Page 21 of Aftermarket Afterlife

Ted sighed. “Why are you here, Mary?”

“Family meeting,” I said. “We’re going to set up videoconferencing for everyone who can’t be here physically. There’s been a Covenant attack on the dragons in New York, and yes, there were casualties, although our people are fine. It looks like they’re moving into the next stage of this war.”

It had been a cold war for long enough that it had become easy to pretend open hostilities would always be a problem for the future, something we would never have to deal with in the living “now.” We didn’t have that luxury anymore. The Covenant was moving, and that meant they were changing the game. We needed to be prepared for whatever they were going to do next. And we didn’t know what information they had.

Dance or Diehad been filmed in Southern California, which meant they knew that Verity, at the very least, was sometimes on the West Coast. How did they get their information about the dragons? Observation, blackmail, or taking people apart? The family had done their best to stay below the radar for a long time, but that sort of stealth only worked so long as the Covenant was on a different continent, not plugged in to the North American rumor mill.

Here, everyone who was connected with the cryptid world, even tangentially, knew about the Prices. To the hunters and poachers, they were nightmare figures that would sweep out of nowhere to disrupt carefully laid plans. To the cryptids, they were either the monsters in their individual closets, bloodthirsty killers who would never be truly separate from their Covenant roots, or undependable saviors who could solve any problem if they were in the area when it happened. Start asking questions in North America, and you’d very quickly find proof that the Price family never truly died out, only managed to become slightly less visible from space.

From the looks on their faces, Jane and Ted both knew this. Ted grimaced and stood, tugging Jane along with him. He put an arm around her shoulders, holding her protectively close.

“Can they find us here?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I replied, honestly. “It depends on how many teams they have in the country right now, since we know they just took some losses in Manhattan. They could be covering this coast, but it’s a matter of manpower and how long they’ve been moving into position. They have the advantage on us here.”

“Doesn’t someone always?” asked Elsie. She pushed away from the wall as she started for the door, passing my seat. I turned to watch her go.

“Elsie—”

“‘Family meeting’ means the whole family,” she said. “I don’t get to skip it just because I’m mad. And Iammad. I’m not going to stop being mad because you tell me I’m not being fair. Maybe I won’t ever stop being mad. No one gets to make me.”

She left then, before anyone could say anything. Ted sighed. He looked at Jane. I looked at her in turn, waiting for her to speak.

Jane frowned, just a little, glancing down at the floor. “I guess I’ve taught her a lot about holding a grudge, huh?”

“Just a little,” I said. “You might want to work on that.”

“Might be too late.”

“Sadly true.”

“Sarah really didn’t mean to hurt Arti—Arthur. I know that. Everyone knows that, except for Elsie. And Sarah, I guess. That girl’s already beating herself up enough. If he hadn’t come back, would Elsinore be half this angry at her cousin?”

“If your mom had never bothered coming to check on you when you were a kid, would you be so mad at her now? Or are you mad because she kept coming back and reminding you of how she wasn’t going to stay?”

Jane was quiet for a moment. Then, finally, she said, “I think...if she had just vanished when I was a baby, and I was meeting her for the first time right now, I think I would probably be a lot more inclined to forgive her for what she wasn’t able to give me then.”

“Oh?”

“If she wasn’t going to stick around, I didn’t want her to come at all. And I didn’t know how to say that, and it always made Kevin sohappyto see her, so I didn’t want to say it, but it feels true.” She looked at me mournfully. “The damage has been done at this point. Saying ‘I might hurt less if things had been different’ is like saying ‘We wouldn’t have as much trouble with the Covenant if all their weapons were made of cottage cheese.’ But I still think it’s right.”

“That’s a start,” I said, and offered her my hand.

After a pause, she took it.

• • •

When I came back into the living room with Jane and Ted, Sam was on his back under the television stand, tinkering with the wires connecting various black boxes and transmitters to the screen, while James focused his attention on the laptop he had balanced open on his knees. Antimony had a large bowl of popcorn kernels, popping them with the hand she held spread above them. Sarah and Sally were seated on the couch to either side of Alice, both looking deeply uncomfortable. Olivia was still on Sarah’s lap. Thomas remained next to Kevin at the end of the room, while Elsie had stopped next to Evelyn, the two of them sharing a loveseat.

It was possibly the most tension I’d seen at a family gathering since the decision was made to allow Verity to compete on reality television, and that meeting had come with flowcharts and PowerPoint arguments explaining why she wouldn’t be putting the rest of us at risk. Well, that had been incorrect. Hopefully, whatever decisions we reached today would be better ones.

It wasn’t like they could be all that much worse, no matter how badly this went.

Sarah waved me over. I walked toward her, and she whispered something to Olivia, gesturing toward me. Livvy looked disappointed but climbed off of her lap, moving to stand next to me, taking my hand while she popped her other thumb into her mouth like she was still two, and not four, heading toward five. Sarah shot me a grateful look and then winked out, vanishing like she had never been there at all.

“Where—” began Sally.

“She’ll be right back,” said Alice. “She’s just making sure her mother is all set up on their end, and she’s done the math to be sure she can pick up something called Greg. He’s an emotional support animal? What the hell is an emotional support animal?”

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