“More what?”
And for the first time, Lacey looked her right in the eyes, as if trying to read something there. “More of us,” she said. “More Afterlights. They don’t glow like Afterlights—not yet anyway—but they will once they wake up.”
When the truth hit Allie, it hit with force enough to pound her halfway to the center of the earth, and it might have too, if she wasn’t standing on a deadspot.
More Afterlights . . .
Now it all made sense in a horrible, twisted way.
“Milos and Moose and Squirrel make them cross, then we’re supposed to grab them before they disappear,” Lacey told Allie. “We grab them, and hold them, and then they fall asleep—but I don’t think it’s right.”
Allie knew on some level this had to be Mary’s idea, but she couldn’t tell Lacey that. Allie had seen into Mary’s mind. She had seen that this was only a fraction of what Mary truly wished to unleash upon the living world. Had Milos seen her mind too? Was he now some sort of dark apostle?
“How many?” Allie asked Lacey. “How many kids have you . . . have you . . . taken?”
“We’ve reaped almost two hundred, but there’s gonna be more,” Lacey said. “A lot more.” Allie shivered. It was almost as if she had flesh herself.
“I’m going to hell!”
Lacey cried. “No,” Allie said. “It’s not your fault. And besides, you’re never going to do it again, are you?”
Lacey looked up to her with wet eyes and shook her head.
“Well,” said Allie, “the decision to stop has got to count for something, right?”
Lacey didn’t seem convinced, but nodded anyway.
Allie told Lacey she had to go back to Milos. She didn’t want to send her back, but she knew that if Lacey was missed, it could make Milos suspicious. “You’ll be a spy,” Allie told her. “A double agent. Just don’t tell anyone, and you’ll be fine.” And then Allie asked the million-dollar question. “Do you know where they’re going to strike next?”
“Yes,” Lacey said, then looked sadly down at her own dangling laces. “It’s happening next Friday,” she told Allie. “In a playground.”
CHAPTER 26
The Angels of Life
The Chocolate Ogre was confused.
It would have been fine if he hadn’t known the depth of his confusion, but he was fully aware of how confused he was. He knew, for instance, that he was being used by Milos, and yet, Milos was so very kind to him. According to Milos, he and the Ogre were best friends now. He seemed so sincere, it was easy for the Ogre to believe it. Sometimes.
Then there was the Ogre’s alleged devotion to this girl named Jill. He had no memory whatsoever of her, and yet Milos, Moose, and Squirrel all insisted that he and Jill were in love and that if Jill ever showed up he should sink with her to the center of the earth, so they could be together until the end of the world. It all sounded very romantic. And yet, not.
In his mind, the Ogre had a memory of two girls. One all dressed in green whom he loved, and another who he believed may have crossed with him into Everlost. Milos just laughed when the Ogre suggested that.
“You did not cross into Everlost,” Milos told him. “You are the Chocolate Ogre; you have always been here.” There was a distinct possibility that it was true, but the Ogre only believed it once in a while.
Milos was certainly clever—there was no doubting that. He was very good at planning exciting excursions for the Afterlights in his care. “Angels of Life,” he called them. Their excursions made special places—and people, too—cross into Everlost.
This did not sit well with the Ogre. There was a powerful sense in him that these excursions were wrong.
One day as they sat in the crossed bank building that they called home, the Ogre brought his concerns to Milos. “You’re killing people,” the Ogre pointed out. “Even if it’s for their own good, I don’t think you should be doing it.”
Milos dismissed his concerns as if he were a small child. “Words like ‘killing’ and ‘dying’ are living-world lies. The living fear crossing because they do not know we are waiting here for them, to save them from the light.” Milos looked out over his Afterlights. “Do you think any of them are sorry to be here? And when the souls we have reaped awake, do you think they will despair, and despise us for having cared enough to bring them into Everlost? No!”
Well, that remained to be seen. There would be no way to gauge their gratitude until they awoke. So far the souls they had reaped were sleeping out their hibernations in the bank vault. According to Milos, they belonged in a vault, because they were treasures. Gifts for Mary, if and when they found her.
The thought of Mary made the Ogre flutter a bit inside, as it always did—but now he knew the feeling was just the devotion all good and true Afterlights had for the girl sent to Everlost to care for them. At least he thought that was it. He wasn’t really certain about anything except the knowledge that he was uncertain.
As for Mary, they were no closer to finding her. There had been no further sign of the Neons and every time it was mentioned, it was a reminder to everyone of how badly Milos had screwed up.
“My mistakes only make me stronger,” Milos said whenever it came up. “Stronger and more determined to make a better world for Mary when she awakes. It is like they say, ‘We burn from our mistakes,’ and now I burn with more determination than before.”
