Page 64 of Installment Immortality

Arthur, who was still new enough that he listened to every word spoken by the people around him, rather than assuming he could understand from half-statements and things he’d heard before, frowned. “What do you mean, ‘at least’?”

“What?”

“You said ‘at least one ghost.’ What do you mean?”

Well, crap. I shrugged. “I showed myself to them, to distract them and try to get a better idea of what they were doing there. I had a hat on, it was dark, and everyone was shining flashlights on everybody else. I doubt they’d recognize me by daylight.”

Arthur and Elsie both stared at me. “Mary, these areCovenant people,” said Arthur. “They’re trained to remember faces, and they’ve been looking for us for decades.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” I said. “I know you think of me as part of the family, and I am, where it counts, but I’m as muchan adoptee as James or Sarah. I don’t look like anyone the Covenant knows to be looking for. Even if I had in the beginning, the crossroads bleached me out so much that I don’t think they’d make the connection.”

Elsie stared at me for a long moment, eyes hard, before she sighed and looked away. “All right, fine,” she said. “They don’t know to look for you. That doesn’t mean we have to like you taking risks.”

“Fair enough,” I agreed.

“But we have the start of a plan,” she said. “We get some sleep, because no one likes going into a fight exhausted, and then in the morning, Mary goes looking for the van. I’ll keep an eye on Chloe’s social media, see if I can figure out anything about their movement, and whether they have anyone else with them. A team of four, we can take. A team of eight might get difficult.”

“Do you think you can sleep?” I asked. “That goes for both of you—I want you rested if we’re going into a potentially dangerous situation.”

“I do,” said Elsie.

“I can try,” said Arthur.

“Well, I don’t sleep,” I said. “But I can go explore the local twilight a bit, or go to the kids if any of them need me. Three children under ten, someone should want a glass of water in the middle of the night, right?”

It had been so long since I had three kids that young to take care of, I wasn’t sure I fully remembered how chaotic things could get. I cocked my head to the side, “listening” with the part of me that had nothing to do with sound. There was nothing. All three kids were sleeping soundly, as were most of the adults. Verity felt like a vast, distant bruise, all sorrow and stillness, which was so out of character for her that it made me want to drop everything and rush to New York.

I couldn’t do that. I was needed here. So I dug deep and mustered a smile for Elsie. “Sounds like we have a plan,” I said. “I’ll see you both in the morning.”

Then I disappeared, removing myself so they could actually get some sleep.

I reappeared in the living room. I didn’t have a room of my own to go to, and I wasn’t sure how much I wanted to explore the local twilight. I’d already met enough of the ghosts in the area; I could find them again if I needed to. As long as I didn’t really have anything to tell them—beyond “your brother is here to hurt you” and “all the missing ghosts are being tortured”—there was no point in rushing.

Of course, both of those were things Benedita would probably want to know, and that was part of what made me hesitate. The last thing I needed to do was trigger a mass haunting of a group of ghost hunters. These people were prepared for spirits in a way that normal living humans weren’t, and they might respond to any action with violence.

The deadcandie. I didn’t want to be responsible for that.

With none of my kids calling for me, I had a few minutes to myself, and I didn’t know what to do with them. I walked toward the kitchen. Being dead, I don’t need to eat or drink; being solid enough to serve as a good babysitter, I sometimes enjoy it, and there’s something to be said for a hot cup of tea in the small hours of the morning. We were renting two rooms. Surely Phee wouldn’t begrudge me a little hot water.

There was a proper kettle on the stove, a lot like the one my mother used to use. I stood up a little straighter at the thought, feeling haunted. Everything I’d said to Elsie was the truth, and I’d had decades to get past the worst of my sorrow, but grief nevertruly goes away. It’s not a wound that can be healed. It’s more like a small, biting animal that lives in your ribcage, ripping and tearing at everything around it, made of teeth and claws and misery. So many parts of me had died in a field in Buckley, but the core of me survived, and the grief was a part of that.

I sniffled, then filled the kettle and placed it on one of the burners, turning it on to heat while I went digging for mugs and teabags. To my delight, Phee had plenty of both, and I was shortly settled at the table to wait for my water to be ready.

“Making yourself right at home, I see,” said Phee. I turned to find her standing behind me in the doorway to the hall, wearing a green robe so bright that it hurt my eyes. “That’s rightly grand. I’d hate for you to go back to all the other ghosts and tell them I’d been a poorly host when you were washed up on my doorstep. Will you be wanting honey, sugar, or milk?”

“None of those,” I said, politely. “They’re all nice things to put in your tea, but they won’t change the flavor much for me at all, and I don’t see the point in pretending that they might.”

“Fair enough.” She pushed away from the doorframe and strolled into the kitchen, smirking and amused. The kettle began to squeal and she took it off the burner, seeming to weigh it in her hand for a moment before she said, “Enough water for two cups. Someone taught you manners, miss ghost.”

“My mother liked her tea.”

“Did she, now? My mam was fair fond of it as well, so you see, we’ve something in common after all.” She turned to take down two mugs from the cabinet full of them, one a novelty Ireland design with a cartoon leprechaun on the side that felt stereotypical and offensive to me, but she would know better than I did if that sort of thing was a problem. The other was an advertisement for a local haunted house, complete with leering red-eyed ghosts in the classic “sheets with holes in” design. I eyed it and snorted lightly. Talk about stereotypical representations.

Phee dropped a teabag into each mug, added hot water to both, and followed it up with honey and a generous splash of whiskey in her own. This done, she set the undoctored mug in front of me and stepped back.

“There. Now the bare minimum is managed, in terms of hospitality, and my mam shan’t rise from the grave to swat me about the head and shoulders with her ladle.”

“That doesn’t sound likely even if you hadn’t fixed my tea.” I wrapped my hands around the mug, letting the heat travel through the ceramic and into my palms.

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