Page 83 of Aftermarket Afterlife

“The man who shot Jane is named Leonard Cunningham,” I said bluntly. “He met Annie when she went undercover with the Covenant, and figured out who she was. He followed her to North America, and she’s intersected with him at least twice. He was the leader of the team that attacked the Spenser Family Carnival, and he was in New Gravesend when she killed the crossroads. He wants her. He thinks he can convince her the Covenant is a better choice than staying where she is.”

Alex barked a short, sharp laugh. “He’d have an easier job convincing her that she’s a lost princess from the moon.”

“I know. I think he may know too, by now, but that hasn’t stopped him from trying. We know he’s been tracking Antimony. If that included backtracking once he had a known location, he may have found out about her time at Lowryland. Which could lead him straight to Megan.”

“Which would explain how the Covenant knew to hit us here,” concluded Alex. “Bastards.”

“No one’s disputing that, although I think the Covenant generally prefers it when their operatives marry before they reproduce; helps to keep the lines of inheritance clear,” I said. “Can I have Dee’s number, or can you call her for me? If Megan is officially one of my responsibilities, I should be able to find her. Hopefully.”

“She’s not likely to want to talk to a stranger, or be in the mood to answer her phone,” said Alex. “I’ll go to her. If I can convince her to hire you, I’ll call you to come join us.”

“All right,” I said. “Hopefully see you soon.” I hung up the phone before passing it back to Alice, who looked disappointed.

“I was hoping to say hello,” she said.

“There will be better times to say hello,” I said. “Less brutally difficult ones.” I turned toward the door.

“Where are you going?” asked Thomas.

“To check on Olivia, and then probably back outside to hang with the grandkids,” I said. “They’re a lot closer to my responsibility than the two of you are. If this works, I’ll know.”

And if it didn’t, I was sure someone would tell me eventually.

That was how this whole thing worked, after all.

Sixteen

“I like gorgons. You shouldn’t get into staring contests with ’em if you have a choice, but on the whole, they’re good people.”

—Frances Brown

Back out at the firepit, which may not be exciting, but hey. That also means it’s not trying to kill anyone

OLIVIA WAS AWAKE, ANDhad been for some time. I hadn’t picked up on it because she was in the attic with Elsie, happily telling the mice her version of what had happened over the course of the day. I made a silent note to set up a conference call between Verity’s mice and the mice here at home before we wound up with a religious schism over the two exceedingly different stories of the day’s events. Elsie flashed me a weary smile when I popped my head into the attic, but didn’t move to greet me or to hand Olivia off.

‘Thank you,’ I mouthed, before heading back down. Elsie liked kids well enough to have spent some of her own teen years as a neighborhood babysitter, and she’d keep Olivia alive, even if she wasn’t up for promising much beyond that. It wouldn’t have been fair of me to ask for more. She’d just lost her mother, and her brother seemed incapable of grieving with her.

But that’s the thing about grief. It hits everyone differently. Ted couldn’t stop crying; Elsie was briskly taking care of anyone who seemed to need it, starting with Arthur and now extending to Olivia; and Arthur was playing board games and wandering the house, lost in his own version of reality. None of them was doing griefwrong. There’s no way of doing griefwrong. There are just different flavors of doing it right.

I made my way out of the house without going through the living room, not wanting to face Kevin and Evelyn again, or to deal with Arthur, and trudged across the lawn toward the firepit, where hopefully the others would be waiting. I was almost there when I heard Sally yell for someone to calm the hell down and I stopped dead—no pun intended. She sounded genuinely angry.

Sarah’s pulse of “Mary I need you” hit me a bare instant later, and I blinked out, reappearing at the firepit’s edge. Sarah was no longer sitting on her log. She was on the ground behind Greg, who had clearly shoved himself in front of her, protective as any large dog. He was standing on six legs, his second pair from the front raised high in an attempt at looking menacing. And his attention was focused on Arthur, who was standing between Greg and the fire, hands balled into fists, glaring at Sarah. James, Sally, and Antimony were staring. This must have happened so quickly that they hadn’t had a chance to physically react yet.

“You have to fix it,” Arthur snapped, just as I appeared. “This isn’tright.”

“I’m sorry,” moaned Sarah. Her eyes were blue, powers quiescent for the moment. “I didn’t do it on purpose.”

“And that doesn’t matter as much as you want to pretend it does,” said Arthur. “The people you’ve hurt are still hurt even if it was an accident.”

“All right, that’s enough of that,” said Antimony, standing up and stepping right into the middle of the bonfire. The leg of her jeans began to smolder. She ignored it as she grabbed for Arthur’s arm. He pulled it out of her reach, shooting a glare at her.

“This doesn’t concern you,” he snapped.

“It does.” She stepped out of the fire again, now on the side with him, Sarah, and Greg. “I was there, all right. In the dimension where this happened to you. I wasthere. I saw Sarah struggling to do the math that would get us home alive and in one piece. I saw how close she was to collapsing. And I saw you grab her arm. I don’t know why you did it. Unlike Sarah, I’m not a mind reader. But I know she was so deep in the equation to get us back here when it happened that shecan’thave compelled you to do it, and I know she didn’t tell us to touch her, and I know it wasn’t an accident. You didn’t trip or brush against her. You grabbed her, with intent. And yeah, she fried your brain.”

Sarah turned her face away, guilt writ large across her features. But Annie wasn’t done.

“She fried your brain, and that sucks, and we’re all so sorry it happened, but Artie—Arthur—whoever the fuck you are now, she didn’t do it on purpose, and she didn’t reach for you to make it happen. You were a participant in this as much as she was. And when she understood what had happened, she did everything within her power to make it right, just as quickly as she possibly could. She tried to put the pieces back together.”

---