Page 57 of Installment Immortality

Annie blinked, then scowled.

“This whole situation involves the Covenant, and you’re burned,” I said. “Timpani having been a member means that Antimony can’t exactly go into the field with me without raising the kind of questions that could end with me on the wrong end of an exorcism.”

“She has a point, babe,” said Sam, tail snaking around her ankle and gripping it loosely, like he needed the reassurance that she was still solid. After the number of times she’d slipped away from him, I couldn’t really fault the impulse. Sometimes, watching them together reminded me of Johnny and Fran more than anything, one of them always running for the dangerous horizon, the other perpetually trying to pull them back to land.

Alice and Thomas weren’t quite the same dynamic. With them, it had only ever been a race to see which one was going to fall off the edge of the world first. Sam wasn’t human, but he’d have been utterly content to stay where he was, patiently watching things go wrong all around him, until he didn’t have a choice about whether or not to get involved.

“As for Arthur, he was a stowaway,” I continued. “Just got in the car without permission, and when we tried to put him out, he argued until we let him stay. He made some really good points. He’s a Price, too, and he has every right to go out into the field.”

Annie frowned, looking profoundly uncomfortable. “I’m not sure that’s true,” she said.

“Which part?”

“Both of them.” She shrugged. “He’s not Artie anymore, Aunt Mary. He’s… someone else. A patchwork person.”

“Your grandfather is a patchwork person,” I said. No one’s sure how many people went into Martin’s construction, just that it was several, collected lovingly by the scientist who originally assembled him. They say time heals all wounds, but sometimes lightning will do in a pinch if you don’t have a lot of time before the angry mob arrives.

“I know,” said Annie. “And Grandpa’s always been very clear about the fact that heisn’tany of those people anymore. He’s someone new, and so is Arthur. Sarah made him from the memories and ideas and opinions of everyone she could reach. He’snotArtie. He can’t even focus long enough to get through a full D&D session, and he’s the reason we don’t allow phones at the table. He wanted us all to be properly immersed. Well, now, his phone is glued to his hand, and he’s not keeping track of things like he should.”

“I don’t think you can eject him from the family because he doesn’t enjoy Dungeons & Dragons the way he used to.”

“It’s not the game, it’s what the game represents. It’s the time and the teamwork and everything else. If he’s such a different person that D&D doesn’t make him happy, is he even Artie at all?”

“No, he’s Arthur,” I said. “That’s what he’s asked me to call him, and if you’re that worried about him, is there any place safer for him to be than with his babysitter?”

Annie frowned, still looking uncomfortable, but finally nodded. “All right, I guess I can understand where you’re coming from,” she said. “What did you need from me?”

“When you were at Penton Hall, who seemed to be in charge?”

“The Cunninghams, of course. They’re the ones running theplace. Reginald Cunningham is technically the head of the Covenant, or was the last time I had any intel on the matter. He’s the big boss. Leonard, who you’ve met, is his eldest grandson.”

“Eldest? How many does he have?”

“Two, that I know of. Leonard and Nathaniel. And then there’s Chloe, his granddaughter. I was her roommate for a little while. She snores like a rhino. That girl needs a sleep study and an assessment for apnea, or she’s going to choke to death trying to breathe in the middle of the night.”

“Well, I think I met the two non-Leonard pieces of that family pie,” I said. “The names are correct, anyway, and they both sounded like they were from England.”

“They’re here?” asked Annie, leaning forward. “Where?”

“Massachusetts, for the moment.” That was nonspecific enough that I wasn’t worried about her tracking me down. Annie’s sorcery is impressive but destructive: it doesn’t come with any sort of teleportation or dimensional distortion. The routewitches were unlikely to bring Annie and Sam to join us—not when they knew Apple was already annoyed. And Sarah wouldn’t bring her anywhere near Arthur. Sarah’s desire never to see him if she could help it was well established and reliable.

“Why?”

“Assignment from the anima mundi.” I shrugged. “The Covenant knows I was with you in Penton Hall. They’ve started ghost-hunting.”

Annie looked down at her hands and grimaced. “I guess that makes sense,” she said. “Not them knowing you were there—I have no idea how they managed that.”

“The anima mundi says they had some sort of ghost detector on the grounds, or else my being destroyed on their property set off some sort of monitoring system. I don’t know exactly what method they used,” I said.

“Yeah. But once theydidknow, going after the ghosts makessense. The Covenant is big into an eye for an eye. Ghosts don’t tend to have any sort of centralized communications, and so many of them are bound to their houses that they’d be sitting ducks if someone wanted to come along and attack them. Are they hurting the road ghosts? Is Rose okay?”

“They’ve been going after road ghosts when it was convenient, but not focusing on them, and I saw Apple earlier; I think she would have mentioned if Rose had been a target. Sadly, I think the Covenant is marginally smarter than that. No one who enjoys continued survival messes with a Fury.” I shook my head to hide my shudder. “Regardless, they’re here, they’re hunting, and they’re having a horrifying degree of success. They’ve been jarring the ghosts they capture, and torturing them to make spirit bombs.”

“Wait, what?” said Sam. “How do you torture a ghost?Whydo you torture a ghost? What good is that supposed to do?”

Sometimes it was easy to forget how new Sam was to a lot of this stuff, sometimes surprisingly so, considering he was half-human and had been raised by a traveling carnival with a reputation for sheltering cryptids capable of coexistence with humans. But he’d been safe and relatively sheltered there, spared the greater complexity of our world. It had taken Annie to break him out of all that, and I still wasn’t entirely sure that had been a blessing for him.

“You torture a ghost by trapping them in a spirit jar—which is just a normal glass jar that’s been treated to make it ghost-proof, so we can’t get out once you suck us in—that’s been outfitted with things that can harm ghosts. Iron shavings, bits of mirror, rosemary, candle wax, pine splinters. And salt, of course.”

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