Page 39 of Installment Immortality

The line ended at a small house with white paint on the wooden portion of the walls and a wraparound porch that went all the way around the house. We stopped in front of the house across the street to get a closer look, Arthur leaning forward to peer out the window like he expected the Covenant to just present themselves. Given the map that led us here, maybe he wasn’t wrong to do so. I eyed the house at the end of the map with suspicion.

Someone knocked on my window.

I yelped and jumped, but managed not to vanish as I whipped around to see who was knocking. The redhaired young woman on the sidewalk outside the car answered with a little wave, beaming at me. I motioned for Elsie to turn the car back on, then rolled down the window, looking suspiciously out.

“Can we help you?” I asked.

“Thought I might should be asking you the same thing,” said the woman amiably. “Seeing as how you’re parked outside my house and not moving around too much, and that usually means stalker or police stakeout. Now, I’m cute, but I’m notthatcute—never have been—and I haven’t done anything illegal enough to garner that sort of attention from the constabulary.”

She had a rolling Irish accent, which managed to sound both out of place and perfectly reasonable for this random suburban street. It was a neat trick.

“We just got a little lost coming off the interstate,” said Elsie, leaning forward and grinning at the woman. “I’m Elsie. What’s your name?”

“Ophelia, but my friends call me Phee,” said the woman.

Elsie kept smiling at her, eyes very nearly managing to turn heart-shaped. Her voice dropped about half an octave as she continued, and I wasn’t sure she knew she was doing it. “Well, Phee, I hope we can be friends.”

“I don’t know. I’ve not had much luck with Lilu, or with dead people,” said Phee. “Begging your pardon, ghost miss. I’m sure you’re a lovely haunting, and it’s probably not your fault that you’re dead. The ones who aren’t raving and trying to possess people usually didn’t die because of anything they did particularly wrong.”

You could have heard a pin drop in the car. But only for a moment, because Arthur breathed in sharply and started choking on his own spit. I vanished from the front seat—no point in pretending when she already knew that I wasn’t exactly a breath-and-heartbeat kind of a girl—and reappeared behind him, rubbing his back in what I hoped would be a comforting circular motion.

After a few more seconds fighting for air, Arthur calmed down and started inhaling and exhaling normally, shooting me a grateful look.

“Sorry, Mary,” he said.

“S’okay,” I said. “I remember coughing. Coughing was the worst.”

I vanished again, this time reappearing in my original seat. Phee looked at me, clearly amused.

“Guess I don’t need to ask whether you’re a friendly ghost,” she said. “Unfriendly ghosts usually aren’t that quick to help someone who’s choking.”

“My form of haunting is usually considered morally neutral,” I said. “We’re not good and we’re not bad. We’re just loyal, and if you’re not one of the people we’re loyal to, things can go either way.”

“Whoa, whoa, hold up,” said Phee, holding her hands out toward me, palms first. “I’m not trying to start trouble. It’s just that when a carload of nonhumans comes this close to my house, I’ve got questions. Question one: are you here to do me harm. Question two: are you looking for a pot of gold, because I have to tell you, no matter how many of you people show up here, I’m not going to suddenly turn into a leprechaun. I wasn’t one yesterday, I won’t be one tomorrow, and if I were, the dragon Nest over in Boston would already have robbed me for everything I have.”

Elsie frowned and leaned forward, eyeing Phee carefully. “You’re talking like someone who isn’t human either,” she said.

“Takes one to know one,” said Phee brightly. “Not human, never have been, popped out of my mam not human, planning to eventually go to the great rainbow in the sky not human. So are you here to hurt me or nah?”

“Nah,” said Arthur, looking faintly dazed. “We have better things to worry about. How’d you know we were Lilu?”

“The smell,” said Phee. “Lilu reek like everything you might ever want to fall into bed with. Trouble is, I don’t want to fall into bed with anything. It’s never been what you might refer to as an interest of mine.”

“You’re asexual,” said Elsie, sounding almost excited.

“Sure, if that’s the label you want to put on it. I always liked ‘otherwise engaged,’ but yours works too. Anyway, Lilu don’t mess with my head, but I can still smell them. It’s the scent of absence for me, empty rooms and hallways where the dust has time to really settle. Between the two of you, I bet you can get anyone who’s into the pleasures of the flesh to go along with whatever you want them to do—and who decidedsexwas what got the title ‘pleasures of the flesh,’ anyway? I find a nice cup of tea, a warmfire, a roller coaster, all pretty pleasurable, and all very much engaging of the flesh. I think you lot are being selfish.”

“It’s not like we got to pick our species off of a character creation table,” said Arthur. “And we’re not pure Lilu, anyway.”

“Hey, hey.” I held up my hands. “This is a lot of species-specific shouting in a public place, when we still don’t know what our…” I faltered for a moment, then settled on, “… new friend is. Ophelia? Identify yourself please?”

“Clurichaun,” she said, with visible satisfaction. “Not a leprechaun, and it’s a grand insult to call one of us by that name. Tragically, we’re related, and near enough that people do go getting us confused—once.”

She grinned, and for a moment, her mouth was full of small, sharp teeth, serrated like a ghoul’s, close-fitting as an otter’s or a seal’s. Then she dropped it, and when she spoke again, her teeth were flat as any human being’s. It was a nice bit of camouflage, and it left me unsure which version of her dentition was the real one. Kevin might have been able to tell me more about what to expect from a clurichaun, or Thomas, but neither of them was here, and I was on my own for figuring out my next move.

I sighed and blipped out of the car, reappearing next to Phee on the sidewalk outside. She looked at me with mild amusement, eyebrows lifted in silent question. I folded my arms.

“We’re here because we know the Covenant of St. George has been active in this city, and the map that was supposed to lead us to them appears to have led us to your house, instead,” I said. “Unless you’re sheltering the Covenant for some reason. If you are, you should know, they’re going to kill you when they’re done with whatever it is they’re doing. They don’t forgive nonhumans for existing, even after they’ve been useful. Don’t get confused about that.”

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