The porch light is off, and for a minute I think maybe they thought I wasn’t coming home tonight. But then I hear the soft plucked notes of Inay’s guitar. She’s sitting on the porch swing in the near-dark. Between the living room window and the streetlamp, there’s just enough light to make out her face and the half-empty whiskey bottle beside her.

“I always wanted a porch swing, growing up,” she says, not looking up from the guitar. “A house with a yard and a porch swing and a wood fence, not chain-link.” She shifts on the swing, making room even though there’s plenty of space. I take it as an invitation. The swing creaks a little under our combined weight, but it always does that. It’s plenty strong.

“Where’s Mom?” I ask.

“Down at Holly’s. She needed an evening out.” Inay sets the guitar aside and reaches for the whiskey. It’s the good stuff, the stuff she usually saves for when Uncle Jack comes over. She raises the bottle to her lips, hesitates, and sticks her other hand inside her jacket, bringing a glass out from nowhere, from hammerspace. She blows into the glass, like it’s dusty or something, wipes off a smudge with her shirttail. Splashes about an inch of whiskey into it. Then she hands it to me.

Surprised, I take it.

“Go on,” she says. “It’s not gonna kill you, is it?”

“No. No, I guess it won’t.”

She doesn’t say anything. She’s already guessed where I was today. What I was doing. That makes it easier, actually. I don’t want to tell her that I died today, even if it didn’t stick. Immortal. I take a sip of whiskey and try not to cough at the way it burns.

We sit there in companionable silence for a while, me with my glass and Inay with the bottle, rocking back and forth. It’s one of the things I love about my Inay: we don’t have to talk to understand each other. In fact, it’s when we talk that we understand each other the least.

“I got a favor to ask,” she says abruptly. Her voice is… not slurred, exactly, but imprecise.

She let herself get drunk, I think. Another surprise.

“Someday, when I’m gone.” She raises the bottle, drinks. Her face is turned into the shadows now, and I can’t see what she’s thinking. “When I’m gone,” she repeats, “and your Mom’s gone, and your Aunt Kyna and Seamus and… when we’re all gone, promise me you’ll look after Uncle Jack. Make sure he doesn’t do anything… stupid.” She laughs, and lifts the bottle again in a kind of salute. “Stupid’s my gig. Don’t let him…” She doesn’t finish.

I look into my glass, into the thin film of whiskey covering the bottom. “He’s got Katie,” I offer. “And Angus. He’ll be all right.”

She’s already shaking her head. “’S not enough,” she says. “He promised me he’d take care of you, before you—“ She gestures with the bottle. “But you’ve got Kate now, and Bronagh. And they’ve got you. He’ll have no one. I dunno what he’ll do, without Kyna.”

“All right,” I say slowly. I’ve made so many promises today. What’s another? “I’ll keep an eye on him. But really, I dunno what I can do that they can’t.”

Inay relaxes. Considers the bottle and sets it down. Picks up the guitar instead. “I know how I’d feel, your Mom goes first.” Her voice is steadier now, way steadier than I’d expect, considering. “But I got anchors. He needs anchors, Jack does. All immortals do.” She nods, like something’s been decided, and starts fiddling with the tuning pegs.

“Go on up to bed,” she says, like I’m twelve again. Like I’m still her baby girl, and she didn’t just give me two fingers of the good whiskey.

“Okay.” I drain the last sip from my glass and stand up. My head’s a little spinny, and it’s only partly the booze. “Don’t stay up too late.” It’s the kind of thing she’d say to me. If I were twelve.

“Just till your mom gets home.” She starts to play. “Turn the porch light on?”

“Sure.” I take the glass with me. No point in sticking it back into hammerspace all sticky. “‘Night, Inay.”

She nods, but she’s paying more attention to the guitar than to me.

Up in my room, I crack the window open a little, just to hear her sing.

---