The smug expression left her face, and she took an aggressive step closer. If she attacked him, it would be an interesting contest. Would she scratch or punch or slap? Or maybe she would move in closer than that, and wrestle him. Jix would often volunteer to fight for His Excellency’s amusement, and he knew many impressive wrestling moves. Which moves could he use on Jill, he wondered? Would he choose to pin her, or throw her off? Again, the thought of it sent a wave of excitement running through him.
“Why did you come in here?” she asked.
“I was curious.”
“Curiosity killed the cat,” she quickly replied—exactly as he knew she would. It put him in control of the conversation without her even realizing it.
She glanced down to the coffin. “So now you’ve seen her. Is she everything you imagined she’d be?”
Jix shrugged. “She’s just a girl who sleeps, verdad?”
“And yet she’s more powerful asleep than most of us are awake.” Jill looked him over, and he tightened his abs for the event. “I still haven’t figured you out,” she said. “Why are you even here on this train? It can’t be because you want to be one of Mary’s loyal servants. You’re too much of a loner for that.”
“Like you,” Jix pointed out.
“I stay because I find it amusing. I like watching Milos spin his wheels and try to play ‘daddy’ to Mary’s little snot-noses. But you don’t have a reason to be here, and you never say anything about yourself. I find that highly suspect.”
Jix smiled and gave her his best catlike stare. Jill was unfazed. What was it about her that intrigued him? She was not particularly attractive, and yet he enjoyed gazing at her. There was a certain . . . rudeness to her soul that Jix could not define. It was almost like a scent; sharp, but not entirely unpleasant. It made his nose twitch. When he had first met Jill, he had despised her . . . but there’s a fine line between hate and certain other emotions.
“Are you going reaping tonight?” Jix asked.
“Mmmmmaybe,” she said. It came out like a purr. “If Milos lets me.”
How strange, thought Jix, that she shows Milos such disrespect, yet knows which rules must be obeyed. So very feline.
“You have an urge to hunt and to kill,” Jix said. “As a human, that makes you a criminal. But as a cat, you’d merely be following an instinct.”
She gave him an arrogant glare. “I don’t furjack,” she said. “If you ask me, I think it’s sick.”
“You say that only because you’ve never done it.” He moved closer to her. “Don’t you ever long to be something different? Something . . . other?” He reached out his forearm toward her. “Touch my arm.”
“Why?”
“It’s not just the color and the spots—it’s beginning to feel like fur.”
Cautiously, she reached out and brushed a finger across his velvet forearm the way one might touch a snake.
“It takes a very long time,” he said, “but you can change yourself into what you choose to skinjack.” Then he locked his gaze on hers. “There are no jaguars this far north, but there are mountain lions, I think. . . . If you became a lioness, I could be your male.”
“Gross!” she said, but Jix just smiled.
“Your lips say ‘no,’ but your eyes tell a different story.”
And at that, Jackin’ Jill, who clearly never stepped back from anyone, took a major step backward.
“We’re done here, Simba.”
“For now,” said Jix, the grin never leaving his face.
She turned and headed for the door, but didn’t leave quite yet. “Think of something awful,” she said, with her back to him.
“¿Como?” he asked. “What?”
“That’s how you dowse your afterglow. Think of something awful, and your glow goes away, but just for a few seconds.” And then she was gone, locking the door, and forcing him to leave the way he came in.
In her book Tips for Taps, Mary Hightower has this to say about human emotions:
“We in Everlost are bound by many of the same emotions that we had in life. Joy and despair, love and hate, fear and contentment. Only skinjackers, however, who still have access to flesh, are cursed with those unwholesome feelings brought on by biology, which includes all forms of burning desires. They should be pitied, because unlike the rest of us, they are closer to animals.”
CHAPTER 7
What Allie Saw
After a week, Speedo’s team of finders returned with a single railroad track.
“One down, about twenty more to go,” Speedo said cheerfully, his oversized grin stretching quite literally from ear to ear.
While Milos was more than happy to stall as long as possible, Mary’s hordes were getting restless, and nothing would quell the growing discontent but moving them closer to their imaginary destination.
Milos had no choice but to go back to Allie.
“Tell me what you saw,” Milos said, “and I will set you free.”
“Deal,” Allie told him. And then she said, “This church isn’t what it appears to be.”
“If it’s not a church, then what is it?”
“No—it’s still a church but . . .” She sighed. “It would make much more sense if you saw it for yourself. Then you can honestly tell everyone you figured it out, and be the big hero.”
“I went back along the tracks. I looked. I saw nothing.”
“Did you go to the top of the hill?”
“That,” said Milos, “is much more than a mile.”
