Page 51 of Aftermarket Afterlife

“I’m pretty good at feelings, Sally, but thanks for the warning, and I need to talk to Kevin.”

She waved with her free hand as I turned and walked back to the house, then through the wall, not bothering to backtrack all the way to the door. Passing through the wall put me in Kevin’s office, which looked so much like his maternal grandfather’s office that it always made me ache a little. Alexander Healy was a Covenant man until he realized the Covenant way was the wrong one, and when that happened, he traded in his life as he knew it for the chance to make something better in America. He’d walked away with his wife beside him, leaving everything he’d ever known behind. But he’d never quite managed to shake the building blocks of his training, and he’d spent his adult life blissfully surrounded by books, doing the bulk of his research in a room perfectly designed for his needs. Alice had packed her grandfather’s office into boxes long before Kevin built the compound, and yet Kevin had somehow managed to recreate it in his own image.

A large leather armchair dominated the space not occupied by desk or lamps, making this the perfect place to retreat for reading or research. I trailed my hand along the arm of the chair as I walked toward the door and, not wanting to break my streak of defying the laws of physics, through it.

The yelling period Sally mentioned had definitely come to an end. Evelyn was clinging to Kevin on the loveseat, both of them weeping helplessly, while Elsie sat on the couch with her hands over her face, shoulders shaking from the force of her grief. She didn’t look up as I entered. Arthur was sitting next to her with one hand on her back and a perplexed expression on his face, like he didn’t quite know what he was supposed to be doing right now, or how he was meant to go about doing it.

Sarah wasn’t in the room. Neither were Sam and Antimony. They were probably out at the barn, swinging in the rafters—literally, they both do trapeze work, and they’re more likely to climb things when they’re unhappy, meaning I didn’t expect to see either of them on the ground for a week or more—and waiting for the worst of the shock to fade before they came back inside to deal with the rest of the family.

Alice and Thomas were standing near the back of the room, both of them dry-eyed. Thomas still looked sorrowful, but almost distantly so, as if he knew heshouldbe weeping, but wasn’t sure quite how to bridge the gap between “ought to” and actuality. Alice, on the other hand, had clearlybeencrying. Her eyes were red and the skin beneath them was puffy, and her nose looked raw, like she’d been blowing it almost constantly since I’d last seen her. Her expression was hard, barely contained rage and the burning need to point it at someone. I wouldn’t have wanted to be on the other side of that look.

Out of everyone in the room, she was the first to notice my arrival. She pulled away from Thomas, who let her go before looking almost helplessly at his hands, and strode across the room to grab my shoulders.

“Where did yougo?” she demanded.

I turned insubstantial enough to back out of her grip, leaving her holding nothing, and answered, “New York, to start with. I needed to find Sarah. She’d gone to the hospital to sit with Mark and tell him what a terrible person she was, for not managing to keep Leonard from breaking out of her control. She was supposed to be coming here next, to get Greg and join the rest of the family. Have you not seen her?”

“Not yet.”

“Huh.” She could easily be outside with her spider, James, and Sally, but she might also have changed her mind and gone somewhere else.

Well, it wasn’t like I could go playingWhere in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?with Sarah in the middle of a family emergency. She’d show up, or she wouldn’t, and we’d cope with it either way, the same way we always did. If there’s anything we’re collectively good at, it’s rolling with the punches and seeing what may come.

“What do you mean, ‘huh’?” demanded Alice. “Mydaughterisdeadand you disappeared to chase after someone you didn’t even bring back with you! Where have youbeen?”

“New York and then Ohio and I will thank you not to take that tone with me, young lady,” I snapped. “I changed your diapers when you were a baby and I’m going to change them again when you’re too old to remember who I am, and you donottalk to me like I’m a child.”

“I’m sorry, Mary,” said Alice, instantly contrite. It wasn’t feigned, either; I knew her well enough to see that the shame in her eyes was sincere. She bowed her head, shoulders sagging. “I’m just...Jane’sdead. We’re all upset.”

“I know, honey.” I looked past her to Kevin and Evelyn. “There have been two more attacks. One in Chicago, on the Carmichael—Rose told me about it. I doubt there were any survivors among the Covenant forces. The second was substantially smaller, in Ohio. They were after the Bakers. I think the Covenant wasn’t quite sure what they were walking into, so they just sent a small team—two field agents and two handlers. The agents got into the house.”

Evelyn gasped, clapping her hand over her mouth. Kevin stood up a little straighter, expression bleeding out of his face and leaving him cold and neutral.

“Was anyone hurt?”

“Both field agents,” I said. “I managed to lead them away from the kids’ room, and then they ran into Shelby.”

Evelyn lowered her hand, cracking a brief and somewhat pained-looking smile. “I cannot wait for him to marry that girl,” she said.

“They’re not married?” asked Thomas.

“No, Dad, they’re not,” said Kevin. “They were working on wedding plans, and then Shelby found out she was pregnant, and they decided to hold off.” His tone all but challenged Thomas to have a problem with that.

Thomas only nodded and said, “Good for them, putting the health of the baby before a wedding.”

Under the circumstances, it wouldn’t have been appropriate for me to laugh, and so I satisfied myself with a very brief smirk. If Kevin was hoping to find disapproval from his father, he was going to be working a lot harder than that. Thomas had been sleeping with Alice long before they were married—he’d actually needed to propose several times before she noticed, and they’d barely managed to get married far enough in advance of Kevin’s birth to keep people from counting on their fingers.

“The team in Ohio has been neutralized, but I need to talk to Annie,” I said. “Do you know where she is?”

“She and Sam took Jane’s...took Jane out to the barn,” said Kevin. “We’re going to organize a funeral, and bury her at the back of the property.”

I nodded.

Kevin’s original plans for the family compound included a small, bespoke parcel of land for a private cemetery. Part of what had led him to settle in Oregon rather than Washington, which had a higher population of several friendly cryptid species, was the legality of home burial. We could lay Jane to rest here, and her family would never be very far away from her. We couldn’t have done that in Washington.

Alice still owned several plots in the Buckley Township cemetery, near her parents and grandparents, but Jane would never have wanted to be buried there. Buckley had only ever been her home in the most technical of senses. It was where she’d been born. That was all the claim it had over her.

“Why do you need to talk to Annie?” asked Evelyn.

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