Page 53 of Installment Immortality

I remanifested on the other side of the room, behind the trio, remaining invisible. No sense in making this easy on them.

“Shit!” said the man in the lead. “Shit, shit,shit!”

“You kiss our mother with that mouth, Nathaniel?” asked the woman. “Oh, no, wait, you don’t, becauseghostslike the one you just let get away from us killed her. Well, swear away! I suppose that’s all you’re good for.”

“That ghost was taunting us,” said the man at the rear of the group. “The locals must have called for backup.”

“Can ghostsdothat?” demanded the woman, voice going shrill. “Can they just phone up other ghosts and ask them to come help them haunt innocent people?”

They both looked toward Nathaniel, who had apparently been elected “guy who knows things about ghosts and how they work,” whether or not he wanted the position. Based on his expression, the answer was very much “not.”

“Some ghosts can,” said Nathaniel, flicking his flashlight’s beam quickly around the edges of the room, clearly looking for me. I spared a momentary thought for appearing when he reached the corner where I stood, giving him one nice, cinematic jump scare, but decided against it.

They were armed and anxious and already looking for ghosts. Playing with them wasn’t going to help at all.

“Why in the formerly living fuck are ghosts like Pokémon?” demanded the woman. “We don’t need all these fucking flavors! We could have done perfectly well with the ones who haunt houses and the ones who haunt highways, full stop, close the book and walk away! Ghosts should be easy and predictable.”

“Shutup,Chloe,” said Nathaniel. “Ghosts are as diverse as people. It makes sense that they’d have different capabilities.”

“It makes sense,” repeated Chloe, in a mocking tone. “God, there’s areasonyou were never supposed to be out in the field. Heitor, have I reminded you recently that my brother is going to get us all killed?”

“You’re not helping,” said Benedita’s brother, who I now presumed was named Heitor. “Strong emotions make for stronger ghosts. Are you hoping to return and haunt us from beyond the grave?”

“Of course not,” said Chloe, sounding offended. “But my brother just decided to have a long chat with a ghost instead of getting rid of it, and that means there’s one more haunt out there for us to deal with.”

“We knew there was a third ghost tied to this location,” said Nathaniel.

“Yes, a ghost that appears as a prepubescentboy,” snapped Chloe. “Even if we want to say that we can’t guess ghost genders—not that they matter, they’re dead, they don’t need genders anymore—that ghost wasdefinitelypostpubescent.”

Still bickering about ghosts, the trio moved on. I watched them until they were out of the room, then turned visible again with a silent sigh of relief. Invisibility isn’t easy. My “body’s” first impulse, when I tell it not to be seen, is to drop down into the twilight, where there’s no chance the living will spot me. Useful as an escape strategy, not too great for hiding.

On the positive side of things, holding invisibility is no harder than holding my breath or tensing a muscle was when I was alive. It even seems to use the same part of my brain—not that I have one of those anymore, either. I was sure our three intrepid ghost hunters would be thrilled to shift their argument to ghost anatomy—why do human ghosts tend to look like people, anyway? Why do we behave as if we still possess the bodies we lost when we died?

(And looking like people isn’t voluntary for most of us. There are ghosts like Aoi, who can change their faces, and there are ghosts that can turn themselves into fireflies or change their apparent age, but for the most part, what you see is what you get. A ghost like a coachman, who’s bonded with their vehicle, will always be bonded with that vehicle. They don’t get to turn themselves back into anindependent biped just because they’re tired of it. The spirit endures after death, and it endures as itself. There’s probably something profound about that. If so, it’s not something I’ve ever seen clearly. I just work here.)

With Jonah safely out of the building, the ghost hunters could search until dawn and not find anything. It didn’t feel like there were any other ghosts in the vicinity, and so I vanished again, this time reappearing outside, in an alcove against the side of the building.

If City Hall had CCTV, someone might see the flicker of my appearance, but I doubted that any of the building’s security was currently connected or staffed. The Covenant ghost hunters wouldn’t have been strolling around so casually if there’d been a chance they’d be caught on tape, and I didn’t believe they had permission to be here. Maybe in a different world, or if they’d hired some mooks to follow them around pretending to film a reality television program, but in this world, without their own cameras? They were skulking about where they weren’t supposed to be, and I was perfectly willing to exploit that.

Safely outside, I looked down to see what I was wearing, and decided the Sabrina-from-Archie-esque black-skirt-and-sweater ensemble with thick blue tights was acceptably neutral to be believable as something a teenage girl might wear while taking an ill-advised midnight walk. There was a strange pressure at my scalp. I reached up and verified that the outfit came with a headband.

I am the universe’s Barbie doll some days, and I’m pretty much okay with that.

Stepping away from the wall, I began circling the grounds of City Hall. Halfway around the building, I found my target: a plain blue-gray van parked at the curb, next to an unfed off-hours parking meter. The engine wasn’t idling, but there were no windows beyond the bare minimum legally required for them to remain road-legal. I walked closer, then did a quick circuit around the van before knocking on the rear door.

There was a scuffling sound from inside. Several seconds ticked by. I knocked again. The door swung open, and a pale, scrawny man with dark hair and the beginnings of a mustache on his upper lip stuck his head out. His had been the fourth face Aoi showed me, but the way he wore it looked so much like a stereotypical Hollywood nerd that I almost wanted to blip myself back inside and scold the Covenant team for playing in to expectations. Instead, I folded my hands behind my back and smiled at him with all the innocent teenage guilelessness that I could muster.

The longer I’ve been sixteen, the funnier it’s been to me that most people over the age of twenty—living or dead after that age—will accept anything I say as true, as long as I say it with a smile. It’s like they’ve forgotten what it was to be young, and innocent, and heartless.

“Hi,” I said, cheerfully. “This is a no-parking zone. Are you okay, mister?”

“I have a permit,” he said, moving as if to close the van door.

“No, you don’t,” I said, before he could.

He stopped, blinking like a member of an improv troupe whose “yes, and” had suddenly transformed into a “no, why” without warning. “What?” He had a generic American accent, and I silently cursed Hollywood for making it so much easier for people to sound like they came from nowhere, everywhere, and Toronto all at the same time.

“My uncle’s in charge of parking for this area, and I know he didn’t issue any parking permits for the no-parking zones around City Hall,” I said. “He always tells me, because I like to TP the cars that aren’t supposed to be here. Makes it easier for the traffic cops to find them the next day.”

---