“My mistake,” said Allie. “Hard to measure distance when you’re tied to the front of a train.”
Again, Milos backtracked alone, and when the tracks began to climb up the hill, he kept going all the way to the top, which afforded him a view of the train, and the terrain around it. There was a small living-world lake to the right of the train, and on the other side of the lake there was a deadspot, about the size of a house. Only a person with a wide view from the front of the train could have seen it as the train came down the hill. There was nothing on the deadspot—just a square made of stones, and a few stone steps that led nowhere. It was the foundation of a building.
It was not unusual for random bits and pieces of the living world to cross into Everlost, but there was something very wrong with this picture. Foundations did not cross into Everlost . . . entire buildings did.
Now he understood exactly what Allie had seen—and what it meant for all of them.
Milos raced back to the train, the memory of a heart beating in his chest, not out of exertion, but out of excitement and out of a fear he was not yet ready to admit. When he arrived back, the others knew right away that something was wrong. Perhaps it was in his eyes, or maybe his Afterlight glow had grown paler—maybe even a little sickly green.
Milos weaved through the groups of jump-roping, ball-playing, yo-yo–bouncing kids, and found Speedo preparing to go out on another rail-finding expedition.
“I will need fifty of our strongest Afterlights,” Milos told him.
“What for?” asked Speedo.
Milos didn’t bother answering him. “Gather them and have them meet me by the church.”
Allie knew that Milos had figured it out, because he came to the front of the train with a huge group of Afterlights—too many for her to count.
“I told you you’d see it,” Allie said, pretending not to be anxious. “All it took was a little perspective.” Milos gave her a quick glance, but not a kind one.
“I don’t understand,” said Speedo. “Are all these Afterlights for my expedition?”
“There will not be another expedition,” Milos told him. “Look under the church. Tell me what you see.”
Speedo reluctantly knelt down, getting eye-level with the railroad ties. “I see the bottom of the church . . . and the tracks underneath it.”
“Exactly,” said Milos. “The church is sitting on top of the tracks.”
“So what?” said Speedo. “It’s still in our way.”
Again, Milos glanced at Allie giving her a chilly look, then he returned all his attention to Speedo.
“Since when does a building cross into Everlost without a foundation?” asked Milos. Speedo could only stammer. “The answer is, it doesn’t.” Then he pointed across the lake. “The church’s foundation is over there.”
“So . . . if the church crossed over there . . . ,” said Speedo, his voice shaking, “. . . how did it get onto our tracks?” But by the way he asked, it was clear Speedo didn’t want to know the answer.
“Someone moved it here,” Milos informed him. “Someone lifted it up, carried it all the way around the lake, and put it down right in our path.”
“Milos gets a gold star!” said Allie.
Then Milos, always one to blame the messenger, turned on her in fury. “You keep your mouth shut or I will find some duct tape and tape it closed!”
To which Allie calmly responded, “Duct tape never crosses.” Which was true. Things that cross into Everlost are usually loved, and nobody loves duct tape. Its use is, at best, an annoyance.
“If it moved once,” Milos said, “it can move again.”
“You . . . you want us to move it back?” asked Speedo.
Allie snickered, which only made Milos more irritated.
“We don’t need to move it back, just off the tracks. Understand?”
“Oh,” said Speedo as if it were a grand revelation. “I get it!”
Milos lined up the Afterlights on one side of the church. Then, on Milos’s command, they began to lift and release, lift and release, over and over until the church began to rock back and forth. Even with fifty Afterlights, the church was so heavy, it took forever until they were able to build any sort of momentum.
Up above, the steeple wavered like a metronome, cutting a wider and wider arc across the sky. By now all the rest of Mary’s children had come out to see what was going on. Moose and Squirrel watched like it was prime-time TV, Jill crossed her arms and feigned complete disinterest, and Jix observed stoically, without revealing how he felt about it either way.
The anticipation of all those assembled built as the church rocked on the tracks, until finally the building reached the edge of its balance, slid off the tracks, and tumbled over on its side, landing unbroken on the ground beside the train. Without a deadspot to rest on, the church began to slowly sink into the living world.
The Afterlights all cheered, giving Milos all the credit for clever thinking—although he knew it wasn’t his cleverness that had solved their predicament. It was Allie’s.
“Load up the train,” Milos commanded. “And stoke the engine.”
“What about me?” asked Allie. “Will you take me down from here now, like you promised?” Milos looked at her, thought for a moment, then said to Moose and Squirrel, “All right. Untie her from the train.”
Allie relaxed, fully ready for freedom until Milos said, “Take her down, then tie her back to the train again. This time, upside down.”