Page 88 of Installment Immortality

“Hello, Banjo,” I said, once the man was close enough.

He eyed me. “You that Mary girl?”

“I am.”

“How’d you know?”

I shrugged. “Lucky guess.”

“How’d we get here?”

The anima mundi sniffed, looking at him. “I called the ghosts from the building you were trapped within, and you came.”

Banjo shot them a dismissive look. “Nah, see, I was possessing this hollow little guy—he wasperfect,an unbroken vessel, justwaiting for someone more useful to come along and put him to good use. I want to go back.”

I stepped forward, eyes blazing. “Excuse me?”

“Aw, yeah, little babysitter. Your boy’s got a good body. I can use it. Better still, he’s got a lousy grip on the thing. You sure he’s not already a possession? Maybe the original got on your nerves? I could live there forever.”

“But you won’t.” I looked to the anima mundi. “Please don’t send him back.”

“I dislike the dead occupying the living,” they said coolly. “I will not enable it.”

“Thank you.” I turned to look at the white lady. “You are…?”

“Agnes, ma’am,” she said, voice polite and deferential. “Have we been called to the great hereafter?”

“Technically you’ve been in the great hereafter since you died, but you’re currently in a new layer of the afterlife,” I said. “This is the anima mundi. They’re making sure the ghosts damaged by the spirit jars don’t have the chance to make things worse.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Agnes, sounding confused. “The spirit jar was very unsettling, and I didn’t much care for it. If we’re here, does that mean we’re all moving on, or is there a chance we can go back to our familiar hauntings? You see, I’ve a garden to tend, and a ward of sorts to care for.”

“Jonah, right?” I asked. She nodded. “I want to talk to you about him. I have a few ideas that might help make his afterlife a little more pleasant.”

“That would be very nice, ma’am, if it’s possible for me to return where I belong.”

“Ask the anima mundi.”

She turned her attention to the anima mundi. “I… Er… Ma’am?”

“As good an address for me as any, I suppose,” said the anima mundi. “How are you still yourself, lady of vengeance?”

“Oh, I found my peace a long, long time ago, but I had flowers to tend to, and bees to care for, so I stayed. It takes more than a little pain and suffering to unsettle me,” said Agnes serenely. “I have to go back for Jonah, and the bees.”

“Then you’ll be returned, as will any others still coherent enough to pose no threat to the living,” said the anima mundi. They turned to me. “I can put you and your charge down outside the house, but I can’t recover the boy from inside without bringing him here and dropping him back again, and he’ll have no means of understanding what’s going on around him.”

“If you get us back into the daylight, I can deal with Arthur.” I tried to sound more confident than I felt.

The anima mundi nodded. “Hmm. There is the small matter of resources. You’ve done as we asked you, which means the time of moving freely and without restraint is over, unless you agree to enter our service, as we previously proposed.”

“Elsie is bleeding to death, Arthur is presumably unconscious at the site of multiple murders, and you want to talk employment?”

“Yes. This seems like a time when you’ll understand the urgency of our request.”

I glared.

“The crossroads also made sure to back me into a corner, and I spent decades fighting against them,” I said. “Be very sure you want to do this.”

The look of smug assurance on the anima mundi’s face flickered but didn’t entirely fade away. “We are.”

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