Page 37 of Installment Immortality

“I’m going to show you where tofindthe Covenant, which could take you weeks or more without me, and I’m going to make sure you know where to start your search once you get there.”

Apple produced a folded roadmap, the sort of thing I recognized from the decades I’d moved through before the cellphone came along, back when it had been possible to spend a week traveling without anyone knowing where you were or how to find you. Elsie gave it a curious, confused look but didn’t reach for it as Apple slid it across the table to me.

I picked it up. It had been folded over and over again until it was the size of a deck of cards. I picked at one corner, folding it upward to reveal a small slice of roads and boundary lines. Apple leaned across the table, putting her hand over mine.

“Don’t,” she said. “As long as you don’t open it, you’re still looking at the potential of the trip, and nothing’s set in stone. When you unfold it, it will be accurate to where the Covenant can be found. They can move after that, and you won’t know.”

I blinked. “So it’s an unfinished map?”

“No, it’s finished. It’s just changing until someone looks at it and fixes it as it is.”

That was the sort of illogical logic the routewitches specialized in. I tucked the map into my pocket. “Thank you,” I said.

“Don’t thank me yet. I have an additional task for you.”

Why was I not surprised to hear that? I frowned, leaning back in my seat, and gestured for her to continue. Apple took a deep breath.

“According to the Ocean Lady, the anima mundi asked you to find and stop the Covenant operatives who are behind all the current trouble.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Well, I want that too. None of us wants a Covenant team wandering around the area, making trouble, and even if you could make them stop without hurting them, they’d still be a problem. I want them gone, you want them gone, we’re going to get rid of them. Bing, bam, boom. But once that’s done—once they aren’t a threat anymore—I need you to deal with the ghosts they’ve captured.”

“The ones they’ve turned into weapons.”

“Yes.” Apple looked at me solemnly, not blinking, and something about the way she held herself was so much older than shelooked that it made me want to disappear and run. I guess it takes one eternal teenager to be terrified of another. She looked like she was just about my age. She was still older and more terrifying than I was, and I wanted to grab my kids and get the hell away from her as quickly as I possibly could. “The ones they’ve turned into weapons.”

“I don’t know how to do that.”

“I don’t think anybody does.” She shrugged. “You’ll figure it out. Or you won’t. You’re not one of mine, so it doesn’t entirely matter to me one way or the other how this goes down, as long as those ghosts aren’t a threat by the end of it.”

I paused for a moment and just stared at her, then shifted my attention over to Arthur and Elsie. To my surprise and satisfaction, they were also staring at her, Arthur with a French fry lifted halfway to his mouth, Elsie with her hands resting against the edge of the table. Both of them looked utterly stunned. Elsie turned to me.

“Do we have to sit here and listen to this?”

“Nope,” I said, and slid out of the booth, the hard outline of the folded map pressing against my hip. I turned back to Apple. “Thank you for your help, even if it’s coming only because you don’t see any other choice. I have never been a friend to the Ocean Lady, and I know that means I’ve never been a friend to you, but I still appreciate it. And because I appreciate it, I’m going to give you a warning.”

“Give me a warning?” she asked, sounding politely amused.

“Yes. If any harm comes to my kids because of what you’ve asked me to do, what you’re sending us off to do without any backup, without any support, if they suffer so much as a broken fingernail, it’s going to be you versus me. The anima mundi versus the Ocean Lady, avatar against avatar, and you’ve been a queen for a long time, Apple. You’ve been comfortable and cosseted andcared for, while I was doing the bidding of the nastiest eldritch force this world has ever known. The twilight taught you to be merciful. The crossroads taught me to cheat, to lie, and to never surrender an advantage. So that’s the warning. If they suffer because you don’t want to put yourself out, I will come for you, Apple Tanaka of the Ocean Lady, and I willendyou.”

For just a moment, I saw fear flash in her eyes. Then her expression clamped down, turning cold and regal. The face of a queen. “So noted,” she said, and snapped her fingers.

She didn’t disappear so much as she had abruptly never been there in the first place. Neither had the diner. I was standing in the middle of one of those cracked-concrete-and-weeds empty lots that crop up alongside major highways, flowering when fortunes are low and being replaced by new construction and money-makers when fortunes are high. The car wasn’t very far away, and beyond it I could see the highway itself, black and raw and gleaming with broken glass and glints of light off passing cars.

Elsie, who had been halfway to her feet when the diner disappeared, straightened. Arthur had still been seated, and he yelped as his butt hit the glass-speckled concrete. I glanced over at him.

“You okay, buddy?”

“Yeah,” he said, pushing himself carefully to his feet. He rubbed his rump with one hand, checking it carefully when he was done, and looked relieved when his fingers came away bloodless. “Are all your friends like that?”

“Okay, first, Apple’s not really my friend. She’s more like a business acquaintance. Second, yeah, pretty much. The crossroads really weren’t into letting me go out and meet people. I never made more than a handful of friends.”

Elsie blinked at me. “What about Grandpa Thomas? You say he’s your friend.”

“He was never one of my charges,” I said. “I met him when hemoved to Buckley. That was when I was still taking care of your grandmother—not that I’ve really ever stopped all the way. Anyway, she liked him, and so she introduced us.”

“Am I allowed to introduce you to my friends?” asked Arthur.

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