Everfound (Skinjacker 3)

“They’re right,” said Jill. “If we bring ten kids with us, they can carry ten more back!”

Milos didn’t even dignify it with a response. As far as he was concerned he’d be happy if the three of them just left. He would be happy never to see Jill again—and as for Moose and Squirrel, well, their partnership had always been one of convenience—and Milos no longer found them very convenient.

Milos had come to realize how very much alone he was without Mary. The thought of having her back is what kept him going. All he had to do was hold things together until the day she opened her eyes.

There was still no sign of the mysterious western Afterlights who had put the church on the tracks. Perhaps the train had already passed through whatever territory they believed was theirs—or perhaps that church had been on the rails for a hundred years, and they were long gone—either into the light, or into the earth. There was no way to be sure. If Mary were here when they encountered “undocumented Afterlights,” as she called them, she would probably talk them into joining her. Mary had a way of making everyone want to follow her—worship her, even. This was not one of Milos’s skills.

* * *

Jix was also on edge now, because he knew things that Milos didn’t. His Excellency had, many years ago, laid claim to all of the Americas west of the Mississippi. The king’s forces had conquered many hordes of Afterlights, and had brought them all to the great City of Souls—first as prisoners, and then, when their memory of conquest had faded, as full-fledged citizens.

This was why there were so few Afterlights to be found—most of them had been relocated to the City of Souls, and occasional sweeps would catch the newcomers. There were only two reasons why there’d still be Afterlights in these parts. Either they had accidentally been overlooked . . . or they were too mean to mess with.

“Be on your guard,” Jix had secretly told Allie, for he knew she was their best early-warning system. “Keep your eyes open always, and if you see something suspicious, call out to me. Wherever I am on the train, I will hear you.”

“Tell you what,” said Allie, “why don’t we switch places, and you can be the one on upside-down lookout.”

Jix did not take his discussions with Allie lightly. He appreciated the things she told him, because no one else was willing to talk about Mary, providing Jix with crucial information.

“Mary slithered her way into Chicago,” Allie told him one night, while the other skinjackers were out reaping. “She charmed the leader there, then took over. That’s what she does. I’ve never seen anyone so good at manipulating people.”

Jix took note of everything Allie said, but he also knew that this was coming from a girl who despised Mary from the bottom of her soul. Jix could respect that, but he could also respect a spirit who could successfully manipulate thousands. For a moment he considered freeing Allie. No one would see him do it, for none of Mary’s children ever came to the front of the train—they were all too afraid of Allie. No one would know it had been Jix that freed her, so what did he have to lose? Jix looked off to make sure the other skinjackers weren’t coming back from reaping, then he leaned close to Allie.

“If you were freed,” Jix asked her, “what would you do?”

Allie answered without hesitation. “I would stop Mary now, before she wakes up. I’d send her down into the earth, and that would be the end of her. Not even Mary can charm her way back to the surface.” Then Allie got quiet, thinking for a long time before she spoke again. “Then, when I was sure that Mary was gone, I’d find Mikey—a friend of mine—and make him go into the light. He deserves to complete his journey. After that, I’d find my body, skinjack myself, and get back to my own life.”

“Careful,” said Jix. “Skinjacking your own body is not the same as skinjacking someone else’s. Once you skinjack yourself, you’re bound to your body. From the moment you jump inside, you can’t leave it until the day you die.”

“Why would I want to?”

Jix thought about the question. It brought back a memory that was painful to think about. “I had a friend who chose to skinjack himself. But his body had brain damage and a ruined leg. He couldn’t speak, and he could barely walk, and he couldn’t un-skinjack himself. He ended up begging on the streets of Cancun.”

Allie squirmed in her bonds, and looked away. “Maybe it won’t be that way for me . . . but unless you free me, I’ll never have the chance to find out, will I?”

Jix picked up an Everlost stone from between the railroad ties, and tossed it into the living world. Allie had made her intentions very clear, but Jix was still neutral in this war, and his mission was to capture Mary, not to send her down. Perhaps Allie deserved to be freed, but freeing her would cause him nothing but trouble.

“If Mary succeeds,” Jix asked, “and she ends the living world, what do you suppose will happen then?”

“Isn’t the end of the world bad enough, without having to think about what happens afterward?”

So then he asked, “Is it so bad to end one world, when another world still remains?”

“Do you really believe that?”

“Maybe not,” he told her. “Maybe I just wanted to see what you would say.”

She struggled once more against her bonds, but they never got any looser. “So,” she asked again, “are you going to let me go?”

“We’ll talk again,” Jix told her, as he always told her, and left.

Jix was not an insomnoid. He would choose to sleep when it suited him, and that night, he wanted to sleep, if only to keep his mind from pondering heavy things. Yet even though he tried, he could not settle his thoughts enough to sleep. Jix still told himself that he was traveling with the train just to gain information before returning to the City of Souls, and reporting what he had found to the king—but not even he was sure of his own motives anymore. At first he had told himself that he’d leave in Dallas, find a big cat somewhere, and furjack his way back home, but instead he stayed with the train. There was too much about this train of souls that intrigued him: the sleeping witch in the caboose, the train’s destination—which the king himself would like to know about if, indeed, it was real . . . but most of all he stayed because of Jackin’ Jill.

After their last encounter, Jill made a point of ignoring Jix, and yet he often caught her watching him out of the corner of her eye—but whenever he returned the gaze, she would get snappish and say, “What are you looking at?” It always made him smile.

As a skinjacker, he had the privilege of staying in the parlor car, so he and Jill were never too distant from each other, and when Jill got tired of pretending to ignore him, she would ask questions.

“How long have you been at this? Furjacking, I mean?”