Page 59 of Installment Immortality

“Youdidn’t,” said Annie, suddenly grinning.

“Hey, it was an excuse that worked whenyouwere a teenager, and I never had the opportunity to get up to that much mischief,” I said. “It worked. It got me into his van, which is where I saw all the ghosts in jars. They’re not in good shape, Annie. Some of them are too far gone to ever be themselves again.”

She swallowed hard, smile fading as she nodded.

“The fourth man is Brazilian, and I don’t know whether he’s a recruit of convenience or a longtime member who got unlucky; I met his sister before I met him, and she’s a midnight beauty. Whether he believes in this hunt or not, he’s in it to find his sister.”

“I guess you’ll know where his loyalties lie when it comes time to put her in a jar,” said Annie, harshly. “Are you going back?”

“I have to. The ghosts need me, and so do your cousins.” I thought of Elsie and Arthur. It was late in Massachusetts, lateenough that they were probably done with dinner and snug in their rooms, either sleeping or waiting for me to come back and report on my evening. Either way, I needed to get back to them. “Thanks, Annie. This is really helpful.”

“Well, it’s mutual, because it helps me to know where you are,” she said. “Knock next time, okay?”

“If I have the time, I will,” I promised, and disappeared, throwing myself back across the continent to where my charges were hopefully still waiting for me.

Fourteen

“I try not to mess with the divine when I can help it. I’m the ghost of a high school student from Michigan. The divinities people like me have access to are the ghosts ofgods.”

—Rose Marshall

Worcester, Massachusetts, in the hallway of a cryptid boardinghouse

REMEMBERING HOW DISTRESSEDANNIE HADbeen by my sudden appearance, I tilted my return toward the hallway of Phee’s boardinghouse, appearing outside the room assigned to Arthur. I looked around to be sure I hadn’t just scared the life out of a boarder, then leaned to the side and looked at the bottom of the door. A thin line of light greeted me there: Arthur was still awake, or had fallen asleep with the lights on. I raised my hand and knocked lightly.

A few seconds later, Arthur called, almost timidly, “Come… in?”

I walked through the door.

Arthur’s suitcase was open on the bed, still packed, and his backpack was open on the floor next to the chair where he was seated, body half-turned toward the desk where he’d set up his laptop. Nosiness is a hard habit to break when it comes to the people in my care: I took a quick look at the screen before he could catchon and close the lid, and blinked at the sight of a familiar forum page. Cryptid teens need peers as much as human ones, and some of them get really good at network security, really early on. They have their own secure websites and forums, and if they’re a little more early 2000s internet than the modern stuff, well, I don’t hear any of them complaining.

I wasn’t as subtle as I thought I was. Arthur saw me looking and sighed, cringing a little as he turned back toward the laptop.

“I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t help myself,” he said.

I moved closer, taking his position and failure to shut the lid as a tacit invitation. The user name at the top of the screen was an unfamiliar one, but the thread he had open had been started by a user named “MidwichGirl.” I frowned, giving him a hard, sidelong look.

“Are youstalkingSarah?” I asked.

“I don’t think I am,” he said. “I know her user name because she gave it to me, and this forum doesn’t require disclosure of real name, age, or species. If she thinks I’m a bogeyman from Iowa, that’s her business.”

“Honey, you know that’s not the way.”

“Do I?” he asked, with a sudden spike of swift anger that wasn’t Artie, wasn’t Artie at all. That boy had always been sweet and steady, trying his best, never losing control when he could help it, even a little. Artie had been my helper on so many occasions, the child it was easiest to buy off with gold stars and extra peanut butter cookies. This anger, though: I knew this anger. I recognized it. It belonged to his mother, who never stoppedwanting,not even when she fell. It belonged to his sister, who wouldn’t thank me for calling her the best parts of Jane. It belonged to so much of his family, but it had never been his, and it hurt, hearing it from his lips, even if I knew someone else was speaking.

He wasn’t done. “I don’t think Iknowanything, except how much I miss her. She took herself away because she decided Icouldn’t make my own choices, and now I’m trying to hold on, but I have those blank places crumbling all through my mind, and if I want to spend some of the time I still have keeping track of the woman I was made to love, I think that’s allowed.”

“Would Sarah agree?”

He didn’t answer. Just stuck his chin out at me and glowered, waiting for me to offer a response.

“How was dinner?”

“Good, except that it was all tomato-based, and that made me think of Sarah, and that’s why I’m on the forums again. I keep promising myself I won’t go back, because you’re right—it’s a little creepy that I know who she is and what she’s doing when she doesn’t know it’s me. But I keep logging in, every time I can’t stop thinking about her.”

“I’m sorry.” I meant it, too. Arthur didn’t deserve any of the things that were happening to him.

“Yeah, well. Watching Elsie flirt with that swamp-beastie lady the whole time didn’t help. She makes fun ofmefor getting tongue-tied, and I swear she could barely talk for half the meal.”

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