She glanced down to the coffin. “So now you’ve seen her. Is she everything you imagined she’d be?”
Jix shrugged. “She’s just a girl who sleeps, verdad?”
“And yet she’s more powerful asleep than most of us are awake.” Jill looked him over, and he tightened his abs for the event. “I still haven’t figured you out,” she said. “Why are you even here on this train? It can’t be because you want to be one of Mary’s loyal servants. You’re too much of a loner for that.”
“Like you,” Jix pointed out.
“I stay because I find it amusing. I like watching Milos spin his wheels and try to play ‘daddy’ to Mary’s little snot-noses. But you don’t have a reason to be here, and you never say anything about yourself. I find that highly suspect.”
Jix smiled and gave her his best catlike stare. Jill was unfazed. What was it about her that intrigued him? She was not particularly attractive, and yet he enjoyed gazing at her. There was a certain . . . rudeness to her soul that Jix could not define. It was almost like a scent; sharp, but not entirely unpleasant. It made his nose twitch. When he had first met Jill, he had despised her . . . but there’s a fine line between hate and certain other emotions.
“Are you going reaping tonight?” Jix asked.
“Mmmmmaybe,” she said. It came out like a purr. “If Milos lets me.”
How strange, thought Jix, that she shows Milos such disrespect, yet knows which rules must be obeyed. So very feline.
“You have an urge to hunt and to kill,” Jix said. “As a human, that makes you a criminal. But as a cat, you’d merely be following an instinct.”
She gave him an arrogant glare. “I don’t furjack,” she said. “If you ask me, I think it’s sick.”
“You say that only because you’ve never done it.” He moved closer to her. “Don’t you ever long to be something different? Something . . . other?” He reached out his forearm toward her. “Touch my arm.”
“Why?”
“It’s not just the color and the spots—it’s beginning to feel like fur.”
Cautiously, she reached out and brushed a finger across his velvet forearm the way one might touch a snake.
“It takes a very long time,” he said, “but you can change yourself into what you choose to skinjack.” Then he locked his gaze on hers. “There are no jaguars this far north, but there are mountain lions, I think. . . . If you became a lioness, I could be your male.”
“Gross!” she said, but Jix just smiled.
“Your lips say ‘no,’ but your eyes tell a different story.”
And at that, Jackin’ Jill, who clearly never stepped back from anyone, took a major step backward.
“We’re done here, Simba.”
“For now,” said Jix, the grin never leaving his face.
She turned and headed for the door, but didn’t leave quite yet. “Think of something awful,” she said, with her back to him.
“¿Como?” he asked. “What?”
“That’s how you dowse your afterglow. Think of something awful, and your glow goes away, but just for a few seconds.” And then she was gone, locking the door, and forcing him to leave the way he came in.
In her book Tips for Taps, Mary Hightower has this to say about human emotions:
“We in Everlost are bound by many of the same emotions that we had in life. Joy and despair, love and hate, fear and contentment. Only skinjackers, however, who still have access to flesh, are cursed with those unwholesome feelings brought on by biology, which includes all forms of burning desires. They should be pitied, because unlike the rest of us, they are closer to animals.”
CHAPTER 7
What Allie Saw
After a week, Speedo’s team of finders returned with a single railroad track.
“One down, about twenty more to go,” Speedo said cheerfully, his oversized grin stretching quite literally from ear to ear.