Page 70 of Aftermarket Afterlife

“It was a long fall,” said Verity, continuing without a pause. “He would have broken almost every bone in his body, but if he’d survived the impact, I could have taken him to St. Giles’s. Dr. Morrow’s a Caladrius. Broken bones are nothing to him. He can fix anything. He could fix a broken spine. And Dominic got hurt trying to protect the cryptid communities of this city. They owe us a little medical care.”

“But he didn’t survive the impact,” I said.

“No,” said Verity, with almost surprising fierceness. I blinked at her. She shook her head. “He was dead before he hit the ground. Look at the blood splatter.”

I turned to look at the wall. The blood was splashed across a wider surface area than I would have thought possible, even if Dominic had been attacked on the alley floor—which Verity was now telling me he hadn’t been. There was more blood on the ground than I had noticed at first, and the blood on the wall looked like it was dripping down from the top, not originating from a central splash.

“He bled out while he was falling?” I asked.

Verity nodded.

I looked up.

If Dominic had been dead before he hit the ground, that might explain his absence. His spirit could be anywhere between the roof and here, assuming it was still around at all—which I didn’t want it to be. I didn’t want to raise Verity’s hopes, and I didn’t want to think about him trapped here, bound by some undefined, unfinished business.

She was still watching me when I looked back down, that yearning plea for rescue in her eyes. “I left their bodies on the roof,” she said. “They must have been watching us, to learn our patrol routes. There are four other elevator houses suitable for hosting an ambush that we could have gone running by.”

The request was simple, and easy to understand. “Can you tell me where they are?”

“I can.”

“My aim’s not what it used to be. This may take me a while.”

She nodded. “I know.”

“If I go looking, will you be all right?”

“I need to call the bogeymen to come and get his...come and get him,” she said, looking down at Dominic’s face like she was trying to memorize every bloodstained inch of it. “His immigration status is questionable, and the false IDs we created for him won’t stand up to someone running his fingerprints through an international database. The last thing we need right now is for the Covenant to find out that they just killed Dominic De Luca when he’s supposedly been dead for years. I won’t be alone for long.”

“And you won’t...hurt yourself?” I have a long history with Healys and the way they respond to losing their loved ones. I watched Alice try to throw herself into a rift in reality to keep Thomas from slipping away from her.

Verity shook her head. “I won’t. I swear. Olivia needs me.”

That made her the first member of her family who’d had the sense to see that. “All right,” I said. “Tell me where to go.”

She lifted her head, looked me in the eyes, and did exactly that.

• • •

My aim may not be what it once was, but unlike Sarah, moving from one place to another isn’t exhausting unless I’m carrying things with me. I appeared on the first rooftop she had identified as a possible ambush site, and immediately wished they’d come this way. There were three Covenant operatives gathered behind the elevator house, none of them more than twenty-five, all of them clearly terrified.

I strolled over to them, hands in my pockets and a bright, false smile on my face. “Hi,” I said, once I was close enough, and was gratified to see two of them jump while the third flinched, all turning to look at me.

They were clearly terrified. Hardened field agents, these were not. If this was the quality of people the Covenant was throwing at us, I didn’t understand how even three of them had been able to distract Verity for more than a few minutes. Which meant, given the fact that I couldn’t deny what had happened to Dominic, that they’d been expecting Dominic and Verity to encounter that particular team, and had been watching them long enough to have a good sense of their patterns.

That was horrifying.

“What are you doing on my roof?” I asked.

One of the agents screwed his courage to the sticking place and stepped forward, demanding, “What do you mean, your roof? How did you get up here?”

“I live here,” I said, with as much disdain as I could muster. “This ismybuilding. And I’ve never seen you before.”

The Covenant agents started to look even more nervous. One thing about dealing with secret societies: theyreallydon’t want you to do things like call building security on their people because you don’t think they should be wherever they are. Another agent straightened, apparently recovering from the shock of my initial appearance. “Ma’am, you need to move along.”

“Oh, you’re going to appeal to my presumed desire to obey authority?” I crossed my arms, glaring at him. “I think the three of you need to move along. Preferably over the edge of the roof.”

“What?” asked the first.

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