Everwild (Skinjacker 2)

The Picassoids looked to one another, then back to Allie. "We don't work for the Sky Witch," the blue-haired Picassoid said. "We serve a monster. The one true monster of Everlost."

Allie did not like the sound of that. "What monster do you mean?"

Then he gave her an unpleasant upside-down smile. "We serve the McGill."

*** Mikey McGill was not blessed with good timing.

In life he would get his knuckles rapped repeatedly for looking at his neighbor's paper at precisely the moment the schoolmaster would look at him. He jumped in front of a speeding train at precisely the wrong moment, sending him and his sister to Everlost--and even in Everlost, he had chosen to spy on Allie at precisely the moment she had kissed Milos.

Naturally it would follow that he would capture Allie at the worst possible moment in this, or any other, universe.

His new minions--the Afterlights he had picked up in Nashville--feared him, and obeyed his commands, but that wasn't enough. He made them pledge themselves to him, but that still wasn't enough. He twisted and tweaked their faces using his talent of change to change them, but none of this could fill the hole inside him. Allie was the only one who could fill it, and so he followed her to Memphis. Since he was convinced he would never win Allie back, he decided the next best thing was to steal her away.

The Picassoids brought Allie to Mikey in an old-fashioned paddy wagon--a cell on wheels that had crossed into Everlost, God knows when.

When Mikey saw them approaching with Allie in the cage, he felt a heart begin to swell in his chest, threatening to transform his entire body into a bloody beating thing. He allowed his bad emotions to overwhelm the good, forced his heart back down his throat, and he strode forward encased in the same armor that had grown the day he ran away. Every step shook the ground as he approached her. Then, when he was right in front of her, he spilled himself through his open mouth, turning inside out, revealing the horrible thing he had become.

"Look at me!" he demanded. "Look at me." Although he didn't have to say it, because she was already looking. He wanted her to scream, he wanted her to cry, he wanted her to feel the misery of what she had done to him ... but she did not react the way he expected. He sprouted himself an extra eye so he could read her more clearly.

"Mikey!" she grabbed the bars, peering through at him, not repulsed, not averting her eyes in the least. "Mikey! You didn't leave! You're still here!"

There was a good reason why Mikey, even with an extra eye, couldn't read Allie. That was because Allie found her emotions were such a strange mix, they all blended together into something unidentifiable. There was incredible joy in knowing that Mikey hadn't left Everlost, but confusion as to why he had turned into this nasty-looking thing. Rather than being horrified, she found herself impressed by it and deeply saddened at the same time. She knew him well enough now to know that his shell was merely that: a mask that he used to express the things he couldn't put into words. Was this, then, the manifestation of what he had been feeling? She couldn't deny that Mikey had been sullen and subdued while he was locked into simple human form--and although she never wanted to see him as a monster again, there were parts of the monster she missed. The truth was, Mikey was boring when he was beautiful.

But what was she thinking? None of this mattered at the moment. Nick was in danger! She had to save Nick!

"Mikey, listen to me!" "No, you listen to ME!" He didn't care what she had to say. She would not rob him of this moment! He reached into a fold in his awful body that had once been a pocket, and he pulled out a coin. "You chose Milos over me!" Then he grabbed Allie's hand. "If I can't have you, then no one will!" and he placed the coin firmly in her palm, closing her fingers around it. He was determined to stay silent as she vanished into the light, but he couldn't stop himself from saying the words he could never before say out loud.

"I love you, Allie... ."

Then he waited for her to get where she was going.

He waited.

And he waited.

But Allie's eyes did not grow wide with cosmic wonder. The light of infinity did not shine on her face. She did not disappear in a rainbow twinkling of light. She stood there mesmerized--dazzled by his heartfelt confession, but she did not vanish. Then, she squeezed his hand firmly, but lovingly, and said:

"Mikey, we need to talk."

He let go of her hand, not knowing what to do, because he had not seen anything beyond this moment. The way he imagined it, Allie would be gone, he would wallow forever in the misery of it, and that would be that. But instead, Allie gave the coin back to him. "It doesn't work for skinjackers," she said. "There's a lot I have to tell you, but now's not the time. You have to let me go now. I have to help Nick."

Mikey turned his transformed hand back to the hand of a boy and gently took the coin. "It doesn't work for me, either. So neither of us is ready." Allie looked at his humanized hand, surprised. "How did you do that?"

"I can do a lot of things," Mikey said, and to prove it, he took on his normal boyish face once more, on the body of the monster. Allie was amazed.

"You can change at will?"

"You have a power," said Mikey, "and so do I."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I thought you hated the monster."

"You were never the monster you pretend to be, Mikey. Not then, and not now."

"I am if I want to be. I am whatever I want to be."

Allie shook her head and smiled. "Then I love all the things you choose to be, because beneath it all, you're still Mikey McGill."