Page 93 of Installment Immortality

“Then he’s yours.”

Jonah brightened. “Really?”

“Really. He’s been waiting here for you to come and get him.” Maybe the ever-lasters would want dogs too, once they knew that dogs were an option. Maybe we could fill their afterlife with wagging tails and understanding eyes, and death would be a little kinder. Because it lasts a long, long time, but the longer I go on, the more I think that love lasts even longer.

I offered Jonah my hand. “Ready to go?”

He nodded, burying the fingers of one hand in the ruff at the back of Tank’s neck even as he took my hand with the other. I smiled down at him, then raised my eyes to the wall in front of us.

“Let’s go home,” I said, thinking of a better future, and we were gone.

Read on for a brand-new InCryptid novella by Seanan McGuire

MOURNER’S WALTZ

Copyright © 2025 by Seanan McGuire

Mourner’s Waltz

“I never thought I’d have a family outside of the Covenant. I never thought I’d done enough to earn such a gift.”

—Dominic Price-De Luca

A small, rent-controlled apartment in Manhattan, New York

Trying to put together a crib without being seriously injured—or seriously injuring someone else

“IDON’T REMEMBER THIS BEINGsohardthe last time I did it,” I complained, letting the leg I’d been struggling to attach fall back into the pile of pieces that would, if put together in the correct order, form a safe and comfortable crib for the baby I was almost finished gestating. Putting a hand on my protruding stomach, I looked down and addressed it, keeping my tone as mild as I could. Kitty insisted the baby could already pick up on my moods.

“I’m glad I don’t have any manual control over assemblingyou,kiddo, or you’d come out with three legs and a handful of missing screws,” I said.

As if in response, the baby kicked my midsection. I winced, then chuckled, trying to heave my unwieldy self up from the floor.

The feeling of something moving aroundinsideme was never going to be something I was completely comfortable with, no matter what the women in my birthing class said. I knew toomuch about the things thatcouldmove around inside the human body, and I’d been studying them for a lot longer than I’d been pregnant. My first thought when a baby started kicking wasn’t “Oh, how sweet”; it was “How long do I have before this thing chews its way out of me?”

Not the most maternal way of thinking. But I’d done all right so far, and we were nearly done with this part of our relationship. Soon enough, I’d be able to evict my tenant and gain a roommate.

But first, I had to put together this damn crib. I glared at it as I got my feet under me and braced myself against the bookshelf, making sure I wasn’t going to fall. This was the same brand as the crib we’d used for Livvy, and that one had gone together fast and easy.

Fast and easy, and with Dominic holding the instructions.

The thought made tears sting the corners of my eyes. It was an incredibly fast response, grief and hormones combining to flood my system with salt water every time I even paused to think about my husband. Which, since I knew I wasn’t an immaculate conception, was pretty much every time I was forced to contend with the reality of my condition.

I got the bulk of my torso balanced correctly above my rump and knees, and pushed away from the bookshelf, taking my first clumsy steps away from the room that would belong to the baby—the baby, and eventually the baby and Livvy, when I was finally ready to bring her home from my parents. The ongoing absence of my daughter hurt in a different way than missing Dominic did—no less potent, but not precisely the same. I knew she was safe where she was, with people who cared for her and had the resources to keep her fed and happy. Whereas I still had times when I’d just go blank and wake up somewhere else in the apartment, having changed rooms while divorced from the flow of time. Once, I’d started a grease fire on the stove without even realizing that I’d started to cook something.

Grief is a nasty predator, and the things it takes away are sometimes worse than dying. I was learning to work around the holes in my memory and my day, and I took my vitamins and ate enough to be sure that I wasn’t doing my little passenger any harm. Handling that and taking care of an active little girl at the same time just wouldn’t have been possible. There was nothing wrong with admitting my limits.

There wasn’t.

I shuffled down the hall toward the front of the apartment. A cup of decaf coffee would help to settle my nerves, even as it upset my stomach. But that’s what Pepto-Bismol is for, right?

Pregnancy is a magic opportunity to spend nine months voluntarily living in a horror movie that everyone tells you to treasure and enjoy more than you’ve ever enjoyed anything else in your life.

I reached the kitchen and pulled down the box of coffee pods I’d scavenged from various offices around the city. Working with—technically for—dragons teaches you a lot about thrift. The dragons respected anything that saved money, and since “walking instead of calling for a ride” was no longer quite as easy an option for me as it had been eight months ago, I was resorting to coffee theft.

Whatever. It wasn’t like the high-powered executives whose offices I hit drank the decaf anyway, and I knew for a fact that the unused pods were thrown out at the end of a long day of meetings.

As I was getting the machine ready, a small head poked out of a hole in the wall behind the toaster, quickly followed by the rest of a compact, brown-furred body. The mouse now crouching on the counter in front of me was wearing a necklace of beads harvested from one of my dance costumes. I had little doubt that the beads had come loose on their own, victims of normal wear and tear, or that the mice had since identified and repaired theoriginal damage. Cinderella had it right: if you want true wardrobe management, get yourself a bunch of talking mice.

---