh, but after the elevator, it was like we were walking through a summer meadow. I took several deep, greedy breaths through my nose, and Alicia shot me another amused look.

“You really don’t care about looking cool, do you?” she asked.

“I used to,” I said. “But then I jumped off a few buildings and got over myself. Those cloned master keys. How easy would you say they are to get?”

She looked briefly thoughtful. “For me? Very. For you? Very not. No one I know who has them will sell to humans. But humans can obviously get them, or we wouldn’t have homeless humans sleeping belowground. I’d say difficult but not impossible. Why?”

“Just wondering.” The proximity of bogeyman territory to the storeroom meant that I didn’t seriously think the Covenant would have taken Madi belowground. They had multiple teams operating in the city, and they’d done some serious damage even without taking Dominic into account, but going into bogeyman territory as hostile actors would be a particularly unpleasant means of committing suicide. I didn’t think even the Covenant was inclined to be that stupid without a really good reason.

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