Page 41 of Installment Immortality

“Nice to meet you,” I said. Bakeneko are originally from Japan, and I’ve never been entirely sure how intelligent they are. I don’t spend a lot of time around four-legged cryptids.

“No, it’s not,” said Phee. She opened the door and strode inside, leaving the rest of us to follow her.

Elsie and Arthur followed her through the door. I took another look at Maron and followed her through the wall, stepping into a pleasant, perfectly ordinary living room, complete with worn brown couch, hanging spider plants, and television that was two sizes too large for the space. I stopped there, turning to take a look at the full space.

It looked lived-in. That wasn’t an insult: roomsshouldlook lived-in, or what’s the point of having them? There was no organization to the bookshelves against the walls, and there were piles of mail and junk magazines on the coffee table. A dark blue cat tree sat in front of the window, presumably for Maron’s benefit.

“This way,” said Phee perfunctorily, and gestured for us to come with her down the hall. We passed several closed doors. She gestured to one of them. “Bathroom,” she said. “Please take cold showers, so you don’t get your pheromones all over everything. I’m immune, not everyone in the house is. If you can’t tolerate cold showers, you can do hot sponge baths or rent a room at the Best Western down the road. Kitchen’s behind us, first door off the living room. Anything unlabeled is fair game, but I ask that you playThe Price is Rightand replace a roughly equal value in groceries.”

“You don’t want us to hand you money?” asked Elsie.

“More fun this way,” said Phee. “How else would we get experiences like ‘that time everyone replaced everything they ate with cheese’ or ‘why do we have seventeen bottles of olive oil?’ You can track the sales by what appears in the fridge. Makes meal planning interesting. Which reminds me. Breakfast is included in the cost of your rooms, but only if you fetch up between seven and nine. After nine, it’s all hands for themselves, and usual rules apply. I set hours so no one else will try to cook then, and you get what you get. Usually boxty, apple cake, and oatmeal are on offer. Other things come and go as they do. You can complain if you like, but it won’t do you any good.” She had stopped between two doors. Beaming, she opened them both and pushed them open.

The rooms on the other side were small, square, and perfectly genericized, with white walls, beige carpet, and medium brown curtains. There was a twin bed, and a basic IKEA dresser under the single window. Both rooms were identical, if mirrored.

“Here’s the two of you,” said Phee cheerfully. “Ghost can sleep wherever she likes. Do ghosts sleep?”

“Not the way you’re thinking,” I said. “I’ll probably spend the night trying to find the Covenant and find out how much damage they’re doing.”

“Just don’t lead them back to my door,” said Phee.

“I won’t,” I said. “I’m better at my job than that.”

Another door banged open farther down the hall, and a woman emerged. She was tall, solidly built as a professional wrestler, and wearing a pink-and-orange tie-dyed bathrobe. She was also heading straight for us.

“Urk,” said Elsie, eyes going wide, round, and shiny. Unlike her brother and his unending devotion to one woman, she had always been ready to fall in love with the next pretty face to come down the sidewalk, and it looked like love had just managed to strike her again, right where she least expected it.

“Afternoon, Phee,” said the newcomer, with a Boston accent so thick I could almost taste it, butter and maple syrup on the tongue. She paused to eye the three of us suspiciously. “New kids?”

“They’ll be staying with us for a little while,” said Phee. “They’re on a bit of a road trip.”

“Huh. They got names?” She turned on Elsie, perhaps recognizing her as the weak spot in this current conversational tree. “You got a name, sweetheart?”

I thought Elsie was going to swoon at being called “sweetheart.” She managed not to, although her cheeks flushed pink with either delight or arousal—I couldn’t really tell which. “Elsinore,” she said.

“What, like the castle fromHamlet?” asked the newcomer.

Elsie nodded, and the woman nudged Phee with her elbow.

“Better watch your back, if Elsinore Castle’s coming to you,” she said.

Elsie laughed like this was the funniest thing she’d ever heard.

“Anyway, I’m Amelia, and I live here at this little boardinghouse of horrors. I’m a bit bouncer and a bit keeper of the chorechart, and Ophelia’d be lost without me, wouldn’t you, Phee? Say you would, you know you would.”

“Get off, you great lump,” said Phee, with obvious fondness. “Amelia was one of my first tenants, and she’s never left. People stay anywhere from a night to, apparently, forever.”

“We’ll be somewhere in the middle of all that,” I said. I gave Amelia a harder look, trying to find any sign that she wasn’t human. Amelia obliged me by meeting my eyes, smiling wickedly, and blinking both sets of eyelids at once.

I blinked. Only once. Humans don’t have a nictating membrane. It’s a definite design flaw, but it’s something evolution decided we didn’t really need, and so didn’t bother to equip. A variety of the homo-form cryptidsdohave nictitating membranes, either due to an aquatic or nocturnal lifestyle, or just because evolution made some different choices when it was putting them together.

Amelia laughed. “Thought that’s what you were looking for. You’re dead, aren’t you?”

I was getting a little tired of being pegged for a ghost on sight. “Caretaker ghost,” I said, curtly. “These two are my responsibility.”

Elsie looked like she wanted to sink into the floor and disappear forever, which meant I was doing my job as her babysitter, even if she was a grown adult who could generally be allowed to flirt without supervision. Still, sometimes it was good to remind people of my role in this little family unit.

“Hockomock Swamp Beastie,” said Amelia, with a toothy smile. “I’m nobody’s responsibility but my own.”

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