Page 75 of Aftermarket Afterlife

Again, she blinked. “That’s a new one.”

“Yeah, but he’s the only one I believe can. And we need to stop this before we all get picked off.”

“You’re dead. You can’t be picked off.”

“I’m a babysitter. If they kill all my charges, they might as well have killed me again. I already died once. That was more than enough.”

Lea nodded. “So a bomb is the answer?”

“Not usually. This time, maybe.”

She frowned, opening her mouth to answer, and stopped as she saw me flinch. “He’s calling?”

“No. That would have been too easy. Alex is calling.” Which meant it was louder and more urgent, jangling my nerves and making an already overlong day feel even longer. I tuned her out to focus on the call. “He doesn’t feel like he’s in active distress, which is a good thing, but I should go. Thank you for your help.”

She gave me a concerned look. “You know you’re welcome any time, Mary. I don’t see you enough.”

“It’s baby season right now,” I said. “Hard to find a lot of time for social calls when everybody’s making more kids for me to take care of. But I’ll be sure to come for a visit when all this is over. Let my folks know they should hire someone living for a week or two. Everyone gets vacations, right?”

“Right,” she agreed, concern fading into a smile.

She was still smiling as I vanished, hurling myself toward Ohio with all my phantom heart.

On arrival, I appeared in the kitchen of the house where Alex and Shelby lived with Angela, Martin, and the children, often including Sarah. All four of the resident adults were present when I popped in, along with both children, Alex’s griffin and Shelby’s garrina, and Uncle Mike, who was leaning against the counter with his thick arms crossed across his black-clad chest. He looked like hired concert security that had wandered afield of his actual assignment, and he nodded as I appeared.

“Mary,” he said.

Shelby, meanwhile, threw herself out of her chair and wrapped her arms around me with surprising force, yanking me into a hug that could just as easily have been delivered by a grizzly bear. I squeaked with surprise, the wind knocked out of me by the gesture, and hugged her back as she kissed me on both cheeks, repeatedly.

“Mary,” she said. “Brilliant Mary. I can never thank you enough for what you did.”

“They’re family,” I said, a little uncomfortable with the intensity in her tone. “They’re my responsibility, and I would be a pretty lousy babysitter if I didn’t come when my kids called.”

“Even so, brilliant Mary,” she said. “I shan’t forget this.”

I remembered, belatedly, that Shelby’s older brother, Jack, died in a cuckoo attack before she came to America. He was part of the reason she’d started dating Alex—she had recognized Angela’s species, and wanted to protect what she saw as another cuckoo victim, only to fall in love. The fact that Shelby now lived with two adult cuckoos while helping to raise a cuckoo child really said something about how much she’d healed since meeting up with Alex, or how good this family was at convincing people that second chances were a necessary kindness. It was difficult to say which was the case.

I leaned back, and Shelby took the hint, letting me go. Stepping over to Alex, I ruffled his hair the way I used to when he was a little boy hurrying to show me some horrible thing he’d pulled out of a hole, and he smiled up at me, tired but unharmed.

“You dispose of those bodies?” I asked.

“I did, after we ran some quick tests to make sure their flesh wasn’t contaminated enough to be toxic,” he replied. “We bled them out, then split the meat between the Komodo dragons at the zoo and the lindworm nest we’ve been monitoring out by the Fringe. They’re small enough that they haven’t started hunting people yet, and we’re hoping we can discourage them from getting started. They’ll be dangerous when they’re fully grown. Those woods could use a few dangerous things, to keep the locals at bay.”

“Is that safe?”

“Nope,” he replied. “Lindworms can’t be domesticated. But they can be worked around, and there’s something to be said for predictable, territorial apex predators.”

“Is the something ‘Ahh no, stop, run’?”

He smiled, crookedly. “Love you too, Mary.”

I looked around the table. No one seemed upset enough to have heard about any of the day’s losses. I winced. It still didn’t feel like my place to inform them—I’ve been a part of this family for decades, but I’m not reallypartof the family. I’m the babysitter. I’m not the one who’s supposed to handle the big announcements, whether good or bad.

Unfortunately, being the babysitter meant they knew me as well as I knew them. Alex frowned at the expression on my face. “Mary?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”

“I...Youreallyneed to call your mother,” I said. “There are some things you should know, and it’s not my place to be the one to tell you.”

He froze. Then, in a very careful tone, he asked, “Was it Annie or Very?”

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