Page 19

“No one here cares whether or not you’re dead. You’re family, and that’s more than good enough for us.”

—Enid Healy

Worcester, Massachusetts, the sidewalk outside a house being rented by the Covenant of St. George

A OI WRENCHED THEIR ELBOW OUT of my grasp as soon as we reappeared on the sidewalk, taking a step away and glaring at me with my own eyes.

“You have to stop doing that!” they said.

“Can you please take off my face?” I asked, scrubbing at my own version of it with one hand. “I’m tired and I’m upset and my charges are in danger, and I don’t like looking in a mirror all the time.”

Aoi blinked, and their facial features began melting back into the smooth expanse of nothing that seemed to be their default. “Sorry,” they said, voice no longer a blend of mine and their own. “Where are we?”

“This house is where the Covenant is holed up,” I said, concealing a shudder as I indicated the modest suburban home in front of us. Watching my own face melt was not a fun experience. “They’re apparently just about out of money after what happened to their main stronghold, so they don’t have a lot of backup. Beyond, apparently, the people we thought were on our side.”

The unfairness of Jane being dead was trying to rise up and overwhelm my concern about her children. She would have been absolutely overjoyed to have both a cryptid social issue to resolve and a traitor to take apart, one shrieking, miserable piece at a time. But Jane was gone, and I was going to save her kids. There was nothing else I could do.

The lights in the living room were on now, when they hadn’t been before. It was difficult to say whether that was a good thing. “The Covenant has four people, and they have my two kids,” I said. “Benedita was in there when I came to get you, along with several dozen jarred ghosts. I don’t know how much support they have that isn’t already in the building.”

“I’m a faceless ghost, ” said Aoi. “What the hell do you think I’m going to do against the Covenant of St. George and a bunch of ghosts in jars?”

“To be honest, I have no living clue, beyond the fact that the anima mundi says you can access more power than you normally could while those ghosts are cut off from the twilight,” I said. “I’m just the babysitter. This is way above my pay grade.” Oh, but I hoped. Linger in the twilight as long as I have, you get to see a lot of people achieve more than they think they’re capable of. “Now come on. Let’s haunt these motherfuckers.”

I strode toward the closed garage door, a small part of my hope shifting toward hoping I wasn’t about to bounce off of some kind of complicated ghost ward and find myself locked outside. But locking me out of the house wouldn’t have served the revenge they’d come here looking for. Maybe they hadn’t been expecting the ghost who leveled Penton Hall to come looking for them in return, and maybe they had been; either way, if they wanted to face me, they needed to first let me inside.

I reached the garage door and walked through rather than bouncing off, finding myself in the virtually empty garage. The van was still there. I assumed that was a good sign.

I still couldn’t feel Elsie or Arthur. They were just gone, excised from the world, the way Annie and the others had been when they went to another dimension. They could have died there—Artie did, in a technical but very real way—and I might never have known. Artie’s death, such as it was, never registered with the part of me that knows those things. He just left and sent a stranger back in his place, whatever that meant for his place in the family.

So this was all fairly terrifying, and didn’t get any less so as Aoi walked through the garage door behind me, still faceless, turning their head from side to side like they were looking at everything around us with the eyes they didn’t have.

“Okay, this is creepy,” they said.

“Not going to argue with you there. Don’t get too close to the van.”

“Why not?”

“There’s a Mesmer cage drawn across the inside. I was able to get out earlier because I’m virtually indistinguishable from the living when I want to be. If you’re not capable of becoming that level of material and solid, you could get stuck inside.”

“Huh.” They turned their head toward the van again, and I got the feeling from their posture that they were looking at it with deliberation. “Could your people be inside there, do you think?”

“It’s possible, but a Mesmer cage weak enough for me to walk out of it under my own power doesn’t feel like it would be enough to cut off the connection between a caretaker and their charges. Wherever they’re holding my kids, I expect it to be deeper in.” I gestured toward the door to the rest of the house. “This way.”

“Got it.”

“You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”

“Oh, now she tells me I’m free to go.” Aoi threw their hands up. “Wow, if I had just realized that sooner, I might not be here now.” They let their hands fall back to their sides. “Benedita is my friend. You have those, don’t you, caretaker?”

I nodded. “I do.”

