“Thank me? She’ll never forgive me!” Jix shouted.
He held on to the sleeping girl, brushing her hair out of her face. She was Hispanic, with very strong Indian features, like himself. How could he have let this happen?
“I have a friend who is very wise,” Milos told him. “Her name is Mary. She says that life in Everlost is a gift. She says we are all chosen to be here because we have been doomed worthy.”
“Deemed,” corrected the wild-haired girl. “Deemed worthy.”
“Yes,” said Milos. “Forgive my English. The point is, if she was chosen to be here, then there is no reason for you to feel guilt.”
Jix turned to Milos, studying his face, and his eyes: bright blue with speckles of white, like a sky dotted with clouds. “What about you?” he asked Milos. “Do you not feel guilt for what you did?”
Milos took a moment before answering. “None,” he said. “None whatsoever.”
But they both knew he was lying.
Around them, in the living world, the chaos born from this awful evening was taking root. Crowds were gathering, loved ones were grieving, distant sirens drew closer. Jix was glad that the living world could be so easily tuned out by Afterlights. He did not want to witness further results of their actions.
“So what do we do with him?” asked the wild-haired girl.
“Push him down! Push him down!” said the squirrelly one.
“No,” said Milos, “he is a skinjacker. He deserves better than that.” Then he held out his hand to Jix. “Join us, and I promise you will be a part of something grand and glorious.”
Still Jix made no move. Working under His Excellency, Jix had always dreamed he’d be part of something larger than himself. He even dreamed that he would be taken into the king’s inner circle, for Jix was a well-respected scout. But scouting kept him at a distance, and when it came to the king, out of sight was truly out of mind. Whenever Jix returned with news, no matter how important, His Excellency would never even remember his name.
As Jix looked at these villainous, barbaric skinjackers, he found himself more and more curious about them, and oddly attracted to their way of life. Little was known about Mary the Eastern Witch—but here was an opportunity to learn more. What he ultimately did with that information would be entirely up to him.
He looked down at the sleeping girl in his arms, and made a decision. “I want to be there when she wakes up. I want to be the first thing she sees when she opens her eyes. Then I’ll ask her for forgiveness.”
The wild-haired girl rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”
Jix gently lifted the spirit of the sleeping girl onto his shoulder. “Take me to the Eastern Witch.”
The five of them made their way back to the train, everyone but Squirrel carrying a sleeping spirit.
“It’s not my fault,” complained Squirrel. “I couldn’t hold on, my hands were greasy.”
“Your hands are always greasy,” Moose pointed out.
“Right—and it’s not my fault!”
Jix spoke very little on the journey, but even so, he was still the center of attention. They all stared at him, some being more obvious about it than others. Jackin’ Jill didn’t even try to hide the fact that she was staring.
“I’ve seen a lot of freaky Afterlights, but I’ve never seen one like you,” she finally said.
Jix was not bothered. He prided himself on his ongoing transformation. He hoped that in time his form would match that of his animal spirit. These eastern Afterlights knew nothing of animal spirits. They were like the living, disconnected from the universe, seeing themselves as solitary. So self-centered. Yet Milos had asked him if he wanted to be part of something larger than himself, which pointed to some higher purpose. These eastern Afterlights certainly warranted closer observation.
“There is art to what you have done to yourself,” Milos said to Jix, and Jix nodded his acceptance of the compliment.
“So, are there any others in your litter?” said Jill. He didn’t have to see her face to sense the sneer in her voice.
“Only me,” Jix said, offering her as little as possible.
“You are the first Afterlight we have seen west of the Mississippi River,” Milos told him.
“So, you’re all on your own?” Jill pressed. “No leader? No friends?”
Jix considered how he’d answer the question before he spoke. “Cats are solitary animals.”
They arrived at the train just after dawn, still carrying their sleeping souls. The kids who Jix had seen playing the day before were all in the train cars, but now that the sun was up, they would soon be out, and playing their games again. Jix had seen the train only at a distance, so as he drew closer with the skinjackers, he took note of everything.
First, and most obvious, was the little church, curiously blocking the train’s progress. He had seen instances of jamnation before, although he had no such fancy word for it. This predicament made him smile. Such a little, unassuming building standing in the way of a mighty ghost train. It reminded him of a picture he had seen in a library book during his living days. A man standing in front of a giant tank in someplace Chinese. He suspected there was more to this church, however, than met the eye.
The demon was still tied to the front of the train, and now he could tell that it was a she-demon, perhaps La Llorrona—the crying woman—although she didn’t appear to be crying. Not that Jix had actually ever met a she-demon, or knew for sure that such things existed, but he’d heard stories.