Once in a while Milos would send Moose and Squirrel out alone for smaller missions—the ones that didn’t involve people, just real estate. So far Moose and Squirrel had caused a coffee shop, a bowling alley, and a post office to cross. The post office had been an accident. Now, however, they received a daily supply of dead letters to read, and some were highly entertaining.
Things took a definite turn for the worse when Milos announced his plans for the concert. Certainly the so-called “Angels of Life” wanted Rhoda Dakota among them—who wouldn’t? But they weren’t convinced that reaping fans at a concert was a good thing.
“Of course it is a good thing,” Milos told them. “It is what Mary wants, and when she returns I will make sure she knows who did their job and who did not.” That seemed to convince some, but not all of them . . . and so Milos offered them something else. “For all of you who do your duty, you will get as much chocolate as you want.”
This was news to the Ogre.
“Uh, I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” the Ogre whispered to Milos.
“Nothing to worry about,” Milos told him. “You have more than enough to spare, yes?” And so, in this way, Milos convinced all forty-three Afterlights to go to the concert. The Ogre didn’t go. He never went because his hands were too slippery to prevent crossing Afterlights from getting where they were going. The Ogre was glad he couldn’t reap, because he didn’t know whether he had the heart to do it.
When they all came back from their mission at the concert, the Ogre saw that it must have been successful, because Moose came into the bank holding Rhoda Dakota herself, asleep in his arms, followed by every other Afterlight, each carrying a sleeping Interlight.
The Ogre did not expect what happened next.
After depositing an Interlight in the bank vault, one of the Angels of Life went straight for the Ogre, and thrust his hand into the Ogre’s side. It didn’t hurt, but it didn’t feel all that good, either.
“Milos said we could have some,” the kid said, “and after what I had to do today, I deserve a whole handful. No, I deserve two handfuls!” Then he thrust his other hand into Nick as well and went off with two fistfuls of fudge.
Until now the kids would only dare to touch a finger to him once in a while, to get a taste of chocolate. That had been fine with the Ogre—after all, he oozed the stuff like thick, dark perspiration. He did have, as Milos said, plenty to spare . . . but every resource has its limits.
After the first Afterlight exacted his pound of fudge, a second Afterlight came, then another and another. One grabbed his shoulder, another stripped chocolate off his leg. Before he knew it, the returning Angels of Life were mobbing him, and taking pieces of him away. He screamed, but they ignored him. He fell to the ground, and tried to crawl. But mob mentality had taken over, and there were too many of them to fight off.
Finally Moose pushed his way in and yelled, “Shtop!”, pulling the Afterlights off of him. The Ogre tried to rise off the floor, but he couldn’t. Then he looked at himself, and was terrified by what he saw. There was barely anything left of him. He was like something you might find on Halloween, a chocolate skeleton. Finally Milos arrived, shooing everyone away and helped the Ogre into a chair where he just shook, barely able to hold himself in a sitting position.
Milos didn’t apologize, he only said, “Perhaps this was not the best idea.”
“Maybe,” the Ogre said to him, “you’ll burn from this mistake too.”
The weakened Ogre was left in the care of a girl with wide eyes and untied laces. She was one of the few who didn’t partake of the feeding frenzy.
“I’m sorry about what they did to you,” she said to the Ogre. “But at least you’re getting better.” And indeed he was. Slowly chocolate began to grow on him again, oozing out from that sweet spot in his soul. He had, however, lost most of his ogreishness. He was now just a slender chocolate boy, much less intimidating than he had been before—but also more human. He liked that. Even though his face only had the barest hint of a form, at least now he could think of himself as something other than an Ogre.
Seeing himself as a boy made him remember a few more things. He was now certain that he had crossed over from the living world, and had not been here forever. He knew he once had a name, although he could not recall what it was. He was fairly certain, though, that it had begun with an N.
Knowing that much about himself made him bolder, not so easily manipulated. Milos, he finally concluded, was not his friend—and Milos probably knew a lot more about the Ogre than he was admitting . . . so the Ogre gave him a simple, but firm, ultimatum.
“Tell me my name, or I’ll breathe chocolate so deep into your soul that it will make you too heavy to skinjack. So deep that your Afterglow will turn brown.”
Milos looked at him with fear, and something far from friendship, and said, “Your name is Nick.”
“Nick . . .” He nodded. “Thank you.” Nick reached up and brushed his fingers through his hair. It was the first time he realized that he even had hair. “I’ve decided that I’m going on the next mission with you. I’m going to watch what happens, and if I don’t like what I see, I’m leaving.”
Milos looked guarded. “That is, of course, your choice. But remember, if you leave you will never find Jill.”
“I don’t know anyone named Jill,” said Nick, realizing that it was true, and for the first time realizing that everything Milos had told him from the moment they had met, had been a lie.