Page 19 of Aftermarket Afterlife

“Sweetie...” We’d all been assuming she was mostly staying in New York and Ohio, with the members of the family who hadn’t been impacted by her devastating cross-dimensional journey, because she was trying to avoid Arthur. Maybe she’d been trying to avoid a lot more than just him. “She’s mad at you. She doesn’t hate you.”

“She hates me because she understands something no one else wants to admit.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“I killed her brother.” The statement was calm, almost placid, and on the surface, it seemed to be virtually serene. It was only if someone really knew her—like I did—that they’d be able to pick up the layers of self-loathing and recrimination under the words. No one would ever be able to blame that girl as much as she was already blaming herself. She would go to her grave blaming herself for something she’d had no control over and couldn’t have stopped if she tried.

“Sarah...” said Alice.

A sobbing cry from the baby monitor on the coffee table brought Evelyn snapping back to attention. “Looks like Livvy’s awake,” she said. “I’ll be right back down.” She bustled away up the stairs.

Thomas focused on me. “Mary, did you have any idea the Covenant was getting this active again?”

“No. As far as I knew, the strike teams you helped clear out were most of the local agents. They must have brought in a whole new detachment—one that’s working with deeply modern methods, and not all that concerned about possible collateral damage. They bombed the Nest in broad daylight, and it’s in the middle of a pretty popular part of the city. If the fire spreads, a lot of people could die.”

“That’s a good sign, at least,” said Thomas.

Kevin turned to look at him, disbelieving. “Dad?” he asked.

Thomas shook his head. “I know how that sounds. I’m not saying it’s better if more people die, or that I want collateral damages. But if the Covenant struck the Nest this boldly, they may have assumed the dragons were keepingalltheir treasures there. Including the irreplaceable one.”

“William,” said Kevin, understanding.

“Precisely. There is no living member of the Covenant of St. George who has seen a grown male dragon with their own eyes; his true size may have been difficult for them to estimate, depending on the reports they’ve managed to get. How did they find out he existed?”

“People talk, darling,” said Alice, tilting her head back to rest against the cushions as she looked at him, fingers still working through Sarah’s hair. “They always have and they always will. The dragons in Southern California knew the Manhattan Nest had a male when I was there with Verity, and if the information crossed a continent, who knows where else it went? It’s entirely possible the Covenant had already heard before the televised snake incident, but were dismissing it as wishful thinking and bragging. But then there’s a real-live Price making threatening statements on the air, and maybe they start to question how many of the things they’ve heard out of North America might not have been true after all.”

“We know Sarah wiped the memories of the team who grabbed the children; are we sure they didn’t document it in some way, or send a report back before they were stopped?” asked Thomas, with dawning horror. “They must have had some sort of mission plan. They must have found the children somehow.”

“Dragons aren’t the only things living underground in Manhattan,” said Alice. “There’s a fairly healthy bogeyman community, and you know they view information as a form of currency. I can’t even blame whoever told. If they’d been caught by a field team and thought it might get them out of it alive?”

“It wouldn’t,” said Thomas, with grim finality.

“But people always hope,” said Kevin. “That’s what lets them keep being people. That’s how you’re even here. If Mom had given up on hoping and come home when it seemed like the easier thing to do, or if Annie had shrugged and poisoned James’s coffee, or if Sarah had stopped trying to find a way to survive the equation that eats worlds, you wouldn’t be here.Wemight not be here. So somebody spilled something they shouldn’t have, in the hopes that it would keep them alive, and I can’t be angry about it. I want to be. But I can’t.”

Evelyn came padding down the stairs, Olivia holding onto her right hand and walking along beside her, silent and droopy. She perked up when she saw Sarah, releasing Evelyn’s hand to race toward her more-familiar cousin.

“Sarah!” she shrieked. “I woke up and it was all fire and now I’m here and where are we?”

Sarah opened her eyes and sat up, repositioning herself to receive a preschooler to the midsection with surprising grace for someone who had never been much for children.

Olivia still ran a little awkwardly, with the funny half-conscious locomotion of someone who was still getting really good at this whole “walking” thing. Human children and toddlers are miraculous. They have so few instincts that watching them figure out the primal motivations theydohave can be enthralling.

I could spend eternity doing it. Luckily for me, that seems to be precisely what I’ve committed myself to doing.

Sarah’s catch was beautifully timed and spoke not only of telepathic foreknowledge but of experience.

“Your mindissoothing,” Sarah informed Olivia, who leaned forward to tuck her head into the crook of Sarah’s neck, snarling both hands in her cousin’s hair. Sarah barely winced.

“It’s all right, Mary,” said Sarah, glancing from Olivia to me. “Verity trusts me with her, and I’m not going anywhere for at least another hour, unless the dissonance comes into the house badly enough that I have to run away. Even then, I’ll probably run upstairs to my bedroom and lock myself in before I go elsewhere.”

“We need to call everyone together, and it would be best if you could stay, Sarah,” said Kevin. “I think this is important enough to warrant a full family meeting.”

Sarah looked momentarily alarmed. “The math doesn’t support going to Ohio to get the others,” she said. “I would collapse something if I tried.”

Since there was a decent chance “something” was local space-time, I was happy to accept that answer, as was Kevin, judging by his brief recoil.

“No one needs to go fetch anyone,” he said firmly. “We have a paid videoconferencing service for a reason. We’ll just dial them in, so Alex and Shelby can be here. But if the Covenant has stepped it up to daylight assaults, we need to inform everybody.”

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