Page 35 of Backpacking through Bedlam

“That’s good,” said Rose. “Have you spoken to anyone human since you got back? Obviously you’ve been in touch with Cynthia, or she wouldn’t be feeding you, but have you called your kids?”

“No,” I admitted. “I wanted to give us a few hours to catch our breath before we started causing problems again.”

To my surprise, Rose nodded, expression implying that this was the smartest answer I could have given. “That’s good too,” she said. “Things have been hectic for the living, what with the war and all, but—”

“Hold on,” interjected Thomas. “The war?”

Rose blinked at him. “Of course,” she said. “You wouldn’t have heard. The Covenant has formally declared war on your family. They’re focusing on the coasts right now, looking for weaknesses, but they’ll be pushing inland soon, and sending more strike teams.”

I dropped the rib I’d been idly gnawing on. It landed in my baked beans, splattering them all over Rose’s denim-clad leg. She looked at the mess, raising her eyebrows.

“Well, now, that’s going to take forever to clean up,” she said, mildly. “Oh, wait, no, it’s not, because as soon as I leave here, I’m going to turn insubstantial and it’s going to fall right through pretty phantom me. You telling me you didn’t know we were at war either?”

I shook my head. “You know I’ve been otherwise occupied.”

“Please. You were there when Very-very, Quite Contrary, decided to go on national television and tell the Covenant to come at me, bro. You were in the building. You can’t honestly be surprised that they’ve decided to come at her.” Rose looked at me for a moment, then frowned. “Or maybe you can be. Maybe you’ve been out of the normal flow of things for so long that you’ve forgotten how cause and effect work.” She ducked her head, redirecting her attention to her plate, and to the process of shoveling as much of the food into her mouth as possible before we kicked her out.

“War,” I said, softly, and looked across Rose and Sally to Thomas, who was watching with quiet resignation. The Covenant had been sniffing around the edges of the continent when I left on my last trip, but it hadn’t been anywhere near actual war. “I swear we haven’t been at war the whole time you were gone,” I said. “Things have been pretty quiet here. I mean, there have been incidents—”

“Like the time the Covenant shot up your windows,” said Rose casually.

I shot her a venomous glare. “Yes, like that.”

“Excuse me?” said Thomas. “The Covenant did what to your what?”

Rose cackled. “Oh, Alice. You went and got the boy back, but you didn’t tell the boy what kind of naughtiness you’d been up to in the interim. You’re going to have a lot of explaining to do before you head off to do something stupid and heroic.”

“Is it always like this?” asked Sally plaintively.

“No, sometimes it gets weird,” said Rose.

The doorbell rang. I turned and glared at it. I was getting real tired of interruptions.

No one else was moving, so I sighed and said, “I’ll get it,” as I set my plate aside and pushed myself off the couch. Cynthia was waiting on the porch, a covered casserole dish in her hands. She looked past me into the house, then back to my face.

“House properly haunted?” she asked.

I stepped aside so she could enter. “Not the ghost I expected to start with, but the one I got. That dessert?”

“Yup. Groceries will be here in the morning.” She moved past me, smiling at the couch—but only the one end of it, I noted. She still wasn’t allowing her eyes to settle on Thomas. “Hey, Rose. Long time no irritate.”

“Don’t worry, I’m in town now, I can make up for it,” said Rose, and laughed. “Good beans.”

“Thanks.” Cynthia turned as I was closing the door, passing the cobbler into my hands. “There’s no ice cream. I’d apologize, but naughty cryptozoologists barely even deserve any dessert, much less ice cream. Can you get dishes?”

“They’re in the kitchen.” The cobbler smelled heavenly. For someone who didn’t eat much solid food, Cynthia was amazingly skilled at the sort of hearty, filling Americana that kept diners and roadside dives like hers in business. Even more impressive, most of her customers didn’t eat that sort of thing: she’d learned specifically for her rare human patrons, and to be able to convince the county health board that she was running a perfectly ordinary, if somewhat remote, dive bar.

I went to get plates and utensils. By the time I returned, Cynthia was settled in the armchair I’d been fighting the tailypo for all afternoon, her coat folded over her lap and her tail wrapped around her ankle. Sally was doing a remarkable job of trying not to stare. Not that she was going to succeed. Sure, we all agreed that Rose was a ghost, but she hadn’t done anything ghostly yet. Cynthia was the first visibly inhuman intelligent being Sally had encountered on Earth. It was understandable for her to be a little overwhelmed.

“Rose tells me she was getting you up to speed on recent events,” said Cynthia, without preamble. “You going to do your duty?”

I set the plates, silverware, and cobbler down on the coffee table, frowning at her. “What duty is that?”

“Get rid of the Covenant.”

I laughed. “I don’t know what kind of superpowers you think I have, but Thomas is the sorcerer here, not me,” I said. “There aren’t enough knives in the world to get rid of the Covenant. I should know. I’ve tried.”

“We’re not asking you to wipe them out, pleasant an outcome as that would be,” said Rose, scooping cobbler onto her plate. “Just get them out of North America, or at least away from the East Coast. They’ve been harassing the routewitches. The Ocean Lady doesn’t like it when things harass the routewitches.”