Page 26 of Installment Immortality

“Oh,Elsie,” I said. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart. I’m here now.”

“But there are babies who need you now, and that means you’re just going to leave me again. You always, always leave me again.”

“I guess that’s true,” I allowed. “Idoneed to focus on raising the new generation of chaos generators, as soon as I’m done with this little job the anima mundi assigned to me.”

Elsie perked up. “Little job? What do you need to do?”

“I’m supposed to head for the East Coast and make the Covenant stop hunting ghosts.”

Elsie’s smile was neither gentle nor kind. “That sounds like my sort of party. You looking for backup?”

I paused. “I came here to see if I could find someone who’d drive with me. I could ghost-blip myself over there like that, but I wouldn’t be able to carry any equipment or do any prep. You have a car, right?”

“I sure do,” affirmed Elsie. “I’m a pretty good driver, too. No accidents since I got my license. You really want me, not Annie or Uncle Kevin or something?”

“I want the Ghostbusters, but I don’t think they really exist, and real-life ghost hunters aren’t usually inclined to work with my sort of person,” I said. “I wasn’t expecting you to volunteer. I’d be happy to have you. You have to do me two favors, though.”

“What?”

“You have to tell your father, and you have to tell your brother.”

Elsie frowned. “Why are those separate favors?”

“Because I don’t think you’re going to be able to get them into the same room.”

Elsie considered this for a moment, and then nodded. “Allright,” she said, bouncing back to her feet. “Dad’s up in his room. I’ll go tell him now.”

Then she was off, bustling out of the room. I waited until she was gone, then cocked my head and vanished in turn, off to update my current employer.

The anima mundi wasn’t in the grain for once. I looked around, finally spotting a low farmhouse in the distance. A porch wrapped around the outside, unscreened and open to the twilit air. There, in a rough-hewn rocking chair, was the anima mundi.

I flickered out and reappeared next to them on the porch. “Nice evening,” I said.

“They always are, when they’re not too hot,” they replied. “We’re guessing you’re here to give us an update on what you’ve been doing with yourself?”

“Something like that,” I agreed. “Elsie’s going to go to Boston with me. She’s Antimony’s cousin. You haven’t met her yet.”

“And you think she can help?”

“She’s field-trained like any other member of the family, she’s half-Lilu, and she’s one of the better social butterflies I know,” I said. “She can manage this. Her mother died recently, and she has a lot of aggression to work out.”

“Excellent. We look forward to hearing of your progress.”

“About that…” I looked up at the sky rather than directly at the anima mundi. “It’s going to take about a week for Elsie to drive from Portland to the East Coast, and longer after that for us to get wherever we’re supposed to be. Is there any chance you could send us a routewitch to make things go a little faster, maybe?”

“Are you too good to cross our distances at a normal rate?”

“Not at all. You just seemed to want this done quickly, and a week of driving before we can even get started isn’t ‘quickly.’”

“Can you not ask a family member closer to your destination?”

I paused to think about the family members who could fit that description. “No,” I said, after a moment’s contemplation. “I couldn’t. Verity’s not available for right now, and Alice and Thomas need to stay uninvolved in case she needs them. Sally isn’t doing fieldwork yet. And Alex and Shelby are taking care of two children under five. There’s really not anyone closer.”

The anima mundi gave me a measuring, narrow-eyed look. “I feel you might have allies you’re choosing not to call upon.”

“I might,” I agreed. “But they’re not family the way Elsie and the others are, which makes it harder for me to just go to where they are. Unless you want to broaden that restriction?”

“No,” they said, without hesitation. “You need to be restricted, Mary Dunlavy, and you need to adjust to the idea that you always will be, from this point forward. Begin your journey with the girl you say will aid you. We will send someone to assist you, when the time is right.”

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