Page 44 of Installment Immortality

“But apparently you missed what’s got the Covenant on ghost patrol,” I said, deadpan. “Just like you missed my surname and why I don’t exactly fit the template for a standard caretaker.”

“Really?” Phee turned toward me, suddenly interested. “What’s your last name, Mary? What’s your real last name?”

“I like ‘Dunham’ well enough. I could roll with that one.”

“No. No, if it’s not the one on your gravestone, I don’t want it.”

“I don’t have a gravestone,” I said. “I was a hit-and-run. I died before Bobby Cross went to the crossroads—long before he went to the crossroads. And I wasn’t a caretaker when I was alive. I babysat for random neighborhood kids because I needed to help my father pay for groceries. I wasn’t particularly attached to any of them until I was already dead.”

“Wait. That’s not how that works. Caretakers happen when someone with a strong protective connection to a child or vulnerable person dies and doesn’t give up their duties. If you died with no one to take care of, you should have moved on to what comes next, immediately.”

“I had my father,” I said, but that was a lie. He’d been alive, and I’d been trying to be a dutiful daughter, to keep him healthy and as happy as he could be in a world without my mother, but I had resented it on some level, hating the fact that I was trapped in our house and our town and a pale parody of the life I’d hadwhen I was alive too. I’d wasted every minute I had among the living trying to make someone else happy, and it had never, ever worked.

It wasn’t until I was already dead and Frances Healy handed Alice to me that I’d finally come to understand what it was to care about someone else without hating them for it, without feeling like they should have been taking care of me instead of me taking care of them. I’d been a child who was never allowed to be a kid, forced to parent my own parents long before I was old enough to understand how wrong it was, and then I’d been a ghost who belonged, utterly, to an eldritch force dedicated solely to causing as much pain as possible. By taking care of the Healys, I’d finally been able to take care of myself.

“And that was enough?” asked Phee.

“No,” I answered. “My father was an angry, bitter man who drank too much because he was more interested in killing himself than he was in staying with the teenage daughter who needed him. I died before he did, and I got hired by Frances Healy to take care of her toddler a little while after my accident. So I guess I did it in the wrong order.”

“But you can’t have done it in the wrong order. It’s not possible.”

“Oh, did you miss the fact that I had two employers? The Healy family hired me to take care of their children after I was already dead, but the crossroads hired me to broker deals for them while I was dying.” I smiled at Phee, lips drawn tight against glossy teeth, and felt my cheeks hollowing out as my appearance slipped from schoolgirl to sepulcher. “I was bleeding out, and the voice of the void spoke to me and offered me a way to stay. I wanted to go. I was ready to go. But my father needed me, and I’d been taught that the best thing I could be was a dutiful daughter, so I stayed. I let the void convince me that it was worth it, that I would do anything that was asked of me.”

Phee stared, speechless for once.

“So I served the crossroads. I did as they asked. I brokered deals, and I helped people sell their souls; I ruined lives. So many lives. I don’t like to talk about it with the people I care for, because none of them realize how much damage I really did when I had the opportunity. They think I’m a good person. I’m not a good person.”

“You’re not Mary Dunham,” said Phee, sounding horrified. “You’re MaryDunlavy.”

“So you have heard of me.”

“That can’t be right. Mary Dunlavy serves the crossroads. She’s a demon, a monster, the worst collaborator the world has ever known. No one would allow her near children. Mary Dunham is the caretaker.”

“Mary Dunham doesn’t exist,” I said blandly. “I’m real, she’s not, I’m sorry you got your story confused. I died, the crossroads caught me, the Healys hired me while I was still solidifying, I became a hybrid caretaker–crossroads guardian, and I stayed that way until the destruction of the crossroads set me free. So now I guess I’m just the babysitter, and it’s my job to keep my kids safe, whatever that means.” I leaned over and took an onion from the pile on the counter, beginning to chop it into small, even pieces. “It’s a good thing I like kids, I guess.”

“Are you the reason the Covenant is so interested in ghosts all of a sudden?”

“Good guess,” I said. “They brought the fight to us. North America was supposed to be off-limits for those assholes and their bullshit. Neutral territory if they absolutely refused to stay away. But they decided they needed to start shit and get hit. They hurt two members of my family. Technically, they hurt my entire family, but they killed two. And once they did that, all bets were off. We came up with a plan to take the fight to them, to Penton Hall, where they trained their people. It was only possible becauseI was able to help. We filled their basement with explosives and set it off before they realized we were there. And somehow they figured out that a ghost was involved, that a ghost was helping their enemies, and they decided that was never going to happen again. They couldn’t find me. They didn’t know who I was. And so they’ve expanded their target profile to cover all the ghosts in North America, even the ones who couldn’t possibly have been responsible for what happened to their training facility.”

“Wow, girl, you really did decide to start shoveling the shit, didn’t you?” asked Phee, dumping a colander of mushrooms into the saucepot. “First you help the crossroads ruin lives for however long, and then when they went away—which, maybe they’ll come back one day, we don’t know—and now you’ve gone and pissed the Covenant off at all the ghosts who didn’t do anything wrong. You just like making enemies, don’t you?”

“The crossroads aren’t coming back,” I said. “Promise.”

Phee raised an eyebrow. “You trying to tell me that you know what happened to the crossroads?”

“You said stories were your ‘thing,’” I said. “I’m not giving you another story for free. Keep my kids safe while I’m out hunting for the Covenant tonight, and I’ll tell you what happened before we move along.”

“Deal,” she said. “But if the Covenant finds their way back here, deal’s off, and I’ll sell you out in a heartbeat.”

“No problem,” I said.

The front door banged open. I turned to look in that direction, resisting the urge to turn invisible. It’s the ghost skill I use the least, in part because it only works when I’m not holding anything that isn’t also made of ghost stuff, whatever that means. I’ve never been entirely sure. Ectoplasm or whatever. My shoes, the contents of my pockets, things I pick up in the starlight, those are all made of the same intangible material as my body, solid when I’m touchingthem, otherwise not. But the knife I was holding, and the half onion still in my hand, those were living things, made of the same solid material as the rest of the universe.

There was no “real” or “unreal” in this distinction: a knife I stole from the starlight would cut in my hands, and could absolutely be used to dice an onion. But if I turned invisible while I was holding a knife from the lands of the living, it would just become a floating knife, and that wouldn’t exactly be inconspicuous.

Amelia, who had just come in with her arms full of grocery bags, marched across the living room and into the kitchen, where she dropped her bags on the counter. “Mission accomplished,” she announced. She looked at me, nodding a quick acknowledgment, then turned back to Phee. “Where are the new kids?” she asked.

“Why? You going to try to pick up the new girl?” Phee replied. “She was already undressing you with her eyes. I bet you could see the underside of her sheets by the end of the week if you really wanted to give it a go—and if it doesn’t offend Miss Babysitter over here.”

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