Page 16 of Installment Immortality

I fixed her with a look. “The mice have a religious rite centered around Alice’s conception. They used to celebrate it in the kitchen, until Enid told them mice who insisted on recreating her son’s idea of foreplay where she’d have to see it were making her reconsider her decision not to get a cat. I’m not seeing a lot of respect there.”

“They respect. They just don’t have a lot of illusions,” said Sarah, taking a piece of bread as Sally passed her the basket. She smiled serenely at me, then dipped her bread into her tomato juice.

“You’re going to get crumbs in your glass,” I said automatically.

“I know,” said Sarah. “It’s like having bonus oatmeal if you do it enough.”

Sally stared at her. “That’s disgusting.”

“Everyone’s here now,” said Thomas. “We can alert the congregation.”

Which meant they’d invoked one of the various “bribery for a moment’s peace” rituals that could be used to keep the mice out from underfoot. I circled the table to settle quickly at Sally’s right, and Alice nodded, tilting her head back so that she was addressing the ceiling.

In her best “I spent my summers as a carnival barker” voice, she shouted, “For lo, did not the Patient Priestess say, It Is Lasagna Night, and You Had Better Get Your Butt to the Table Before It Gets Cold?” She managed to pronounce every single capital letter, a skill she’d picked up from the mice when she was still a child. She’d been adorable back then, this tiny girl with fluffy blonde curls making nonsensical religious commandments with all the fervor of a fire-and-brimstone preacher.

There’s nothing like a colony of talking mice for taking the gravity out of organized religion. Fortunately for me, my father had been dead by the time the Healys trusted me enough to let me meet the mice, or Sunday mornings at church would have become infinitely more awkward. The first time I yelled “HAIL!” at the end of a sermon, I would have been in serious trouble.

Summoned by Alice’s declaration, mice began to pour out of holes cut into the baseboards, flooding the floor and running up the legs of the table. The holes they emerged from were small enough that they’d been able to blend in to the general darkness of the hardwood floor and navy-blue wallpaper. It was semi-intentional camouflage; while not many people outside the family were allowed into the house, it was occasionally necessary to allow allies inside, and the dining room was usually the location for any important strategy meetings that needed to happen. Keeping people from realizing just how thoroughly infested the place was by rodents was a good idea.

The Aeslin mice swarming onto the table ran first for the smaller version of the meal that had been set up for them, then stopped one by one as they noticed me. It was pretty funny, especially because itdidn’t happen all at the same time. One mouse would stop, another mouse would run into them, and then both mice would stare at me, becoming a rock for the rest of the wave to break against.

In the end, not a mouse reached the lasagna, and not a sound was made. It was unnerving, having so many little rodent eyes fixed on me, not a one of them blinking, all of them shining with a brilliance that had nothing to do with the overhead lights.

Thomas sipped his iced tea. “This one’s your problem, Mary. I’ve already done my version of the presentation.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t go missing for fifty years,” I protested.

The mice kept staring.

I suppose it would have been too much to ask for the family to wait and be sure I wasactuallydead before they told the mice about it. Even if they’d wanted to, Annie had gone to Penton Hall with the stated intention of rescuing the colony of Aeslin mice living there, the descendants of the splinter colony that accompanied Charles and Ava when they chose not to go with their parents into exile. (If that doesn’t make any sense, don’t worry about it. I’ve been with this family for something like seventy years now, and sometimes I still get confused. Feed the children, comfort the babies, and love them, and it all works out in the end.)

Aeslin mice are capable of many things. They can even keep secrets when they have good reason. But there’s no force in this world that will compel them to keep secrets from family, or from another clergy when that clergy is impacted by the secrets in question. The mice who’d seen me lost would have gone straight to my congregation and told them everything they knew. Not out of malice: out of mercy.

When your gods can be destroyed, there’s good reason to stay committed to knowing exactly where they are and what they’re doing. When your gods have absolutely no sense of self-preservation—when your gods are Price-Healys, in other words—there’s not just good reason, there’s an obligation. Someof these mice were no doubt mine, having chosen the path of the Phantom Priestess when they grew old enough in mouse terms to pledge themselves to a specific liturgical branch of their church. I’d been dead before they pledged themselves to me, but there’s dead and then there’s gone, and I’d never been gone.

“Um, hi,” I said, offering the mice a little wave. “Reports of my destruction have been greatly exaggerated.”

“HAIL!” shouted one of the mice, whiskers pushed forward in ecstasy. “HAIL THE RETURN OF THE PHANTOM PRIESTESS!”

Slowly at first, but with growing enthusiasm, the rest of the congregation picked up the chant, all of them shouting and swaying and staring at me. I grimaced.

“I’m sure glad I don’t eat anymore,” I said. “This would be enough to make me lose my appetite.”

“We’re used to it,” said Sarah, dipping her bread in her tomato juice again.

Sally snickered.

Alice glanced at me, smiled, and took pity. Pushing her chair back, she stood and clapped her hands together. The mice quieted and focused on her, absolutely attentive. They used to respond to Enid that way, paying absolute attendance to the oldest priestess in the room.

Thoughts of Enid still ached a little, as they probably always would. She’d died badly, and for a while I’d hoped that meant she might stick around for a while, even if it was as one of the types of ghost who never manifested in the lands of the living. I could have kept her a secret if it had meant she wastherefor me to lean on and turn to.

But she didn’t linger after she died. In my experience, Healy women never did. I’d buried two of them now—three if we counted Jane—and none of them chose to stay.

“Rejoice, rejoice, for the Phantom Priestess is returned to us,having defeated death a second time to come home to her family and her faithful,” she said. The mice cheered, but cut themselves off quickly, recognizing that Alice wasn’t done.

“She will tell you the story of her absence, that it might be added to the liturgy—later.Now is the time of feasting, and did not the Violent Priestess say Lasagna Is Essentially Cake, For It Has Noodles Made of Dough and Layers of Cheese? Eat and be glad that she has been returned, no longer to fade into the silence that awaits for the divine once they walk no more among us.”

The mice cheered again, and this time they swarmed the tiny table, picking it clean in a matter of seconds. Thomas responded by shoving a full-sized plate substantially more laden-down with food in their direction, and Alice tossed half the basket of garlic bread into the middle of the teeming mass of mice.

---