Page 18 of Installment Immortality

“How do you makethattransition?” asked Thomas.

Sally shot him the look I had come to recognize as “what the actual hell is going on please explain,” and he smiled. I wondered if he understood how fondly he looked at her. I suspected he did. You don’t court Alice Healy without beingveryaware of your own emotions, because that woman has never met a feeling she couldn’t ignore for as long as humanly possible.

“A reaper is a type of ghost responsible for shepherding the souls of the recently dead into the next level of the afterlife, assuming they’re not going to hang about and become permanent residents like Miss Mary here,” he said. “We don’t know much about them, because they’re entirely disinterested in interacting with the living, or at least that’s what I understand.” He glanced at me.

“Reapers aren’t chatty, no,” I said. “Bethany probably fits right in.” That wasn’t fair. She’d been totally chatty when I’d met her. Unpleasant and unnecessarily catty, but conversational. I just liked the idea of her trying to deal with an eternity where she had no one to talk to. Call me petty, but I don’t like it when people try to hurt me, or my friends.

“And she’s the only one?” asked Alice.

“As far as I know,” I said. “All the other crossroads ghosts faded away when the crossroads were destroyed. I’m not sure the older ones really noticed what was happening to them. They had a tendency to lose their humanity over time, like rocks losing their sharp edges after years in running water.”

“But you held on to yours,” said Sally, clearly trying to keep up with conversation. “How?”

“Her.” I gestured toward Alice. “Taking care of this little hellion kept me tied to what I originally was, and I didn’t fade into something eldritch and uncaring like the rest of them. I got bitter and sarcastic instead.”

“I like you bitter and sarcastic,” said Sarah shyly.

I smiled at her. “That’s because it’s all you’ve ever known. I promise, I can be bracing to adults who meet me for the first time.”

“You talk like the boss,” said Sally. “I was honestly a lot more disconcerted by the whole ‘dead and still standing here talking to us’ thing than I was by the sarcasm. The sarcasm was comforting. It meant I was back in a world where people had the energy and the luxury tobesarcastic. Not a lot of space for sarcasm in the barren wasteland.”

“You really were in hell,” I said, looking straight at Thomas, who laughed.

“We were,” he agreed. “But it was worth it, in the end.”

I suppose it had been. So much had happened while he was gone—he’d missed the entire childhoods of his children, and almost the entirety of Jane’s life. He hadn’t even known her well enough to truly mourn her; he was missing the faint air of melancholy that I’d picked up around almost every member of the family I’d seen so far. Even Alice, whose relationship with Jane had been fraught at best, looked quietly heartbroken when she wasn’t focusing on something else.

And yet, for Thomas, he’d come back to a world where hisfamily was flourishing, his wife was miraculously not only still alive but by his side, the crossroads were gone, and the healing of the anima mundi meant that sorcerers might return to the world. The Covenant was lashing out in desperation, and best of all, everyone who’d ever tried to hurt him was dead, meaning that for the first time in his life, he didn’t have to spend every waking hour looking over his shoulder. He was close to free. For him, all the losses really had been worth it.

I didn’t want to think of losing Jane as having been worth anything at all. I returned my attention to Alice. “The anima mundi needs to curtail the amount of energy I pull from the pneuma just to stay on this plane of existence,” I said. “That means the rules I operate by are going to be changing. They already are. Right now, I’m pretty flexible, but going forward, assume you’ll only see me if you call for me.”

“What does that mean?” she asked.

“Before, I could come to you whether you called for me or not. All you had to do was need me, and I could be there, assuming the crossroads didn’t have me off doing something horrible. Now, you’ll need to actively call for me. I can probably negotiate something less constrictive with the preverbal kids, because they can’t possibly call my name, but I won’t be able to just pop in and out the way I could before.”

Alice frowned, a line appearing between her eyebrows. It made her look so much like Fran that it would have taken my breath away, if I’d had any breath left to take. “That doesn’t sound so bad.”

“It is and it isn’t,” I said. “I’ll just be restricted like a living babysitter would be. The kids will be able to get into trouble when I’m not looking. Think back. Remember how I used to appear when you didn’t want me to? When you were absolutely sure you were on top of things? Maybe it’s better this way. I’d be tempted to hover now that the crossroads aren’t keeping me occupied all the time, and the new generation would never have the opportunity tomake messes. You needed those messes if you were going to grow up ready to deal with the world the way you were supposed to.”

“That’s not enough of a limitation to explain the look on your face,” said Alice. “What else?”

“I can’t decide to adopt new family members anymore,” I said. Sally looked momentarily alarmed, and I shook my head. “No, honey, not you. Not Sarah either. Both of you were brought into the family by somebody else. But when that asshole from the Covenant snatched Annie’s friend Megan, we were able to find her by convincing her mother to hire me as her babysitter. As soon as I took the job, I could ‘hear’ Megan the way I can hear any of you, and that let me go to her. I can’t do that anymore. So I guess it’s less that I can’t adopt new family members, and more that I can’t take on more clients.” I could still “hear” Megan if I concentrated. That was going to be interesting. Was my position as her babysitter going to be hereditary the way it was with the Price-Healys? Did her already being a client mean she was grandfathered in somehow?

Well, if it did, that was fine, I’d just have to learn the proper techniques for taking care of baby gorgons. I could probably start earlier than I did with human babies, assuming they hatched from eggs the same way snakes did—a big assumption, and yet not too far out of line for some of the things I’d seen.

“All right,” said Alice. “That’s not too bad. Was that all the anima mundi needed?”

“No. The Covenant’s still in North America.”

“We knew that,” said Thomas. “They took grave losses at Penton Hall. Most of their trainers, and a huge portion of their archives. But they weren’t eliminated, and the ones who are behind this invasion can’t give up and back down. If they did, they’d be telling the rest of the Covenant that they’re weak, and open themselves to infighting.”

“I don’t like these people,” I said.

“None of us do,” said Alice.

“Well, the Covenant that’s here in North America is getting on the anima mundi’s nerves. They’ve started hunting ghosts. Someone saw me, and told the rest of the Covenant that you’d been able to attack them the way you did because you had a ghost with them.”

“That’s technically true,” said Sarah. “Without your assistance, we would have been unable to transport the explosive devices we used to demolish the building.”

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