“When I died, my face melted off my head, and I was terrified. She was the one who found me in a nightclub in Miami, haunting the bathrooms and terrifying the janitorial staff, and told me what I was now and how it was going to work moving forward. Without her, I’d still be there, thinking I was never going to be good for anything but scaring people ever again.”

“What was your…?”

“My unfinished business? Fucked if I know.” Aoi shrugged. “I was murdered, if that helps at all, but if every murdered person turned into a ghost, we’d be up to our armpits in the restless dead, and I just haven’t seen any evidence of that. I figure I’ll find out eventually, but until that happens, I’m happy to keep clubbing with Benedita, hang out with the kid, and try not to get put into a jar. The jar thing seems to really, really suck.”

“It does,” I said. “Well, I’m sorry you got killed, and I’m sorry your face melted, and I’m glad you want to help your friend, because I was not excited about the idea of doing this alone.”

“Somehow, didn’t get the feeling you would be.”

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.

“Those fuckers, ” 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 of a 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 if I could go to the anima mundi, there was no guarantee I could take Aoi with 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.”

“What she’s done?” demanded Benedita, uncovering her face and climbing unsteadily to her feet. “ She’ll burn for what she’s done? 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! What you did, though—there was no reason for what you did. All we ever were was loyal to you. All we ever did was try to 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.

“I was loyal. 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.

Howling, Benedita was sucked inside, and Chloe replaced the lid on the jar, screwing it tightly down before giving the whole thing an experimental shake. The items already lining the bottom of the jar clattered and rattled through the dense fog the jar now contained, which whirled frantically in response. For a moment, Benedita’s face pressed against the glass, drained of color and substance, now made of insubstantial gray mist. Then it was gone, and only the whirling fog remained.

“She was one of your own, ” I said, staring at Chloe. “She was Covenant. Doesn’t that matter to you people?”

“Timpani was one of our own too, but she chose your side over ours,” said Chloe. “She’s on the footage, too. We know she helped you set the charges. We know she helped to kill our mother. She’s going to pay for what she’s done. You’re all going to pay. You filthy little killers are going to be sorry you ever tangled with the Covenant of St. George.”

Babysitting small humans means having a lot of experience with people whose grasp of cause and effect is faulty at best. For a small child, them pushing a glass vase on the floor doesn’t always mean “I broke the vase.” Sometimes it means “the vase broke,” and removes them from the equation entirely. I stared at Chloe.

“We attacked Penton Hall because your people were attacking us! You came after us in New York, and you sent assassins after members of my family and you attacked an innocent carnival because you thought they might be harboring cryptids!”

“I was there,” said Chloe stiffly. “Those people weren’t innocent.”

“Any animal will bite if it’s provoked enough. Isn’t that what you’re trying to do? Bite the hand that hurt you? I’m sorry you lost your mother. Those two people you took tonight lost their mother too. Your brother shot her before we set the charges at Penton. She died protecting strangers, not seeking them out to do them harm. You’re shaming your own mother’s memory.”

“Don’t you talk about my mother,” spat Chloe.

“Or what? You’ve already caught Benedita. Your jar is full, and your brother doesn’t have one. I guess he could shoot me, but I’m already dead, and all he’ll do is hit the wall. I can’t exit your ghost trap, but while I’m inside it, I can still do my best to ruin your plans for me.”

“Sure you can,” said the man from the van, behind me. I turned. He grinned, taking the lid off his own mason jar. “But we can ruin your afterlife first.”

The pull from the open jar was like a vacuum cleaner, yanking me forward harder and harder. I whirled around and grabbed hold of Aoi’s hand, trying my best to hold on. She yelped. I held on harder.

My feet left the floor. I didn’t let go. She leaned back, grabbing the armchair with her free hand, holding us both in place.

The man from the van moved toward me, holding the jar out in front of him, smirking. Aoi’s grip on the chair began to slip, and her copy of my eyes widened, sheer terror flooding her expression.

I’m a caretaker. It’s what I do. And I can’t adopt everyone—my family has to be finite—but that doesn’t mean I want the people who don’t belong to me to suffer. I met Aoi’s eyes and nodded solemnly, and then I let her go.

The vacuum from the spirit jar grabbed me and jerked me backward, through the open mouth of the physical jar itself. I hit the bottom, hard enough to knock the breath I didn’t have out of me, and then the lid was slamming down, and the world narrowed to a field of endless gray, and everything was icy cold and burning at the same time, and I was trapped.