Page 70 of Installment Immortality

I winced. “Bad luck.”

Haunts are sort of a fifty-fifty case when it comes to them interacting with the living. Half the time, they can heal any wound, cure any illness, and bring people back from the very verge of death. It’s impressive as hell. The other half, they kill with a kiss, stopping hearts instantly. It’s not a gamble most people are really looking to take, and that’s pretty reasonable, if you ask me.

“Yeah,” she said. “I died, and I rose up three days later in the same club, where the owner—he’d been a friend of mine when I was alive, thank God—hurried to get me off into a private room, so I wouldn’t start a riot. He told me I was gone, and that my brother had collected my body and set ghost traps all around the club to catch the haunt that killed me. I wasn’t thinking straight. One minute I was fine, the next I was being told my favorite club was a trap for people like I’d suddenly become, and my hot new maybe-boyfriend had been a monster. Only he wasn’t a monster. He was a sweet guy who probably hadn’t remembered his kiss could kill, and he didn’t deserve whatever my brother was going to do to him.” She paused, and looked at me levelly. “You’ve met Heitor, haven’t you?”

“I— Howcould you tell?”

“You’re looking at me differently, like I might be dangerous, like I might be something more than another eternal party girl looking for her next dance partner. That means you know who I used to be when I was alive. I thought death was supposed to be the big release for people like us, huh? We die, we get all our sins forgiven, and the twilight makes us over into what we were always meant to be. I’m the life of the party. I’m just dead at the same time.”

“I think some things carry over.”

Benedita exhaled, half-laughing. “I hope not. Because the way Heitor acted when he saw me, I lost everything as soon as my heart stopped. No brother. No purpose. No place in the Covenant. He looked at me like I was a monster, and he tried to jar me. I got away because I spent so much of my life training with him that I don’t think he could get the drop on me if he tried. And hetried.Oh, how he tried. I had to run, and I kept running until I got to Orlando, where I thought I’d be safe. But he found me there, and I started running again, following the coast, trying to get far enough away that he’d leave me alone.”

I managed, barely, not to groan. “The Covenant’s been followingyou,and using your presence as a bellwether for local hauntings. They’ve been sweeping up the ghosts in your wake.”

“I didn’t do it on purpose.”

“I know. But you did it, and now that it’s done, we have to deal with it.” I huffed. “Your brother said that if I bring you to him, he’ll walk away. He’ll stop working with the Covenant. Without an umbramancer, they won’t be able to do half as much damage as they’re doing right now.”

“He’ll hurt me.”

“They’ve already hurt so many people, livinganddead. I can’t force you, but I can ask, and I’m asking you to make the right decision. If not for me, for Jonah. That poor kid’s on the cusp of losing everything.”

“That poor kid lost everything two hundred years ago,” said Benedita. “Shouldn’t I get a longer afterlife?”

I just looked at her. She glared back, hands flexing like she was thinking about hitting me. That would be an interesting choice on her part. Physical fights between ghostscanhappen, but all I’d need to do is blink away and she’d be fighting nothing. Not the most productive use of her time.

“Look, I’m not the boss of you; I can’t force you to go to yourbrother,” I said. “But I can, and will, tell the other ghosts that you’re the reason the Covenant is hunting here instead of somewhere else, and I bet they’ll find that fascinating.”

“You wouldn’tdare.”

“Wouldn’t I? You’re putting us all at risk. You’re puttingmy familyat risk, because you’re so busy running away from your own. Your brother is looking for you. I’m not asking you to stop the Covenant. Just to take away one of their tools, and slow them down.”

Benedita sighed, looking briefly cowed. “I miss my brother,” she said. “Heitor and I were always inseparable, until I went and got myself killed like an amateur. I should have picked up on the signs before I let him kiss me. But it was nice to have someone want me that much, you know? Every club I went to, he was there. Every party. And it wasn’t creepy, somehow, it was just—nice.”

I didn’t say anything. She was convincing herself at this point, working through what she needed to do without involving me. I wasn’t going to interrupt, not when there was a chance she could end all this.

“When I was with the Covenant, I had a purpose. I was part of something larger than myself. I think, sometimes, that I miss that even more than I miss Heitor.”

“I understand,” I said, and I did. There were moments when I missed the steady, selfish presence of the crossroads. There’s something nice about having a greater force telling you what to do.

Benedita looked at me, and it was suddenly obvious how young she was, under the phantom makeup that came with her place in the afterlife. She’d lived longer than I had, but only by a few years. “Did Heitor say what he was going to do with me?”

“No,” I said. “Just that he missed you. And you’ve just said that you miss him. Don’t you think it’s time we brought this to some kind of an ending?”

I held out my hand. After a moment, she took it, and I took her, both of us, into the other side of the twilight.

We appeared, not in the living room where I’d left Heitor to wait for me, but in the shadows of an unfamiliar orchard. The trees around us were more like extremely ambitious bushes, reminding me of some blueberry farms I had visited, but instead of dusky blue sprigs of fruit, they had long stalks growing off the branches, each covered in clusters of small, bright red fruits that I didn’t recognize.

Benedita clearly did. She blinked, then turned on me and asked, sharply, “What kind of joke is this?”

“It’s not a joke,” I said. “I just… don’t know where we are.”

“It’s a fazenda,” said Benedita. “And frankly, I’m insulted that you’d assume I was a farmer just because I’m Brazilian.”

“She didn’t,” said a new voice, familiar only in that it was uniquely unfamiliar, shifting on every syllable, so that it could never be truly recognizable. “We didn’t either, to be clear; we brought you to us to find out what you know, but the space selects the shape. Only it’s always growing, and always ready for the harvest, because the reaper loves the crop, or what’s the point in planting?”

Grateful, I turned, and there was the anima mundi, standing between two of the strange trees with a basket over their arm and a small pair of shears in their hand. The basket was half-full of the little red fruits. Despite their unfamiliar surroundings, the anima mundi was as beautiful as ever. It was impossible to label or define their beauty, which changed constantly, but it was equally impossible to deny it.

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