Page 85 of Aftermarket Afterlife

“Our gaze is paralytic.”

“Ah. I’m immune to that, too. Being dead comes with a few benefits, to counterbalance all the ways in which it kinda sucks. Why aren’t you worried about paralyzing Alex?”

“I’m not looking her in the eye, and she needed to finish cleaning herself up before you got here,” said Alex. “I know how to handle myself around gorgons.”

Understatement of the year. “Okay. That makes sense and we may not have a lot of time, so let’s get down to business. You’re hiring me to babysit your daughter, yeah?”

“Megan,” said Dee, tone almost reverent; it was like she was describing the most important person in the world, and to her, maybe she was. It was clear from the fact that she’d been able to hire me that they had a strong relationship—maybe I was being overly optimistic about the way the world works, but I had the distinct feeling that an estranged parent wouldn’t have been able to pull the same trick. I could be used to hunt down the beloved, not the intentionally absent. “She’s a doctor, you know.”

“Is she working at a cryptid hospital?”

Dee’s face fell. “No. I told her to wait until one of them had an opening for an intern, Itoldher, but she made human friends while she was in medical school, and I work for a human, and she wanted to experience the whole process. She matched with a hospital in Seattle. Made a lot of terrible jokes about a television program calledGrey’s Anatomy, bought a sweatshirt for the hospital from the show as well as the things she’d need for her posting, and went off to finish her studies. I didn’t like it then, and I don’t like it now. She’s not supposed to be so far away from home.”

In a human parent, that might have caused me to look at her askance. In a gorgon parent, that attitude made a lot of sense. They’re fairly critically endangered, and they don’t reproduce any faster than humans do. It’s uncommon for kids to settle very far from their parents, just because they lack the distributed support structure that many humans have.

Alex grimaced but didn’t say anything. This was Dee’s daughter, and Dee’s story, and he was only here to facilitate.

“So there wouldn’t have been any unusual security,” I said, thoughtfully. “Do you have any other kids?”

“No.”

“All right. Last question: may I hold your hand?”

Dee looked startled. “How is that going to help?”

“You’ve hired me to sit for Megan. Normally you’d introduce me to the child right after I agreed to work for you. Obviously, we can’t do it that way right now, so I think the solution is for me to bring myself closer to you. The families I sit for are just that—family.” And it was “families” at this point. The Prices might slap the “aunt” and “uncle” label on everyone who slowed down in their vicinity, but Drew wasn’t really family to anyone who lived in Portland, except for Evelyn. He was his own branch, and he shouldn’t have registered for me. But he did, because Sarah was one of my kids, and he was her uncle by adoption. I usually thought of them as one big, coherent family, but they hadn’t been for a long time, and there was nothing wrong with that.

Uncertainly, Dee reached over and took my hand.

“Tell me about her.”

“Megan’s wanted to be a doctor since she was a little girl. Her father’s our doctor, here at the colony, and she wanted to be just like him. She wanted to keep gorgons safe and healthy and happy. She used to find animals that had been hurt and nurse them back to health—when she was twelve, she found a turkey vulture who’d been blown into some power lines by a bad storm, and she saved his life. He was in love with her for years, would follow her around when she was outside, just like a puppy. He flew away eventually. All children fly away eventually.” Her lips twisted, expression turning pained.

“What does she like?” I prompted.

“She loves ice cream, and boardgames with too many rules, and Lowry movies. She always said they were better than Disney because they didn’t have the budget not to be—they couldn’t afford the most fluid animation or the most impressive celebrity voices, so they had to have the best stories. She got a Princess Aspen dress for Haloa when she was six, and wore it until it literally fell apart around her. When she got accepted into the Lowryland college program, it was like all her dreams were coming true at once, even if she considered it a crime that she couldn’t let her snakes sunbathe in the Florida sun. She’s had two steady boyfriends, but never reached the seriousness level of a courtship.”

I was starting to feel a dim flicker of presence from the west, farther north than Portland, as Megan became a part of my mental map. She was alive, then, and still in the Seattle area.

“Now,” I said. “About my rates.”

Dee blanched. “We aren’t what you’d call ‘wealthy,’ by human standards,” she said. “I get a salary from Alex, but mostly we barter among ourselves for what we need. I give most of my actual money to the community for necessities, and—”

“I know it’s expensive, but I charge a whole dime an hour, because I have a lot of experience for someone my age, and your children will be so safe with me, it’s worth the money for the peace of mind,” I continued, not letting her stop me. Dee’s mouth snapped shut, and she stared at me, confused. “I don’t know a lot about how this all works, since I’ve done the bulk of my work for one family for the last ninety years, but I’m pretty sure I have to give my rates, and you have to accept them, before I’m formally hired.”

“A—a dime an hour? Ten cents?”

I nodded.

“I can do that,” said Dee.

“Then we have an agreement,” I said, as the feeling of Megan’s presence snapped into sudden clarity. I knew where she was. Of course I knew where she was. She was my responsibility, and I’d be a pretty lousy babysitter if I didn’t know where the kids I was supposed to be taking care of were. “I’m going to go check on Megan now. Is it unreasonable of me to ask for my first hour’s pay in advance?”

One thing you learn after being dead for a while: when something seems like a good idea, it’s almost always better to just go with it. The twilight has reasons to ask for the things it does. Dee frowned, digging a hand into her pocket to produce a crumpled dollar bill. “I don’t have any coins on me,” she said. “Can I pay you for ten hours?”

“That would be fine,” I said, and took the dollar. The feeling of presence from the west got stronger, Megan truly becoming my responsibility. I would be able to find her now; I was sure of it. “It was nice to meet you,” I said, and flashed a quick smile at Alex. He smiled back, and I disappeared.

The world blurred around me, and I was standing in a small, dark room, the windows covered by heavy canvas curtains that let only the barest edges of the light in, the walls draped in plastic sheeting. What looked like a dentist’s reclining chair was set up at the center of the room, a figure strapped into it, head lolling insensate. I hurried over to the woman I already recognized as one of my charges.

---