Page 76 of Installment Immortality

Together we walked through the door into the house proper, and two things happened at the same time: my vague awareness of Elsie and Arthur as living creatures whose welfare was my responsibility snapped back into place like it had never been disrupted, and the runes that had been painted on the doorframe in dull silver ink flared to life, completing the ghost trap someone had been industriously building. I turned to stare at them in open-mouthed betrayal. Half of them looked like they’d been there for weeks, waiting for the moment when they would be put to use and the whole house would be turned into the slightly more vicious equivalent of a Mesmer cage. The other half were clearly fresh, the paint still gleaming and wet.

“Thosefuckers,” I said.

“Mary?” Aoi moved closer to me.

“They knew the ghosts would follow them home eventually. I found Heitor in the living room, and he said that if I brought him his sister, this would all be over. So I went to convince Benedita to come. I don’t know whether he meant it when he said he wanted to quit, or whether that was all part of the trap, but I believed him either way. I thought I could end this. When I brought her here, there was no ghost trap. They must have closed the loop to keep her contained.”

I fucked up. I resisted the urge to put my hands over my face and give myself a moment of regret. Instead, I flexed the mental muscle that would allow me to drop down into the twilight, and found the passage was blocked. The ghost trap we’d wandered into might not be the standard design, but it was solid, and it was designed to make sure that anything bodiless that stepped over the threshold wasn’t going to be stepping out again.

Mesmer cages fell out of favor in part because any sufficiently incarnate ghost can beat them with a Sharpie. I thought about going to the kitchen and digging through the drawers in search of a get-out-of-jail-free marker, but the thought was too repulsive to pursue. It made my gut twist in a very visceral, living way, like I was going to vomit ectoplasm all over the floor. I pushed the idea aside, and the cramping sensation went with it. They’d constructed a ghost trap designed to preserve itself by punishing ghosts who even thought about destroying it.

Great. I love a good advancement in fucking with the dead technology. This was not good.

“Can I borrow your face again, please?” asked Aoi, a little desperately. “I feel naked without one, and I don’t like feeling naked in this house. It’s like the opposite of haunted in here. It’s uncomfortable.”

“Go for it,” I said, and started down the hall. I peeked into the bedrooms as I passed them, and while I could still move through the walls, there were no people there to find. That wasn’t much ofa surprise. Arthur and Elsie were somewhere inside the cage with us, and it didn’t extend to cover the garage: that was all I knew, and that was going to have to be enough.

The anima mundi wasn’t in the twilight. They were in their own place, part of the afterlife but pinched off somehow, forming a unique realm. They were also technically divine. I wondered if I could pass through the cage to get to them, and dismissed the idea. Even ifIcould go to the anima mundi, there was no guarantee I could takeAoiwith me, or that I would be able to get back here again. I couldn’t leave my kids. Not when they were in Covenant custody and possibly still drugged.

“I found Heitor and one of the other agents in the front room before,” I said. “That’s where we go.”

Aoi, who now looked like my black-haired twin, nodded and kept following me, staying close. I was grateful for the company, however unnerving their appearance might be. I didn’t want to be doing this alone.

I felt the next layer of the ghost trap slam shut as we stepped out of the hall and into the front room, passing another set of freshly painted silver runes on the doorframe. I barely paid it any attention.

Heitor was back in the armchair where he’d been initially, head lolling and eyes glassy, throat an open ruin of sliced flesh and severed arteries. The chair was drenched with his blood, as was the front of his shirt. He must have bled out in seconds, too quickly to realize what was happening or pull any tricks of his own. Benedita was on her knees next to the body, hands over her face, weeping hysterically.

There was no sign of his ghost. There never is, with umbramancers. When they die, they’re gone, and that’s the end.

Chloe and Nathaniel were at the end of the room in front of the window. Chloe was holding a mason jar. The man from the van was nowhere to be seen.

“You,” said Nathaniel, pure venom in his tone. I looked at him, unsurprised to see the loathing in his voice reflected in his eyes. He hated me. Truly and completely hated me, as I had hated nothing in my life outside of the crossroads.

“Me,” I said, agreeably enough. I glanced to Aoi. “Might want to go and borrow Benedita’s face while you have the chance. These people don’t like me much.” I didn’t wait to see what they were going to do before I returned my attention to Nathaniel. “Elsie and Arthur don’t have anything to do with this. Let them go.”

“On the contrary, they’re the proof of how far their degenerate family has fallen,” he said with a sneer. “My brother thinks to secure his legacy by bringing the youngest Price daughter back into the fold of righteousness, but we have two of her bloodline who bred with monsters. There is no coming back for them. Leonard would found his dynasty on a sister to beasts.”

“Okay, wow, wish Antimony were here to have heard you say all that, because I would genuinely enjoy watching her remove your lower jaw as a souvenir of that time she kicked your ass, but she’s not, so fuck you, on behalf of the entire Price family,” I said, sharply. I looked to Chloe. “You believe this shit?”

“I believe you’re a demon summoned up from hell by the forces of darkness,” spat Chloe. “You’ll burn in hell for all eternity for what you’ve done.”

“Whatshe’sdone?” demanded Benedita, uncovering her face and climbing unsteadily to her feet. “She’llburn for whatshe’sdone? Find a mirror, bitch, because there’s blood on your hands, and if there’s a hell, it’s waiting to welcome you home!”

“Benedita, maybe catch a bubble before you antagonize the lady with the ghost trap,” I said, but she wasn’t listening. She stalked toward the Cunninghams, stiff-legged and furious.

“Whatever Mary did, she did to save the family you won’t just leave alone! Whatyoudid, though—there was no reason for whatyoudid. All we ever were was loyal to you. All we ever did was tryto serve and uphold the ideals of the Covenant of St George. But Heitor wasn’t willing to choose you over me, and so you killed him, for what? For the satisfaction of wiping his blood off your hands? You’re murderers and monsters and worse than any of the things you hunt.”

“You said you were loyal and then you rose from the grave as an abomination,” said Nathaniel.

“Iwasloyal. I didn’t know any better,” said Benedita. “I served you well, and I didn’t choose to rise when I died. My brother—”

“Was a monster, yes, we knew that,” said Chloe dismissively. “He thought he hid it so well, but we’ve known for years. That’s why we called him when we decided it was time to bring the fight to North America. We knew he would answer, and we knew his presence would summon the dead, like luring cats with dead fish.”

“You bitch,” said Benedita, sounding almost awed.

“Maybe, but at least I have a pulse,” said Chloe.

Benedita lunged for her, moving with the speed of someone who’d been training for years for exactly this sort of moment. I recognized the way she braced her legs and jumped; it was the way Verity did the same thing, exploiting the strength of her well-developed lower body to accomplish her goals. She jumped, and Chloe calmly brought her mason jar around, removing the lid as she did.

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