Everlost (Skinjacker 1)

“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” Mary knew she was screaming, but she didn’t care. How dare he! How dare he do this to her!

“I know exactly what I’ve done,” said Nick with all the calm in his voice that Mary had lost. “I let them go to where they should have gone in the first place.”

“How dare you presume to know where they should have gone. They were here, which means this is where they were meant to be!”

“I don’t believe that!”

“Who cares what you believe!” It was as if she was looking at a different boy.

She had taken him into her confidence—she had trusted him. They were going to be a team, benevolently leading the Afterlights of Everlost forever and ever. This wasn’t supposed to happen!

Then Nick’s expression changed, and for the first time his calm took a turn toward anger, and accusation.

“How long have you known?” Nick demanded.

Mary refused to answer him.

“Did you know about the coins from the beginning? How long have you been robbing them from the children who come to you for help?”

She found she couldn’t face the accusation, and couldn’t meet his eye. “Not from the beginning,” she grumbled. “And I’m not a thief—they throw their coins into the fountain by choice. They can take them out any time they want—but no one does—and do you know why? Because they don’t want to.”

“No! They don’t take back their coins because it’s your fountain, and they wouldn’t dream of going against Miss Mary. But if they knew the truth about what those coins did—what they were really for— they’d take them in a second!”

“My children are happy!” insisted Mary.

“They’re lost! And you’re no better than your brother!”

Before Mary even knew what she was doing, she brought back her hand and slapped him across the face with the full force of her fury. For a moment she wanted to take it back, and tell him that she was sorry, but then she realized she wasn’t sorry at all. She wanted to slap him again and again and again until she slapped some sense into him. What had she done to deserve this treachery? She had cared about him—more than that, she had loved him. She loved him still, and now she hated the fact that she loved him.

Nick recovered from the slap, then picked up the bucket and tilted it toward her. “Strange,” he said, “but there were exactly enough coins in there for every Afterlight.”

“So what!” said Mary. “A thousand Afterlights, a thousand coins. Nothing strange about that.”

“Look again.”

Mary looked into the bucket to see that it wasn’t entirely empty. Two coins remained.

“Two coins,” said Nick. “Two of us.”

“Coincidence!” insisted Mary. She would not be swayed by it. This was not the universe trying to tell her something. This was not the hand of God reaching out to them. Mary didn’t need a bucket to tell her what God’s purpose for her was.

She reached in, picked up a coin and prepared to throw it as far from her sight as possible…But then Nick said — ” — Is it warm or is it cold?”

Mary felt the coin in her hand. “It’s cold,” she told him. “Cold as death.”

Nick sighed. “Mine’s cold, too. So I guess neither of us are going anywhere for a while. And then he added, “All these years here, and you’re still not ready.”

“I’ll never be ready!” said Mary. “I’ll never leave Everlost, because this world is the eternal one, and it’s my job to find lost souls to fill it. It’s my job to find them and take care of them. Why can’t you understand that?”

“I do understand it,” Nick said. “And maybe you’re right—maybe that is your job…But now I think I have a job, too. And my job is to help those same lost souls get where they’re going.”

Mary looked at the ugly coin in her hand. What was so wonderful about the end of the tunnel? How did anyone know if that bright light was a light of love, or of flames?

If there was one thing Mary knew it was the simple rule that every mother tells her child: If you’re lost, stay put. Don’t walk away, don’t wander off, don’t talk to strangers, and just because you see a light, it doesn’t give you permission to cross the street. Lost children stay put! How could Nick not see the sense in that?

At the sound of a car engine, Mary looked up to see Speedo drive up in the Jaguar she had given him. At least he was smart enough not to hurl himself down a dark tunnel.

“The train’s waiting,” Speedo said.