The question brought absolute silence to the crowd. All eyes were on Milos, and Milos looked out at them, watching them watching him. They bobbed up and down in that odd way an Afterlight crowd did when trying to keep from sinking in living ground.
Milos cleared his throat, although there was nothing there to block his voice, and spoke as commandingly as he could.
“Mary wanted this to be a surprise, but maybe she won’t mind if I tell you.” Then he pointed off to the setting sun. “There is a deadspot in the West,” Milos told them. “A deadspot larger than any you’ve ever seen. It is a beautiful place filled with everything you could ever want or need. A place where you can all be happy forever. This is where Mary wants us to go.”
And the crowd applauded—some actually even cheered. There was one problem, though:
Milos was lying.
Mary’s plan was to head west, and conquer . . . but “west” was a direction, not a destination, and while these children could blindly trust Mary to lead them, they weren’t so blind when it came to Milos. He was afraid to consider what they might do to him if they knew Milos had no idea where they were going, or what to do when they got there.
CHAPTER 5
Allie in Distress
There were many things of which Allie was unaware. How could she know what went on behind her when her only view was the world in front of her? She knew that Mary Hightower had been pushed out of Everlost, and into the living world, because Allie had been there, and had helped turn her back into flesh and blood. . . . Yet Allie did not know that Mary’s second life was already over, and that she was just a few months away from awakening in Everlost again.
Allie knew that Nick, the “Chocolate Ogre,” had finally been overcome by his chocolate cancer, and had dissolved into nothing—but she did not know that Mikey McGill, still deeply in love with her, had gathered the shapeless melted mass that had once been Nick, and had given him shape once more.
Allie had no way of knowing that Charlie and Johnnie-O—Nick’s staunchest allies—were now hopelessly adrift in the Hindenburg, and that the massive airship was at the mercy of the Everlost sky.
And Allie didn’t know about reaping.
She knew it was possible, but even if she had known what Mary’s skinjackers were doing, what could she have done to stop them? To be imprisoned, unable to do anything was, for Allie, the worst punishment yet devised. She had been Allie the Outcast, an Afterlight to be reckoned with. Now she was a joke, and it burned her more than the heat of the earth’s core ever could. She immediately flashed to that stupid old silent-movie image of the damsel in distress tied to the railroad tracks, helplessly wailing. If she ever got off this train, she vowed never to be so helpless again. She’d rather sink to the center of the earth than suffer the indignity of needing rescue.
There was a way out of this—there had to be. In theory, she could skinjack her way off the train by touching a living person passing by, slip into that person’s body, and just walk away. However, the train never brought her in contact with the living. Even when they traveled through populated areas, the living never crossed directly into her path, and it wasn’t like she could shout to them and call them over.
Still, she would find a way out of this, and once she escaped the train, she would leave Everlost. She would not go down the tunnel and into the light—that was for those who were truly dead. But skinjackers had other alternatives. . . .
She had learned the secret of skinjackers—the thing that no skinjacker ever spoke of, but every skinjacker eventually discovered. Skinjackers are not dead, but are in deep, deep comas . . . not quite dead, but not quite alive, either.
But if her body was still alive . . . maybe—just maybe—she could skinjack herself.
There was one problem, however. If she did it, it meant leaving Mikey behind. The thought of it challenged her resolve. Could she say good-bye to him, after the years they’d spent together? She loved him. It was not a simple love—it was as deeply complicated as true love should be, full of strength and vulnerability, joy and frustration. A powerful connection between them, more tangible than eternity. Could she sacrifice that for a chance at living? She wondered where Mikey was now, and what he would say. Would he talk her out of leaving, or encourage her to go? With Mikey there was no telling. He was a spirit who could be both selfish and gallant at the same time. It was part of what made her love him.
Of course none of her musings mattered as long as she was tied to the grille of a train.
On the day that Speedo left on his expedition to find railroad tracks, Milos and his skinjackers went off as well, for their own dark purposes. Allie assumed it was their usual “skinjacking for fun and profit.”
Then, just a few minutes after they had gone, Allie was visited by the strangest spirit. A boy that seemed part cat. Clearly this was not one of Mary’s children.
“I thought you were bound by a spell,” he said as he approached, “but now I can see it’s nothing but rope that has crossed into Everlost.”
Allie had seen all sorts of body modifications in Everlost—some intentional, some not—but few were as exquisite as this boy’s. “Who are you?” Allie asked. She waited for an answer, but he gave her none.
“They fear you,” he said. “If they didn’t, they wouldn’t treat you this way.” She knew it was true, but it didn’t change her sense of powerlessness.
“Are there many of you?” Allie asked. “Are you going to attack the train?” If there was a whole army of cat-kids, then this could be a good thing. If they saw Milos and the others as enemies, then they could see Allie as a friend, and might free her.
“I am here as a guest of the Eastern Witch,” the cat-boy said, which, again, did not answer her question.
“There is no Eastern Witch,” Allie told him, taking a little bit of pride in the fact. “She won’t be back, no matter what her children think.”
The cat-kid raised an eyebrow. “Then who is it who sleeps in the last car?”
At first she thought she had misheard him. Then she thought he was making some sort of joke. Then she realized he didn’t have a sense of humor. He was dead serious. But if Mary was in the last car, she wasn’t just sleeping, she was hibernating. She was in transition between life, and—
“No!” Allie didn’t want to believe it. “No! Milos didn’t! He couldn’t have . . . he wouldn’t dare!” But she knew he would dare. Milos was audacious to an extreme—he would have no compunction about killing Mary, then pulling her out of the tunnel. It explained so many things. It explained why they were still pushing westward, following Mary’s directive, as if she’d be coming back.