Page 73 of Aftermarket Afterlife

“I know, sweetie.”

“And then I was in New York, and I wasn’t looking for a relationship. I wasn’t even looking for a friend with benefits. I was just trying to help the community, and learn more about urban cryptids, and find a way to distinguish myself from the rest of my family. I wasn’tlooking.” It came out almost like a plea. “I wasn’t looking, and he was there, and he danced with me. He danced with me, and he fought with me, and that would have been enough. He could have been the kind of friend I needed in my life. But his life was so...so empty. The Covenant didn’t give him anything but the mission. They thought that was all he needed. So I tried to show him there could be a better way, and somehow that turned into the two of us, and bribing the mice to keep quiet, and— The mice. Mary, how am I going to tell themice?” Her tears, which had almost stopped during her recollections, started again in earnest. “They loved him almost as much as I do. They’re going to be heartbroken.”

“You’ll tell them the same way you tell them anything. Carefully and in words you can handle hearing echoed back, because they’re going to repeat whatever you say forever.” I paused. “Verity...have you spoken to anyone from the compound since this morning?”

“No.” She shook her head. “There hasn’t been time. Is everyone okay?”

“I...” I paused, unsure exactly how to finish that. “You should call home when you get the chance. You need to talk to your mother.”

“My mother...God, Mary, she loved Dominic too. Once she got over him being Covenant, she said she couldn’t imagine me finding a more perfect partner.” She looked at me, desperation in her eyes. “I know the crossroads are gone, but is there any way . . . ?”

“No. And even if there were, I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. They never had the ability to raise the dead. Not like that, baby. You wouldn’t want what they could give you, even if they were still here to do it.”

“When does it stop feeling like I’m the one who bled out in that alley?”

“I don’t know,” I said, honestly. “For your great-grandfather, it never did. And you saw what your grandmother did to her life. Love is a powerful thing. It’s also a pretty poison. You’ve been drinking deep, and now you get to pay for it. The thing about love, though, is that you’d do it all over again if you had the choice. That’s what makes it powerful. That’s what makes it good.”

“I want to make them pay.”

“I know. But you have to think of Olivia. What happens to her if you go off on a mission of revenge and don’t come home? You saw what that did to your father and aunt. She needs at least one parent to stay with her. She needs to feel like she’s enough.”

“Then you have to make them pay.” She turned to look at me again, eyes huge. “Will you make them pay, Mary? For me? For Dominic? For what they did?”

“We’re already working on that, sweetheart, I promise. They’re going to be sorry as hell that they ever messed with us. But I need to get back.”

“Can you...” She looked down again, swallowing hard, then glanced at me. “Can you not tell Mom and Dad? I want to tell them myself.”

“They need to tell you some things too,” I said. “Please call as soon as you feel like you’re up to it. I love you, bug. I know this is hard, and I know this is horrible, but your family is here when you need us, and we always will be. Dominic would want you to keep going, for all of us, and for him.”

“I know.” For the first time since I’d found her in the alley, she wiped the tears from her cheeks, smearing the remaining blood in the process. The end effect was ghoulish but hopeful. “I’ll come to Portland as soon as things are stable here. I want to hug my daughter.”

“I can ask Sarah if the numbers have unsnarled enough to let her bring her back?”

“No!” Verity’s response was immediate. “If it’s not safe for me to leave, it’s not safe for her to come, either. I’m dealing with this, whatever that means, and then I’m coming home.”

“Okay, baby,” I said. “I’ll see you there.”

She wiped her face again, offering me a weak, wavering smile. I wanted to tell her she didn’t have to force it for me. I wanted to tell her she was allowed to be sad. And she was; she just wasn’t allowed to fall into the wallowing despair that had claimed so many of her ancestors. If I could break the cycle I had witnessed for generations, I would consider my time with the family to have been more than well spent.

I blew her a kiss, and I was gone.

I still had work to do.

Fourteen

“Children aren’t pets or projects. They’re people. We can tell them who we want them to be, but we can’t force anything. No matter how much we may wish we could.”

—Eloise Dunlavy

Skipping through the twilight, on the way to another destination, sure I’m making about a dozen mistakes but not sure how to stop

IAPPEARED IN THEmiddle of the produce section of a Whole Foods Market, standing between a display of assorted apples and a cart with a baby in the basket. The adult associated with the cart had her back to me, attention on the two zucchini she was weighing in her hands, studying them with the focus most people reserved for active surgery. The baby stared at me, eyes enormous but somehow unsurprised. Everything was strange and new—why shouldn’t people appear out of nowhere? It was just like peekaboo but with a stranger’s entire body, rather than Mama’s face.

I was probably going to be responsible for this kid taking an extra few weeks to develop proper object permanence, and I would have felt bad about that, if I’d done it on purpose. As it was, I waved to the kid, causing them to flap both arms in excitement, then walked out of the produce department and around the corner of the nearest aisle, where there were no witnesses. Once there, I vanished again.

This lack-of-reliable-aim thing was getting old. I couldn’t exactly ask my family members to distribute themselves evenly across the continent and call for me precisely when I needed them to, so I was going to have to figure this out, no matter how impossible it seemed.

This time, I appeared on a suburban street corner, the street around me lined with charming brick houses and beautifully maintained trees. A squirrel chattered at me. I chittered back in pale imitation of its indignant protests, and vanished a third time, trying to focus harder on where I was going.

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