Page 66 of Aftermarket Afterlife

“Oh.” She sighed, giving Greg’s head one more careful stroke, then stood. “I can hold the sad back for a little while,” she said.

“Good.” I pulled myself to my own feet. “Then I need you to come with me, all right?”

“Where are we going?”

“To the barn.” The others had continued walking while I was talking to Sarah. I could see them approaching the barn doors, rendered small by distance and perspective. “We need to get Jane back onto the table, and then I need to talk to you and Annie about how we’re going to make this stop.”

“Okay, Aunt Mary,” said Sarah, docilely enough. I wanted to trust it. I couldn’t, quite. She was miserable, and she was blaming herself for not keeping Leonard under control when she grabbed the rest of the field team, and she needed to feel like she was being punished.

I couldn’t bring myself to do it, even in pantomime. Sarah had been through enough.

We all had.

Descending the platform was easier than climbing up had been: I just stopped keeping myself solid and fell through, dropping down until I stopped myself just above the ground. Sarah climbed down the more-ordinary way, while Greg leapt after her, demonstrating with one mighty motion why he was called a jumping spider. He waved his pedipalps at her as she reached the ground, seeming pleased to be moving again. Together, we followed the others toward the barn.

Surprising as it had been to find Annie alone in the attic, it was entirely unsurprising when I stepped into the barn to find that Sam had rejoined her, and was standing beside her as she looked down at Jane’s face. They had already hoisted her body back onto the table, and the four of them were standing in a loose circle around her, watching her as if they expected her to open her eyes and tell them to give her some space. James looked around as Sarah and I walked into the barn, Greg following close behind us, and Sally turned, following his motion. Then she squeaked, tensing.

“It’s just Greg,” said James. “He’s Sarah’s ESA.”

“I met Sarah in New York,” said Sally. “She didnothave a fuck-off giant spider with her. I would have noticed.”

“Greg doesn’t like the city,” said Sarah gravely. “Even the big spaces are too small for him, and he can’t be with me most places, so he doesn’t understand why he can’t just stay here or in Ohio and keep roaming around in his woods, the way he wants to. He’s happier when he’s with me, but he’s happiest when he doesn’t have to go in the city. He’s my emotional support animal, and I’m his. I try not to upset him when I don’t have to.”

“That’s...surprisingly sensible,” said Sally. “I always hated it when some of the ladies at the Hendersons’ church would bring their ‘emotional support’ dogs to services, even though it clearly made the poor things completely miserable. If Greg doesn’t want to go to Manhattan, he shouldn’t have to. He’s still a giant spider, though.”

“I noticed,” said Sarah.

“So did the rest of us,” said Annie. “Greg’s harmless, as giant spiders go. Okay, Mary, we got Aunt Jane off the floor. Thank you for bringing her back.”

“I didn’t really think I had a choice,” I said. “I wasn’t going to leave her in the twilight, and I couldn’t leave her somewhere else in the daylight. It wouldn’t have been fair to anyone. Especially not Ted.”

“Or Elsie,” said James.

Sally blinked at him. “That’s the cousin with the pink hair?”

“Yeah,” he said. “She was the token queer kid until I came along, so she and I spend a lot of time talking. She never reallygother mother, but she loved her a whole lot. She’s going to be a mess for a while. Where is she, anyway?”

“Elsinore is in the library, reading books about how to raise the dead,” said Sarah. “She’s very unhappy, because all of them indicate that it’s a terrible idea, rarely works the way you want it to, and requires a willing spirit. As Aunt Jane has already passed outside the layers of death that Mary can access, it seems unlikely that she would be classified as a ‘willing spirit.’ I expect her to give up soon and cry herself to sleep.”

“Okay, that’s bad,” said Annie. “This is all terrible. Nothing about this makes things better. Mary, you had what sounded like the start of a plan?”

I nodded. “I did. I mean, I do. I mean, it may not work, and it might be a truly terrible idea, but it’s still worth looking into. Sarah, if Annie lets you into her head, can you extract the location of Penton Hall?”

“I can gather what she knows, and extrapolate from there,” said Sarah. “I should be able to locate the facility.”

“Okay. Good. If you know where it is, can you go there?”

Sarah nodded. “England is no trouble.”

“I was worried it might be outside of your range.”

Sarah blinked, then laughed, briefly. I raised an eyebrow.

“You want to tell me what’s so funny?”

“I don’t normally hop from here to New York by going across North America,” she said. “Shorter distances are substantially more difficult than long ones.”

“Meaning?”

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