Page 9 of Installment Immortality

“I didn’t run off last time, Sarah,” I said, quietly. “I tried to get out of that basement, and I couldn’t do it. It was like the world didn’t want me to. I’d pulled all the strength I had into getting those bombs where we needed them to be, and nothing I did would let me leave. Hasn’t the math ever failed you? Hasn’t it ever left you somewhere that you didn’t want to be?”

She flinched, and that was more than enough of an answer for me. Of course she understood what that was like. Her own abilities were new and still evolving; there was no way they could work perfectly every time she asked them to. That didn’t mean people wouldn’t blame her when they failed. That didn’t mean people weren’t going to blameme.

I leaned over and wrapped an arm around her shoulders, giving her a quick hug. “Come on, Sarah. Let’s stop standing here and playing ‘what if they get upset,’ and go upset them instead, okay?”

“Okay,” she said, voice surprisingly thick, and didn’t resist as I started forward, pulling her along with me.

The Portland compound was designed and constructed by Kevin, intended to serve as a permanent place big enough for his whole family to live if they wanted to. “Constructed by” is a pretty generous way to describe it, since he’s not particularly handy, but he was the one who’d organized the crews, mostly sasquatch and bogeymen, who’d cleared the land and put the physical buildings up. Over two dozen groups of workers had been responsible for getting everything put together, with Kevin rotating them regularly to make sure no one knew all the details of the security system. Paranoid? Yes. Unreasonable? When we already knew that the Covenant was out there looking for us, no. Not unreasonable in the least.

Although maybe the idea that the whole family would ever come and live happily under one roof had been more than a little unreasonable. Jane never forgave her mother for missing most of her childhood, and she’d taken that resentment with her to the grave. When Alice was in the house, Jane did her best not to be, and since Kevin had always insisted that his mother would be welcome in any home of his, the happy fantasy he’d been trying to build had never come to pass.

The house was nice, though.

We followed the hallway to the living room, a well-lit, airy space with a ceiling so high that I had sometimes suspected Evelyn had managed to train songbirds to do the dusting in the corners and light fixtures. These days, she probably just has Sam do it. Couches and comfortable chairs were scattered around the space, and the lack of too many shelves kept it from feeling claustrophobic, even as a few low bookshelves stuffed with popular novels and foraging guides made sure that no one was going to forget who lived here. Family photos covered the walls.

Several had been added since my last visit. One showed Aliceand Thomas sitting on the porch swing of their house in Buckley, grinning like fools with a banner on the wall behind them that said “IT’S A GIRL!” Sally was sandwiched between them, a resigned look on her face and a tailypo in her lap.

The others were less cheerful. They looked like they’d been taken at the recent funerals, and I had little doubt that they’d be moved to an office or parlor by the end of the year, replaced by fresh baby pictures and other, more optimistic images.

Kevin and Evelyn were sitting on one of the couches, clearly deep in some sort of serious discussion. For maybe the first time since he’d first brought her home, the sight of them together didn’t cause me to do a double take. Kevin looked so much like his father, and Evelyn, for all that she didn’t lookexactlylike Alice, was still a girl just like the girl who’d married dear old Dad.

It was mildly unsettling to see them together while Thomas was still missing. It would have been worse, if not for the fact that I’d never seen anything in their actual relationship to imply that Kevin had been trying to replace his mother. They fought and lived and loved like any couple, and they’d raised three reasonably well-adjusted children. Although I took part of the credit for that.

Evelyn was the one with a direct eyeline on the hallway door; she raised her head when she heard us enter, and froze, eyes going wide and suspiciously bright, like she was on the verge of tears. She raised one shaking hand to her mouth, and otherwise didn’t move.

Kevin stiffened, head coming up before he turned. Then he joined his wife in staring, both of them focused on me in a way that might have been gratifying if it hadn’t been silent and accompanied by tears. Evelyn’s were the first to fall, but Kevin’s, when they came, were copious and steady, running down his cheeks unhindered as both his hands were still resting on the couch between them.

“Hi,” I said, with a little wave. “Miss me?”

Kevin finally made a sound—a choked gargle that sounded like it couldn’t make up its mind between a laugh and a bark—and lunged to his feet before rushing over to sweep me into a hug. Or to try to, anyway. He definitely made the gesture, but when his arms closed, they passed right through me, leaving me unhugged.

“Er,” I said. “Sorry about that. I’m having a little trouble with the whole ‘solid, not-solid’ thing right now. I probably shouldn’t try to do the grocery shopping until we know what’s going on.”

“Mary,” said Evelyn. “It’s really you.”

“Mary Dunlavy, at your service,” I said.

“We thought you were dead,” said Kevin. “Again.”

“Can you be double-dead?” asked Evelyn.

“Absolutely,” I said. “Ghosts can be destroyed. It’s easier than we want people to think. I mean, it’s still hard, but there are a lot of methods that will do it if someone is determined enough. Most of them wouldn’t work on me when I worked for the crossroads, because they were a bigger, meaner boss than your average ghost hunter was expecting.”

“And now?” she asked, with clear anxiety in her expression.

“Now I don’t know.” I shrugged. “I’m technically a caretaker—a form of nanny ghost—and we know most of what those are capable of, but I’m a caretaker who’s answering directly to the anima mundi, and that could change things. It’s hard to say. I’m not really in a hurry to find out, though. Six months of nonexistence was enough for me.”

Kevin tried again to hug me. This time, I stayed solid as he wrapped his arms around my shoulders and pulled me against him, and I responded by turning to make the hug easier, patting his shoulder with one hand. He clung, shaking, and pressed his face against my neck.

“I know, buddy,” I said. “I’m sorry I was gone for so long. I didn’t mean to be.”

“Whathappened?” asked Evelyn.

“When the charges went off at Penton Hall, I was already exhausted from the effort of transporting the explosive devices, and I couldn’t shift myself out in time. I tried, really I tried, but it didn’t work.” I’d been crying blood by the time I picked up the last of the bombs—and no matter how much I wanted to call them “explosive devices” or other polite, bloodless phrases, they were bombs. They’d been designed to kill people, and that was what we’d used them to do. “One more thing to thank the crossroads for, I guess: they never bothered to tell me I was supposed to have limits, and so once I reached them, I didn’t know what to do.”

“So you were still there when the blast went off,” said Evelyn, sounding horrified.

“I thought she was, but everything was so chaotic and there were so many minds in play that I wasn’t fully certain,” said Sarah. “I’m sorry, Mary. I should have found a way to get you out of there.”

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