Page 83 of Installment Immortality

“Too long at the top of the food chain,” I said. I looked toward the attic door. “You any good with locks?”

“Never needed to pick ’em when I could shoot ’em out or kick ’em down, but I know the basic principles.”

I can pick a lock,said Elsie.

I paused, frowning. “If we let go of our possessions, the ghosts you’ve released will attack Elsie and Arthur.”

“Yeah, and I ain’t letting go.”

“What?”

Banjo folded Arthur’s arms. “I ain’t letting go. Getting a goodgrip on a living person is hard enough, and doing it a second time is just this side of impossible. I need a living body if I want to get out of this shithole, and I’m holding on to the one I have.”

“You’ll let him go after we’re out of the trap, though.”

“That remains to be seen, but for the moment, we’ll go with ‘yes, of course.’”

“Right.” I didn’t trust him any farther than I could throw him, and while Elsie was fairly strong, she wasn’t “toss your brother like a caber” strong. But that was all a problem for later, when we were out of this attic. “So we can’t let go right now. Can we share space?”

“What? Why would you want to dothat? You get to be alive again, and the first thing you think to do isshare?”

“I’ve been a babysitter for a long time.” I closed Elsie’s eyes, trying to concentrate on loosening my grip without entirely letting go, giving her the space to come forward and share this possession with me. I tried to think of it as teaching her how to ride a bicycle, those days when she’d been gripping the inside of the handlebars, pedaling for all that she was worth, while I’d held on to the outside and focused on running along beside her. Awkward, yes; also effective.

Are you sure?she asked.

Just trust me, baby,I replied, and then she was there, shoving me aside, and I felt the body we shared moving without my telling it to do so. It was… odd, like being a passenger in the back seat of a car, with no way to control or influence where we were going. I didn’t feel helpless, though, although I might have expected to do so; I could tell from the balance between us that I could seize control back in a moment if I felt I needed it.

But I wouldn’t need it, because this wasElsie’sbody. I was just here to make sure we got it safely home. She stooped, picking up a few nails, some needles, and a sprig of pine from the mess on the floor, then moved toward the door, carrying me along with her.

Several swirls of phantom smoke followed us, some brushing against our shared skin. They were cold, and I tried to flinch away from them without giving up any more of my now-tenuous hold on Elsie. If I lost much more, she’d be able to shove me out entirely, and then she’d have no defenses against the dead.

Don’t push me out, honey,I thought, fiercely.You need me in here to keep you safe.

I know, Mary. I won’t.She hunkered down in front of the door, beginning to work on the lock with the items she’d collected from the floor. Banjo crowded in close behind us, casting a proprietary eye over her work.

“You’re gonna have to get out of my brother, mister. I don’t care if you are some big-time dead gangster,” said Elsie calmly.

“Oh yeah? Or what?”

“Or I’ll tell my Aunt Rose, and she’llmakeyou get out of my brother.” There was a click from inside the lock, and she pulled her makeshift tools away. “I don’t think you want to deal with Aunt Rose. She’s a Fury.”

Banjo blanched. The expression wasn’t like anything I’d seen Arthur, or Artie, wear. It was a relic of the man now occupying their body like it was a rented Halloween costume. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said, and picked up a nearby jar, throwing it as hard as he could into another pile of them.

That seemed to be the signal the dead had been waiting for. They began ripping through the remaining jars, shaking them and knocking them to the floor, until the attic rang with the sound of shattering glass and rattling torture instruments. Elsie squeaked in surprise and bent back over the lock, working even faster than before. There was another click, and the door swung open.

“Thanks, sweetheart,” said Banjo, grabbing it and pushing past us to the outside. A torrent of smoke followed him, endless and crackling with a sharp static that made Elsie’s skin crawl. She straightened up and staggered back, plastering herself against the wall.

“Mary, I think you’re up,” she said, and retreated into her own mind, leaving me to push forward and retake control. It took a moment, and when I reasserted my claim over the body, I found Elsie’s hands tingling like she’d fallen asleep on top of them, the blood flow struggling to return to normal. I shook them, then stuck them up under her arms, trying to warm her freezing fingers.

Finish this,she thought.

“Yes, dear,” I replied, aloud, and followed Banjo out of the attic, into the larger ghost trap of the house.

The hall was quiet, Banjo and the spirits already gone. I paused to listen, but I didn’t hear anything, not footsteps and not screams. That didn’t necessarily mean that he wasn’t doing something horrible to Chloe and Nathaniel, just that if he was, it was happening far enough away that I couldn’t hear it.

Did Iwanthim to be doing something horrible to Chloe and Nathaniel? They had come to America on a mission of revenge, not caring who might get hurt in the process of finding the people who’d killed their mother. That was terrible, truly, but was it so different from what we’d done? We’d gone to England to make the Covenantstop,and we hadn’t worried enough about the collateral damage ofouractions. No matter how we tried to assign blame, there was always someone who’d hit someone else, an action triggering a reaction, all the way back to the very beginning.

I’m not a true Price, wasn’t born into this endless conflict, but I’ve spoken to enough of them, and to enough ghosts with an interest in history, and near as I’ve ever been able to determine, this is what happened: a long, long time ago, dragons were well on their way to becoming the dominant intelligent species on several continents. They were massive, they could breathe fire, they could fly until they reached a certain size, and most importantly ofall, they were territorial carnivores. The Covenant of St. George formed to stop the dragons from burning down entire human settlements, as a final effort against extinction. And it worked!

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