Page 96 of Aftermarket Afterlife

“As long as it ends with my kitchen free of explosive charges, that’s more than fine by me,” he said.

“Great. Thank you all.” I looked at the three men, managing one last smile, and disappeared as Annie’s call of “Mary, I need you” echoed through my mind.

• • •

Annie and Sarah were in the barn, next to the table where Jane’s body still waited in frozen stasis. James had to re-freeze her every twelve hours or so, but as long as he did that, she would stay the same, not changing, not starting to decay, held exactly as she was until it was safe for us to bury her.

My poor Janey. Ted didn’t come to the barn anymore; he’d been banned after the second time we found him sitting next to her body with a vodka bottle in one hand, weeping so furiously that it had rendered the area unsafe for non-relations for hours. Ironically, Ted’s shattered condition had proven useful by giving Arthur something to do: as long as he focused on taking care of his father, he wasn’t stalking the grounds looking for Sarah so he could yell at her some more.

Sarah was uncomfortable being at the compound, because Arthur could walk in any time. As I reappeared, she was leaning against Antimony, the two holding hands, Sarah’s head resting on Antimony’s shoulder. I scuffed my toe against the ground, making enough of a sound to hopefully catch their attention. They both turned in my direction, Annie’s free hand suddenly holding a knife. How a quick draw could be genetic, I had no idea, but every Price or Healy born I’d ever known had mastered the ability to seemingly conjure knives from nowhere before they’d mastered algebra.

“It’s just me,” I said, putting my hands up before Antimony could fling a knife through my head. “I come in peace. You two ready to go?”

“No one’s too thrilled about this plan, but yeah, we’re ready,” said Annie.

“Oh, believe me, I know.” In the last two days, I’d heard every argument possible against our plan, from “What if something goes wrong?” to “What if the Covenant has shields against transdimensional mathematics?” In the end, however, our various family members had been forced to concede that this wasn’t going to end unless we hit the Covenant hard enough tomakeit end, and we really didn’t have another method of doing that.

“You ready?”

“I think so. Uncle Mike gave me the instructions for arming the bombs. We’re going to set them and arm them, and then you’re going to fill the place with fire to set them off.”

“And I’ll pull myself, Antimony, and the mice out when necessary,” said Sarah.

“I have a cat carrier.” Annie bent to pick it up, then held it up for my inspection. It was, indeed, a cat carrier, half-filled with alfalfa hay and scraps of colorful fabric. “For the mice.”

“You really think they’ll come with you?”

“I hope they will. They’re in extreme danger if they don’t.”

And they would provide a valuable source of information on the Covenant if they did; getting the mice out would have been a reasonable excuse for going to Penton Hall, even if we hadn’t been trying to bring this whole stupid conflict crashing to a close. I nodded.

“So it’s go time,” I said, and pushed my hair back from my face with both hands, trying to look brave. “Alex is going to call any second now, and we’ll get this party started.”

“Maybe next time, send a card instead?” suggested Sarah.

I laughed.

A moment later, Alex called for me in the back of my mind, summoning me back to Ohio. His voice lacked the urgency it would have held if he’d really been in trouble, but even when I served the crossroads, I’d been allowed a certain degree of flexibility around coming when called. Sometimes a kid just needed to see their babysitter, to be reassured that they were still loved and cherished and important. So when Alex called, I was allowed to answer.

I vanished from the barn, hurtling across what I could now see was an endless field of golden wheat, and was in the kitchen in Ohio, looking at three men and three bombs. Alex didn’t even blink when I appeared. “Can you tell Annie I love her, when you see her again?” he asked. “I’m worried I won’t get to.”

“You will,” I said solemnly. “No one else dies today.” No one outside the Covenant, and some of their deaths would be regrettable ones—we had no way of evacuating the children without playing our hand, and no possible pattern of charges would avoid the part of the building where Thomas said they were kept. One way or another, innocents were going to die today. I hated the Covenant for pushing us to this point, and I was so, so sorry, even as I understood that it couldn’t be avoided.

I moved to the first bomb, crouching down to lever it off the floor and upright, wrapping my arms around it like the world’s most dangerous teddy bear. It was heavy, and cold, and I hated it, even as I silently thanked it for being the answer to our current dilemma. Straining as much as I could, I was able to get the base a few inches above the floor, and held it there, waiting for the bell of Annie’s voice at the back of my head. Just holding it was hard enough that I could feel the burn in muscles that didn’t exist anymore, the idea of my body objecting to what I now understood was an increased draw on the anima mundi’s power. I didn’t have adrenaline to spike or muscles to strain. I had the living world, and it hurt to pull on it this hard.

Annie called with more urgency than Alex had, probably because she was already in enemy territory. I took a deep, unnecessary breath and threw myself, bomb and all, into the nothingness that would take me to her.

My flight above the grain was slower this time; I could actually look down, could actually see what lay beneath me in all its ripe and golden glory. The presence of the anima mundi hung heavy in the air, and I had the sensation that she knew exactly what I was doing, was entirely aware of my every move. She approved despite the strain—thus far. But if we deviated at all from the original plan, she might take that approval back, and I wasn’t at all sure what would happen then.

Nothing good, of that much I was sure.

• • •

The basement of Penton Hall was as large as an auditorium, gray slate floor and brick walls stretching out as far as the eye could see. Structurally key pillars connected the floor to the low ceiling, and a bank of boilers occupied a chunk of the space. But only a chunk. The rest of what I could see appeared to be the Covenant archives, box after box of documents and stolen cryptid artifacts extending in all directions.

Antimony and Sarah were standing right in front of where I had appeared, their mouths open as they stared around themselves. “Grandpa didn’t mention this when he was helping us find the weak spots in the structure,” said Annie.

“He thought about it,” said Sarah. Annie shot her a scandalized look. “He didn’t say anything because he recognized, correctly, that you might be reluctant to move forward with the plan if confronted with the reality of how much scholarship and history would be destroyed alongside the Covenant warriors we were trying to harm, especially not when you were already conflicted over the projected loss of life. It was a calculated choice.”

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