Page 80 of Aftermarket Afterlife

“Inside, to talk to your grandfather,” I said. “If we’re going to blow up Penton Hall, I figure I should ask him whether he has any advice about how to get the best bang for our buck. They may have changed operational standards, but there’s no way they changed the basic blueprint of the building while he’s been gone.”

“And you’ll go to Alex after your talk? To ask him about getting Megan’s mom to offer you a job?”

“I will,” I said solemnly. “Now, you lot try not to burn the compound down while you’re having quiet time out here.”

“No promises,” said James, and several of the others laughed. It was a comfortable, convivial atmosphere; I was happy to see how well Sally was already fitting in with the others. Her experiences weren’t going to make it easier for her to find a peer group.

It was a problem I’d navigated before, first with Alice, then with Jane and Kevin, who’d at least had the other children at the carnival to keep them company, all the way up to the current generation. It’s hard enough for normal people to make friends. My people, much as I adore them and always will, are not normal people.

I walked back to the house, trying not to think too much about the fact that they wanted me to jump,again, to Ohio. Sort of like it’s easy for the dead to say things like “It’s my life” or “the high cost of living,” language facilitates using movement words for the way we get around. And for some of us, itismovement, always—Rose, for example, can’t just vanish from somewhere in the twilight and reappear wherever it is she wants to be. She has to travel along the roads, and she has to hitchhike at least part of the way, or there can be consequences. She walks a lot.

I can go from family member to family member, and have some fine control over where around them I land, but that’s notmoving. I just decide I’m done being in one place, and I appear somewhere different. Situations like my journey to Stumptown are unusual, and I avoid them whenever I can. The bomb plan would never work if there was actualmovementinvolved; picking up the bombs and trying not to fall over before I put them down was about the extent of my strength. There isn’t a word for what I actually do. I tend to use words like “jump” and “throw,” because that’s almost what it feels like—like I’m picking myself up like a dolly in a dollhouse and hurling myself to wherever it is I need to be. Only when the crossroads died, I started having to throw with my eyes closed, which is why I keep missing my targets unless I have someone waiting to catch me.

And I still get tired. I may not bemoving, but I’m exerting effort, in a strange metaphysical sort of way that I don’t entirely understand. After bouncing back and forth so many times in one day, I felt like I’d been running laps in PE before I died, circling the track until my joints screamed and my tongue tasted like desert.

At the same time, I might have to, because there was a more-than-solid chance that Alex wasnotgoing to answer his phone right now. Not with two crying children seeking comfort and a dead aunt hanging on the edge of his awareness. I knew him well enough to not even ask.

Inside, Kevin and Evelyn were in the living room, with Arthur and Elsie sitting in the dining room, some sort of overly elaborate board game spread out across the table. Arthur looked like he was enjoying himself as he peacefully rolled dice and moved pieces, and that was the only reason I could think of for Elsie to be tolerating the activity so soon after their mother’s death. He seemed as normal as he ever was, a little stiff, a little awkward in his motions, like he had never quite figured out how his body was supposed to work after getting it returned to him. She, on the other hand, looked abjectly miserable, eyes red, corners of her mouth turned firmly down. If I hadn’t already known that something was wrong, her face would have told me. There was no way Arthur hadn’t noticed.

But from the way he was playing, he hadn’t. We’d been trying to pretend there was nothing wrong with him, but it had always been just that: pretending. Because something was clearly very, very wrong.

I walked over to where Kevin and Evelyn were sandwiched together on the loveseat, her head on his shoulder, his hands in her lap, clasping hers. They both looked up as I approached; they had both been crying.

“Hey,” I said, softly.

“Verity just called,” said Kevin, looking past me to where the cousins played. His expression, already grave, turned downright funereal. “I don’t know how to start telling them, and until I figure it out, I can’t tell the mice. Once the mice know, it’s public news.”

“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry. I got there right after it happened, and I didn’t know what to say, either.”

“Excuse my terrible manners, Mary,” said Evie, wiping her eyes. “What can we help you with?”

“Where are Thomas and Alice? We may have the start of a plan, but it would be better if I could discuss it with Thomas before I bounce back to Ohio to start looking for a missing gorgon.”

“Poor Mary,” said Evie, with what sounded like genuine sympathy. “We’re running you ragged today, aren’t we?”

“Comes with the territory,” I said.

“Ted went up to one of the guest rooms to have a little nap and be alone without actually beingalone. Thomas and Alice are in the library.” Evie paused, shaking her head. “I’ve known for a year that they were planning to come back here, but that still feels so odd to say, you know? Like it ought to be impossible.”

“A lot of things ought to be impossible,” I said, and walked deeper into the house.

As I approached the library, I heard a familiar sound that had been absent for so long that I had to stop for a moment to just listen, letting it wash over me.

Alice and Thomas were arguing about a book.

They weren’t angry, just disagreeing about the text, and expressing that disagreement in their respective ways. She sounded annoyed; he sounded exasperated; together, they sounded like a trip back in time, to a world that had been so much less complicated. For a moment, I wished their arguingwouldtake us back in time, would let us try this all again.

But going back would have meant giving up the people I’d come to love in this time, the people who were my family. I shook off the illusion and walked into the library. “Am I interrupting something?”

“Just someone who doesn’t want to accept that some of the basic texts have been updated since the 1960s,” said Alice, with a fond, exasperated look at Thomas.

“Some things aren’t broken,” said Thomas gravely. Then he paused, looking at my face. “Mary? What’s wrong?”

“The Covenant hit again in New York,” I said. These were members of my family, yes, and they knew Dominic, but they didn’t love him the way everyone else who knew him did. They didn’t have the bonds that Kevin and Evelyn had formed with their son-in-law, or that Annie and Alex had formed with their brother-in-law. They were the next ring out of grief.

Alice looked at my expression and winced, closing her eyes. “Oh, God, poor Verity,” she said.

“How . . . ?” asked Thomas.

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