Page 33 of Installment Immortality

“He’s your cousin, and that means he’s my responsibility,” I said. “I have to make sure Arthur is all right, and that he’s not so sad that it’s hurting him. We can’t stay any longer, not with him so sad. When Elsie finishes her shower, we’ll leave for what we’re on our way to do, and I’ll come back when it’s all finished.”

“Promise?” whispered Charlotte.

“I promise,” I said. Isaac was still holding on to Shelby; he started crying again as he looked at me, probably picking up on how disappointed in him I was. I’m not a Price-Healy by birth, and I don’t have their resistance to cuckoo telepathy. It helps that all the cuckoos I spend time with actuallyaremembers of my family—they don’t need to nest-parasite their way into my memories. As a ghost, my thoughts are a little fuzzy and distant for cuckoo purposes, but not being partially immune to their influence makes me easier to read. And I can’t hide my disapproval.

I understood why Isaac had reacted so badly to the close sight of Arthur’s mind. That didn’t mean I wasn’t disappointed, or that I hadn’t been expecting better from him. Then again, I couldn’t see what he had seen. Maybe the inside of Arthur’s head was a genuine nightmare. The only adult cuckoo I could have reasonably asked was also the only person Icouldn’task.

Sarah would be able to tell me what Arthur looked like on the inside, but she would never voluntarily look.

I gave Charlotte one last, hopefully reassuring look and disappeared.

Eight

“We don’t get to choose our beginnings or our ends. All we get to decide on is what we do in between. And baby, I hope you shine.”

—Eloise Dunlavy

The driveway of a small home in Columbus, Ohio

IREAPPEARED ON THE EDGEof the lawn, where the shadow of the house would keep me from being too obvious. Not that I was particularly concerned: there were no ghost hunters in this area, and if the Covenant had been sniffing around again, Shelby would have said something. Most people, when they see someone appear out of thin air, assume there’s something wrong with their eyes before they jump to “ghosts are real.”

Sometimes human stubbornness works in my favor, is what I’m saying here. I looked around. My precautions had been for nothing, because there was no one watching me, only Arthur sitting miserably in the back seat of the car with his shoulders hunched and his head bowed. Even he didn’t seem to have seen me arrive. I trotted in his direction, testing the passenger-side door and finding it mercifully unlocked.

A locked door won’t keep me out, but a locked door frequently means the person on the other side is looking for privacy, and I try not to be that particular flavor of asshole when I have achoice in the matter. I opened the door and slid into the front seat, kneeling with my back to the windshield and my elbows resting on the back of the seat.

“Hey,” I said.

Arthur didn’t lift his head. I winced. This wasn’t great.

“Hey,” I tried again. This time he glanced up, just enough to meet my eyes, before looking back down again.

“Hey,” he agreed, in a monotone.

“You okay, buddy?”

“I’m not your buddy,” he said. “You barely know me. You remember babysitting this body, I guess, since some of the memories I’m made from tell me that you used to be in charge of me, but you don’t knowme.Don’t act like you do.”

“I’m sorry, Arthur. I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable. And I wasn’t trying to act like you’re the same person you used to be. But it’s hard, sometimes, not to act that way. You were built from memories of him, and as you said, I used to take care of the body you live in.”

Arthur turned his face away.

“You just want Artie back,” he said.

I paused. I didn’t want to tell him he was right, and I didn’t want to lie to him, either. But hewasright. Artie was the kid I had helped to raise, the boy I knew and understood, the man I had been so proud to watch growing up and growing into himself. He was the one I knew, and loved, and treasured, and even though it would have meant this man disappeared forever, I would have brought Artie home in an instant. Not just for me, either. He and Sarah spent so many years dancing around each other that losing him, and losing him due to Sarah, no less, felt less like a natural ending and more like a cruel cheat inflicted by an uncaring universe.

“Arthur…” I said.

“You can’t even lie about it, can you? You want him back, the same as everyone does, and you hate that I’m here.”

“I don’t,” I said, carefully. “Hate that you’re here, I mean. Everything changes. People come and go. I do worry sometimes that you being here means that Artie doesn’t get to move on—that because you’re using the same body, you’re also functionally using the same soul. If that’s the case, it’s not fair to either of you. I do want him back, but I’d be perfectly happy to have him back and keep you around at the same time, if that were possible. But what I want doesn’t matter. He’s not coming back. He was erased, and you’re here now, and we both need to be okay with that. Ilikeyou, Arthur. I like the ways you’re like Artie, and I like the ways you’re not like him, too. I like watching you figure out who you are.”

He turned back to me, expression utterly miserable. “It doesn’t really matter what I figure out. Pieces of me keep breaking off and dropping into the void, and once they’re gone, they’re gone forever. I know that sounds weird, but when something falls, it’s not like I forgot it. It’s just not there anymore. It’sgone.”

“I don’t understand.”

“When you try to think about your life, you know how you don’t remember every single little detail, but it feels like there’ssomethingin the spaces you don’t remember all the way? Like going for a long walk through a familiar neighborhood, and maybe you won’t see every little detail, but what you do see will be coherent enough to fill in the gaps? I don’t have that anymore. I just have emptiness.” He sighed, visibly frustrated. “No wonder that kid thought I was a monster. The inside of my head must look like a slaughterhouse.”

“That kid is your cousin Isaac,” I said.

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