Page 15 of Aftermarket Afterlife

Part of how I could be so calm was that I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that she wasn’t dead. I could still feel her fussing, unhappy and overtired, but not actually physically harmed. As long as that remained the case, I could afford to be calm.

I’d appeared on the burning walkway because I learned a long time ago that popping right into the bedroom of a fussy child is a great way to escalate mild discontent into an active tantrum. It doesn’t matter how used to me they are. They don’t like to be startled, and I can respect that.

The flames were licking at the door to the room Verity and Dominic had converted into Olivia’s nursery. That didn’t mean the room itself was on fire, and I wasn’t feeling any pain from her, but did mean that opening the door probably wasn’t a great idea. I took a deep, unnecessary breath and walked forward, through flames and door at the same time, stepping into the nursery.

Olivia was sitting up in her bed and clutching her blankets against her chest, dark blue eyes huge in the dim glow of her moon-and-stars mobile. The room had no window, a consequence of its construction, and there was no interior sign of what was going on outside the nursery. That was a good thing. I didn’t want to freak her out any more than we absolutely couldn’t avoid.

She released her death grip on the blankets when she saw me, reaching out with tiny hands, fingers spread wide. “Mary,up,” she said, almost imperiously, fear having knocked her sentence structure back by over a year. All preschoolers are demanding. Preschoolers who recognize me as their dedicated babysitter are a special sort of demanding. They have no reason to expect that I would ever tell them no.

“Not yet, bug,” I said, bustling to the room’s small closet, where I pulled out her suitcase. Like all Prices and Healys, she had her own go bag, packed for her by her parents before she’d even been born. It contained several changes of clothing, all her essential documentation, a full set of fake documentation, copies of her favorite bedtime books, and a teddy bear identical to the one currently in her bed, to hopefully make the trauma of running less severe.

Aging that teddy to match the one she slept with had been an undertaking in and of itself, and not one that any of us had particularly enjoyed.

Olivia watched me with eyes still open as wide as they could go, mouth beginning to screw up in frustration. “Mary,up,” she repeated, with more force.

“In a second, sweetheart. Right now, you need to stay where you are, and not get out of your bed.” I hesitated, then said the one thing that would all but guarantee obedience: “If you can do that for me, we can go to the playground soon, all right?”

Olivia stayed where she was, shoving her thumb into her mouth as she nodded vigorously.

I like them at this age. They’re malleable. Holding her go bag in one hand, I let my sense of the family drift, looking for the two who should be geographically closest, and probably losing their shit right about now.

Verity was easy to spot, an incandescent mixture of rage and fear about six blocks away. Dominic was more reined-in, mostly anger mixed with a sort of murderous resignation. He was even closer, three blocks over at the absolute most. If he wasn’t already on his way to the Nest, he would be soon. I blew Olivia a kiss and disappeared. Small children are much more sanguine about people vanishing in front of them than they are about people popping out of nothing. I’ve never been sure entirely why.

I reappeared on the rooftop of one of the area’s uncounted retail structures, Olivia’s bag still in my hand. I can transport things that aren’t alive with me when I travel, as long as I can lift them, although it’s a strain if I try to move things that are too large for me to lift easily. Living things are a different matter. Oh, I can take them. They’re just not alive when I reach my destination.

I’ve never been particularly worried about being spotted by the living. People, by and large, aren’t as observant as they think they are, and they don’treallywant to believe in life after death that looks as messy and inconvenient as life before death. When I appear out of nowhere, unless I’m right up in somebody’s face, they’ll generally ignore me or justify it away, writing off my sudden apparition as a trick of the light or them just not noticing me before.

Dominic probably wouldn’t have noticed if I’d been there for the last ten minutes. When I popped in, he was standing over the bodies of three downed men in charcoal and camo, all of them unconscious at the absolute minimum. I’m not a psychopomp. The only way I know if someone’s dead is if I check their pulse—or if they’re family.

When family dies, I know right away.

“Hey,” I called, trying to keep my voice easy, so as not to startle him. I needed to stay solid if I didn’t want to drop Olivia’s go bag, and even if wounds can’t kill me, they can still hurt like hell.

Dominic whirled around, eyes wide. There was a trickle of blood running from his left temple, and a smear on his bottom lip. He might have come out on top, but the fight had been far from effortless. He blinked, falling out of his combat-ready stance and into something more relaxed—at least until he saw what I was holding, and tensed.

“Mary,” he said. “Why are you here?”

“Nest’s on fire,” I said. “If you have an SOS phrase you can text Very, you should, because I need to get back to Oregon and tell Sarah I need her help getting Olivia out of here. Can I take her back to the compound?”

Dominic hesitated. I would have expected nothing less. I was asking if I could take his daughter to the other side of the continent via the unstable-telepath express,andtelling him his primary safehouse was in the process of burning down. Not comforting stuff, when you really stopped and thought about it.

“Yes,” he said, finally and decisively. “Can we—will we be able to say goodbye?”

“I don’t think it’s safe,” I said. “The fire has her trapped in her room right now, but she’s not in pain or any real distress, and with Sarah’s help, I can get her out. I’ll call as soon as we reach Portland.”

“Swear.”

“I swear.”

“These bastards...” He kicked the nearest body, and from the boneless way its head lolled, I knew itwasa body now, not an operative. “They ambushed me on the way home. They had some sort of rocket-launching device.”

“I think they have another one, because whatever hit the Nest hit the roof first,” I said, and vanished. It would have been easy to stay and gather information, but that ignored the urgency of the situation. Fire moves fast when it gets going. Olivia was safe for now. She might not stay that way.

• • •

Once again, I emerged into chaos.

Thomas was standing with his hands on Kevin’s arms, the two men staring at each other and crying silently, apparently communicating through some silent father-son telepathy that skipped over even the normal psychic channels. Elsie was standing behind them, watching hungrily, her empathy clearly leaving her eager for her turn. Alice was on the other side of the room, being shouted at by Jane, while Evie tried to push her way between the two women and Sally lurked near the far wall, clearly uncomfortable. There was no sign of anyone else.

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