Page 91 of Aftermarket Afterlife

“I know all this,” I said.

“But do you know why manifest ghosts are so rare, Mary Dunlavy? They cost. Oh, how they cost. They cost the pneuma of the world every time they walk in the world, because they have to be powered by something. And a ghost like you, who has no clear service to refuel them, why, you are a very expensive haunting to maintain.”

I shot her a surprised look. “What?”

“Not long after you were anchored, your line was spliced with something very old and very long forgotten. It wouldn’t have been possible, had not the hand that held the scissors belonged to a daughter of an equally forgotten line. The Kairos change fates when they have the cause to do so, and while she knew not what she did, Frances Healy changed your fate. She made you less expensive by giving you a purpose beyond the crossroads.”

“Great,” I said. “Then I’m the babysitter, and I’ll go do my job now.”

“Not so fast, Mary Dunlavy. When you tend to the children, you’re a babysitter. When you cleave to the ill, you’re a nanny, and that, too, is a part of your purpose, clean and ancient enough to incur no additional costs. But when you exploit the ill-defined rules of your existence to add more people to those who can spend your presence freely, I have to make sure you understand how precarious your position is.”

The anima mundi was suddenly much taller than I was, towering over me. She bent forward, placing her hands on her knees, and looked at me sternly. “There will be no more cheating, Mary Dunlavy.”

“Er. Yes, ma’am,” I said. “In my defense, though, the woman I just helped to rescue knows too much about my family. I couldn’t just let the Covenant have her without leaving all of my family exposed to attack.”

“Yes, and that’s why we allowed the manipulation, clever as it was, to succeed, rather than restricting you to a single family, as it would have been in days of old. We simply want you to refrain from trying again.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“As to this continual back-and-forth, we thought you would have realized, as the passage grew more and more difficult, that we would like you to stop moving according to your own whim. Go where you are summoned, little caretaker, and leave the unclaimed road to others. Our lands are open to you between times of need, if you tire of the starlight and its wonders.”

“Generous an offer as that is, ma’am, I do have one more big jump planned.” I looked up at the anima mundi. “I’ve arranged it so I’ll be summoned on both ends, but it’s not a short distance. Please. I need to do this, or the Covenant won’t stop, and more members of my family will die.”

“The Covenant...” The anima mundi sighed. “We can’t play favorites, Mary Dunlavy. The predator is as beloved as the prey. But they, like you, have tried the bounds too many times, have reached beyond their grasp, and now begin to damage the balance on which the world depends. We made many wondrous things because we wanted to have them.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t follow.” The anima mundi, as far as I knew, was the spirit of the living world. It couldn’t pre-date life on Earth, or have influenced its creation in any way: when life was getting started, the anima mundi didn’t exist yet.

Then again, as a force, it seemed to have some pretty flexible ideas about the flow of time. Maybe ithadbeen there, and I just didn’t have the capacity to fully comprehend how. I quietly added one more item to my list of reasons being dead sucks: it’s debatable whether or not I really have a head, what with the whole “no more physical body” thing, but I definitely had a headache.

“Because you act now to correct an imbalance we would never have allowed, had we been in our proper place, we will allow it,” said the anima mundi. “But when this matter is concluded, you will move only at the pace of the living, or when summoned by your charges.”

“That’s fair enough,” I agreed. It was still a massive limitation compared to the way I’d been doing things, but as long as I could help blow up Penton Hall, it was something I could accept. It left me with my family. That was all that really mattered.

“Then we have an agreement, Mary Dunlavy,” said the anima mundi, with aching solemnity. “I will give you no aid but this, and you will not try me again.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, fighting back the impulse to salute. “Not on purpose, anyway.”

“And no more trying to use the rules of your existence to your own advantage.” The anima mundi looked amused for a moment. “Even if weweresomewhat impressed when you thought to extend your client base for the sake of saving a friend, it’s not something we can tolerate going forward.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Megan was safe. That was what mattered here.

“Then go, and fight this battle with our blessing. It’s been waiting for some time.”

I stammered for a moment. The blessing? Of a divinity? That wasn’t something I wanted to have. Pushing aside anxious thoughts of Rose and her fate—she had been actively seeking the favor of three different divinities, not having a crossroads negotiation with a single one—I nodded, and then I was gone.

• • •

I appeared in the waiting room at St. Giles’s, popping in to find the space much more active and occupied than it had been on previous visits. Dragons, bogeymen, and assorted other cryptids filled the hard plastic chairs. Some of the children were crying. In one corner, a spotty-faced teenager who I recognized as the babysitter through some odd commonality of body language and the way the children were watching them, stood up, did a little turn, and transformed into a wolf. The children cheered, setting themselves to petting their now-canid babysitter, whose tail waved vigorously as they licked the children’s faces.

Wulver make great babysitters, when they can find cryptid families to sit for, and don’t get painted with the same brush as werewolves. They’re not the same thing, even remotely. Wulver are a stable species of therianthropes, and werewolves are people with a disease. Wulver have been complicit in spreading lycanthropy, because they can survive it longer than most victims, but that’s where their relationship with the situation stops.

The Caladrius woman from before was behind the desk again, seeming substantially more harried. Her wing feathers were in disarray; it looked like she was on the verge of a molt. I stopped politely in front of her, waiting my turn.

She kept typing frantically on her computer keyboard for several more seconds before she glanced up and jumped, apparently startled by my appearance.

“Um, hello?” I ventured, trying to sound friendly and not terrifying.

“M-Mary!” she squeaked. “I didn’t think we were expecting you.”

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