“And Jill!” added the Ogre.
The kid still shook his head, but all the while stared at the Ogre. He seemed almost ready to break. Milos turned toward the Ogre. “Show this miserable Afterlight what we do to those who don’t cooperate with us.”
“Okay!” Then the Ogre thought for a moment. “What do we do?”
Milos sighed. “We show our strength in a way that they will never forget.”
“That makes sense,” said the Ogre cheerfully. Then he grabbed the Neon, lifted him off the ground, and threw him all the way over the building in front of them.
Milos stood there, stunned. “Why did you do that?”
“Because I didn’t think he’d ever forget it,” said the Ogre.
The whole mob of Afterlights ran to find him, but he wasn’t on the next street, or the next, or the next. Milos had begun to think that maybe he had landed hard enough to sink—but then they finally saw him in the distance, turning a corner. Once they reached the corner he was long gone—but then one of the other Afterlights noticed something. “Hey, what’s that?”
They went down a narrow alley that opened up to a street with stone-paved sidewalks and crowds of living people. On one side of the street were older, living-world buildings, but their facades were insulted by garish, blinking signs advertising everything from a wax museum to a mirror maze, and across a large plaza was an old stone mission.
“I think itsh the Alamo,” said Moose. “But I thought it would be bigger.”
“Look at it, look at it!” said Squirrel, pointing at the familiar face of the structure.
The entire building, and the stone walls that surrounded the complex almost seemed to be squirming; randomly shifting in and out of focus. The stone itself appeared to swirl in and out of phase, as if it couldn’t decide whether it was in Everlost or in the living world.
“It’s a vortex,” Milos said. Milos didn’t even try to hide his disgust.
“You don’t think they’re in there, do you?” asked Moose.
“You can’t make me go into a vortex!” said the complaining Afterlight—the one who always doubted Milos. “You never know what a vortex will do to you!”
e Richard spent much of his days holding the piggy bank upside down and shaking it to make the coin come out of the tiny slot. He had been at it for several years.
“It will come out when it wants to,” Jix told him. But that didn’t stop him from shaking the bank.
Jill, who was listening, looked at Jix doubtfully. “You talk like the coin has a mind of its own.”
“Not a mind,” Jix said. “But a purpose. Nothing exists without a purpose.”
Jill smirked. “Did the jaguar gods tell you that?”
Jix knew it was meant as an insult, but he chose not to take it as one. “No,” he answered. “My mother did.”
Jill was not impressed. In fact, she was never impressed by anything. Ever. This fact impressed Jix a great deal. At least once a day, Jill would get in Jix’s face, insisting that they leave. “We’re skinjackers, we need to skinjack,” Jill said to him one day. “Even if you don’t, I do!”
They had been there about a week, by Jix’s reckoning, although the days did blend together—especially when they couldn’t see daylight.
“You would leave Mary?” he asked Jill.
Jill looked over to the glass coffin. It sat like a centerpiece in the common room, like a diamond in the middle of its setting. While Wurlitzer was covered with a quilt, Mary’s glory remained unhidden. More and more Neons had begun to revere the beautiful girl in the green satin gown. They knew nothing of her, had read none of her writings on the nature of Everlost. She arrived here without the thunderstorm of legend that usually preceded her arrival. Yet still, these Afterlights were drawn to her.
Jill considered Mary for a moment more, then said, “I don’t owe her anything, and right now she’s useless to me.”
Jix smiled. “Self-interest suits you, verdad? But sometimes a predator needs to look further than the eyes can see.”
“What are you blathering about? More of that jaguar-god nonsense?”
“No. I’m talking about successful stalking.” He looked around, and saw that the poker kids were beginning to get louder, preparing for their daily fistfight—which included a crowd of others cheering them on. Jix took Jill to the corner farthest away, so they could not be heard. “Cats stalk with their instincts—but you and me—we stalk with our minds. The way I stalked all of you on the train.”
Jill gave him a twisted grin. “You didn’t stalk anyone—we let you stay.”