The next thing he noticed was a caboose at the other end of the train, decorated with Christmas lights and shiny baubles that reflected the rising sun. He made a note to ask about it when he felt sure he’d get a truthful answer.
And then there was the fourth passenger car. All of the other passenger cars seemed crowded with children, but the fourth car was crowded in a very different way. In the windows, Jix saw faces pressed up against the glass. It was quite literally crammed with Afterlights—there had to be a thousand souls stuck in that cramped space. Jix recalled one time when His Excellency had commanded a group of Afterlights to squeeze themselves into a large ceramic vase that had crossed into Everlost. In the living world it had been big enough to hold no more than two or three—but Afterlights, who are pure spirit, and have no true physical substance, can fit just about anywhere. They kept climbing in, and his Excellency got bored when the count reached fifty. There was no telling how many souls were shoved into this train car.
“Wild, huh?” said Moose, looking at the crammed car. “Like clownsh in a car.” The faces in the window didn’t seem in distress, and Jix figured they had been in there quite a long time because they had gotten used to it. At most, it looked awkward and inconvenient, but they were still having conversations with one another as if this was just another normal day for them.
“Why are they in there?” Jix asked. “For someone’s amusement?” That made Squirrel laugh, which was not a pleasant sound.
“They were an enemy army,” Milos told him. “We defeated them a few months ago, and now we hold them in there for safekeeping.”
“Yeah, yeah,” said Squirrel. “Prisoners of war.”
“Bet you’ve never sheen sho many Afterlightsh,” said Moose.
For a moment Jix wanted to brag about the great City of Souls, but decided to keep that to himself.
The skinjackers brought their four slumbering spirits to an Afterlight who waited by a sleeping car.
“Leave them with me,” the kid said, but Jix was reluctant.
“It is all right,” said Milos. “Sandman will tag them, and mark them with the date they will awake.”
Jix refused to give his sleeping girl to Sandman; instead he carried her into the sleeping car himself.
“Hey,” said Sandman, “you can’t go in there.” Jix turned to him, bared his teeth and growled. Although his growl still sounded more like a boy than a wild cat, Sandman was intimidated enough to leave him alone.
The sleeping car was already crowded. Each upper and lower berth had two, sometimes three sleeping kids, their chests rising and falling with the memory of breathing, but none of them snored or made the slightest sound. Jix found a comfortable place and left his sleeping girl there, making sure she looked comfortable, then kissed her forehead, because he knew she no longer had parents to do so, and because he knew no one was watching. Then he left the sleeping car and went straight to Milos.
“I will meet Mary, the Eastern Witch, now.”
“You will meet her,” said Milos, “when she is ready to be met.”
“And when will that be?”
Milos took a long look at him, perhaps trying to read something in his expression, but stealth also required a cool, unreadable face. Jix never gave anything away that he didn’t intend to.
“Not today,” was all Milos said.
“In the meantime,” suggested Jackin’ Jill, “why don’t you go lick yourself clean like a good kitty?”
Jix suspected that he and Jill were never going to be friends.
CHAPTER 4
Green Goddess
Milos had not forgotten what Allie had told him, and although he hated the thought that she knew something he didn’t, he had to find out what she had seen from her perch at the front of the train. About a mile back, she had said. Figure it out for yourself. Once the newly harvested souls were safely in the sleeping car, Milos decided to set off alone to do exactly that.
He left Jill in charge of Jix, which she resented. “I don’t trust him,” Jill said. “No normal person skinjacks animals.”
“Would you rather Moose and Squirrel watch him?” suggested Milos. She just grunted in disgust. They both knew Moose and Squirrel had attention spans too short to effectively guard anyone. “Perhaps you could charm him into telling you more about where he comes from,” Milos said, with a grin. “After all, you’re a bit like a cat yourself.”
She raised her hand like a claw. “In that case, why don’t I just scratch that grin right off your face?” Still, Milos smiled. He had once been in love with Jill, as he had once been in love with Allie—but both times the love was bleached away by betrayal, leaving him with a wounded, if not broken, heart.
But then there was Mary.
All else in his life, and afterlife, had been mere preparation for her. She was his salvation—and in a very real way, he was hers as well.
Milos left the train in the afternoon, and followed the track, every couple of minutes looking around, trying to spot anything out of the ordinary, but nothing caught his eye. Looking back at the train proved to be a surreal sight: the locomotive, standing against the little white church right in the middle of its path. The way its steeple poked up at the sky made it appear as if the church was giving the train the middle finger.
Milos found nothing a mile back. Just a dead track, and the living world on either side of it. Whatever it was Allie saw, it was not revealing itself to Milos. He returned to the train, his afterglow faintly red with slow-boiling frustration.