Page 40 of Aftermarket Afterlife

“One two three, eyes on me,” I said, keeping my voice soft and gentle. She finally turned to look, eyes wet and bloodshot from crying, tears still dripping down her cheeks. She looked wrecked. I was sure Jane would have been surprised to see her mother looking so gutted over her, and just had to wish she’d been here for this moment. I had to wish this whole damn day hadn’t happened.

“Rose is going back to the Ocean Lady to get Apple to send us another routewitch,” I said—a sentence that had quite possibly never existed before on Earth, and might never exist again.

“We’re not leaving her here,” said Alice, with sudden fierceness.

I shook my head, trying to look soothing. “No, we’re not. That’s why we need a routewitch. So we can get her home, and not have to deal with any of the mess of transporting a body across state lines. Ally, are you with us? Can you come back from wherever it is you are right now, and be with us? Please? We need you.”

“I found Thomas,” she said, voice very small. “I found him, and I brought him home, and we were going to be a family again. Finally, after everything, we were going to be a family again. How can we be a family if she’s dead?”

“Honey, they were a family the whole time you were gone, and they would have been a family if you’d been there. No single person gets to make the decision of whether or not something is a family. They would have been a family if you’d never come back at all, and they’re going to be a family with you and without her. Families change. There isn’t a single static definition that says ‘You must have this exact assortment of people to be a family,’ and we wouldn’t want there to be. We’re all going to be grieving for a while. But we don’t honor her by giving up, and we don’t respect her death by leaving this fight unfinished.”

Alice took a shuddering breath and nodded, standing up a little straighter as she wiped her eyes with both hands. “I was hoping she’d come back.”

“Don’t wish hauntings on the people you love,” I said. “It’s almost never as pleasant to be a ghost as you hope it’s going to be.”

To my delight, Alice actually laughed at that, and followed me back over to Sam and Annie. “I climbed up to the top of the Ferris wheel to get better reception and called my grandma,” said Sam. “Our show wasn’t attacked. She’s fine, and she says any of the Campbells who need a safe place to go for a little while can come and join them at the winter yard. Maybe they can combine the two shows for a season or three, while the Campbells get their feet back underneath themselves and everything steadies out.”

“It would be better than losing the Campbells entirely,” I agreed. “Rose said the routewitches were on their way. They’ll help preserve what can be preserved before it’s too late.”

“What about the other shows that were attacked?” asked Sam.

“Do you have any idea how to find them?” I asked him, baldly. “Because I don’t. I wish I did. We can’t take care of everything.”

“They were attacked—”

“Because the Covenant is a bunch of prejudiced zealots who attack what might be different. It took this long because we’ve been keeping them out of North America. We didn’t cause this attack, Sam. We delayed it.”

He grumbled but looked away, backing down.

“What do we do about the dead Covenant members outside?” asked Annie.

“If we weren’t trying to keep the carnival from getting in trouble, I’d tell you to torch them,” I said. “This was pretty clearly some sort of an attack, and given that we have multiple dead carnies and the Covenant agents were all shooting at each other, I think law enforcement is going to come up with a pretty straightforward explanation for what happened here. It won’t be correct, but since when has that stopped anyone? With the attacks on the other carnivals making it look like some sort of organized hate movement, they should be able to get out from under this pretty easily.”

I was downplaying the potential legal difficulty, but only because I knew there was no way we were hanging around to help. We couldn’t. No matter how much we wanted to, I was dead, Sam wasn’t human, and Alice’s legal status could get extremely precarious if someone ran her fingerprints and realized how old she actually was. Did the government have her fingerprints on file somewhere? I didn’t know, and I didn’t want to find out by becoming an unsolved mystery.

The tent opening darkened as a brown-skinned, broad-shouldered man in a red flannel shirt stepped into it, blocking the light. His short-cropped hair was dusted with gray, and the knees of his denim jeans were dark with grease. He looked around at the little group of us, nodding to Alice, before he focused on me.

“Mary Dunlavy?” His voice was a pleasant baritone, and entirely unfamiliar.

“I’m sorry, do I know you?” I asked.

“We haven’t met,” he said. “I’ve met that one,” he nodded toward Alice again, “but that’s about all. I’m Darius.”

“Nice to meet you, Darius. How did you . . . ?”

“Rose called, said to look for the teenager with the white hair, told me that’d be my contact.” He paused, quirking a very slight smile. “Her description was pretty on the money, have to say. She said you needed a ride home for four people and one...” He faltered. “Former person.”

That could have described either me or Jane, under the circumstances. I nodded. “That would be ideal, yes. We’re heading to Portland. Well. Outside Portland. Are you good to get us there?”

“As long as you don’t mind riding in my girl, and if you do, we might have a bit of an issue, since I was the only person available to do the run,” he said, and beckoned for us to follow him as he turned to leave the tent.

Alice gathered Jane’s body in her arms before she joined the group, carrying her daughter as she’d never done when the other woman was still alive. The tablecloth slipped away. Jane’s head lolled limply against Alice’s chest, eyes closed. I turned away. I’m intimately familiar with death—in some ways, more familiar than I am with life. I still didn’t want to look at that.

It still hurt.

Sam and Annie fell in step, Annie leaning up against Sam, Sam keeping his tail wrapped around her waist like he was afraid she’d float away and disappear if he let go for an instant. We followed Darius away from the carnival, away from the carnies who were picking through the wreckage of their lives for whatever they could find, and back out to the side of the road. There was still no sign of Sarah. I wasn’t sure yet whether I needed to be worried about her or not. Probably not, but I was going to worry about her anyway.

What we did find by the side of the road was a big green sedan, engine idling, chassis radiating heat like some great, camouflaged predator. Alice smiled, just a little, and glanced to Darius.

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