Everlost (Skinjacker 1)

“Or they found a better place to be,” suggested Nick.

“Either we stay here, or we get eaten by the McGill,” said Lief. “That’s why I’m staying here.”

“What if there’s another choice?” said Nick. “If we’re not alive, but we’re not quite dead, then maybe …” He pulled a coin out of his pocket— one of the few things that had come with him, along with those overly formal clothes he wore.

“Maybe we’re like coins standing on their edge?”

Allie considered this. “Meaning?”

“Meaning, we might be able to shake things up a little, and find a way to come up heads.”

“Or tails,” suggested Allie.

“What are you talking about?” said Lief.

“Life and death.” Nick flipped the coin, and slapped it down on the back of his palm, keeping it covered with his other hand, so none of them could see how it had landed. “Maybe—just maybe —we can find a way out of here. A way into the light at the end of the tunnel… or maybe even a path back to life.”

It seemed the trees themselves held the thought, sifting it through their boughs, giving it resonance.

“Could that be possible?” Allie asked, and looked to Lief.

“I don’t know,” he told them.

“So the question is,” said Nick, “where do we go to find out?”

“There’s only one place I want to go,” said Allie. “Home.”

Nick instinctively sensed that going home wouldn’t be a good idea—but just like Allie, he wanted to go home. He had to find out if his family had survived, or if they “got where they were going.” They were in Upstate New York, though; it was far from home.

“I’m from Baltimore,” Nick said. “How about you?”

“New Jersey,” Allie said. “The southern tip.”

“Okay. Then we head south from here, and keep an eye out for others who can help us. Someone has got to know how to get out of this place…one way, or another.”

Nick put his coin away, and they all began to talk about life, death, and a way out of this place in-between. None of them had noticed on which side the coin had landed.

Allie had always been a goal-oriented girl. It was both her strength and her weakness. She had a drive to completion that always got things done, but it also made her inflexible, and stubborn. Even though she adamantly denied being stubborn, she knew deep down it was true.

The coin-on-its-edge business might have been fine for Nick, but Allie was not at ease with all this metaphysical talk. Going home, however—that was a goal she could buy into. Whether she was dead or half-dead, whether she was spirit or wraith, didn’t matter. It was too unpleasant to think about. Better to put on the blinders, and keep her thoughts fully focused on the house where she had spent her life. She would go back there. And once she was there, all things would sort themselves out. She had to believe that, or she would lose her mind.

Lief had his own unique way of seeing things, too — and his vision began and ended with the forest. He wouldn’t be going with them, because for Lief, being alone in his safe haven was better than having company in the big bad world of the living.

As for the snowshoes, they were Nick’s idea, although Allie was the one who figured out how to make them, and Lief was the one with the practical know-how to actually do it with twigs and strips of bark. Allie thought they looked kind of goofy, but after all it wasn’t like they’d be posing for a fashion show any time soon.

“What’s the point,” Lief had said when Nick first mentioned the idea of snowshoes. “It’s not going to snow for months, and we move right through snow anyway.”

“They’re not for snow,” Nick had told him. “It’s so we can walk on living-world roads without sinking in. We’ll be able to move faster if we don’t have to pluck our feet out of the asphalt after every step.”

“So then they’re road-shoes, not snowshoes,” Lief said, then went about tying twigs together with strips of bark. When he had finished the shoes, he handed them to Nick and Allie. “Aren’t you afraid at all?” he asked. “Aren’t you afraid of what’s out there? All the things you couldn’t see when you were alive? Evil spirits? Monsters? I’ve been waiting forever for you to come. I prayed for you, did you know that? God hears our prayers here. Maybe even better than before, because we’re closer to him here.” Lief looked at them with big, mournful eyes.

“Please don’t go.”

It tugged at Allie’s heart, and brought a tear to her eyes, but she couldn’t let her emotions influence this decision. She had to remind herself that Lief wasn’t really a little kid. He was an Afterlight who was more than a hundred years old.

He had done fine in his forest alone, and there was no reason to think he wouldn’t be fine once they left.

“I’m sorry,” Allie told him. “But we can’t stay. Maybe once we learn more, we’ll come back for you.”