“Go on. Sink down to hell for all I care.” Ice clinked in his amber drink as he took a long gulp.
“Hell’s not down there,” Nick told him. “Just the center of the earth.”
“Well, then,” Clarence said. “Pleasant journey. If you meet Jules Verne, give him my regards.” From the end of the bar, the bartender gave Clarence a sideways glance, so Clarence pulled out a broken Bluetooth headset, and fixed it to his ear. “I learned this trick while traveling with Mikey,” Clarence told Nick. “Makes my brand of crazy seem the same as everyone else’s.”
The fact that Clarence put on his ear prop was a good sign. It meant he was willing to talk, so there was hope of bringing him back from whatever dark place he was now in.
“Your friend Mikey knew what my touch could do, but he didn’t tell me. He turned me into a murderer. Worse than a murderer.”
“I think,” said Nick, “they call that manslaughter or wrongful death, don’t they? I mean, when it’s an accident or out of ignorance, or something.”
Clarence turned to Nick, studying him with his Everlost eye. “You’re a lot smarter than you were back in the cage,” Clarence said. “You look better too. Back then you were a thing, now you’re almost a person.”
“Thanks… but ‘almost’ is still ‘almost.’”
“Yeah, well, we’re all almost something.”
Nick pulled his feet out of the ground, nearly losing his balance.
“Stop that. You’re making me nervous. And when I get nervous.. .” Clarence didn’t finish the thought. He just grabbed his drink and took a swig, then stood from the bar. “Looks like someone once croaked in a booth back there. Unlucky for him, lucky for you.”
Sure enough, there was a corner booth that had a bright little deadspot on the seat just big enough for an Afterlight to sit on. They went to the booth and sat across from each other.
“You tell Mikey I’m done with this nasty business,” said Clarence. “I want nothing to do with any of you anymore.”
“I understand,” Nick said. “But-”
“No buts!” Clarence slammed his drink down so hard an ice cube leaped out and slithered across the table like a snail. There were tears in Clarence’s eyes now, both the living and the dead one.
“When I touched that boy, I felt something. Something awful. Something I can’t describe.”
“We all felt it,” Nick said.
“You may have felt it, but I caused it.” Then both his eyes seemed to go far away. “Something changed out there. I don’t know what it was, but something in the world changed because that kid didn’t deserve what I did to him-and the powers that be know that I did it.” Nick watched as a tear fell from his Everlost eye and disappeared through the living world table.
“What if,” said Nick, not even sure what he was going to say yet, “what if you were that kid and you were told you could change the world, but you would have to sacrifice yourself to do it?”
Clarence chuckled at the thought. “I believe that question was already asked a long time ago, and that creepy kid did not look anything like Jesus to me.”
“But you do think that something changed…”
“I don’t know whether it’s good or bad.”
“What if it’s neither?” suggested Nick. “What if we get to make it one or the other?”
Clarence finished the rest of his drink and crunched on the remaining ice. “You’re a pain in my derriere, you know that?” Clarence said. “Derriere, that’s French for ‘butt.’”
“I figured.”
Clarence took a long look at his empty glass, his unkempt clothes, and his Everlost hand, which, to his left eye, was nothing more than a shriveled lump.
“You know, I wasn’t always like this,” he said softly.
“Neither was I,” Nick replied. “But maybe… maybe we’ll both find who we once were.”
Clarence looked at him, perhaps seeing more than just the chocolate. Nick thought he caught the slightest hint of a nod, but then the bartender called over.
“Hey! Hey, you in the corner!”
On TV, the news had switched away from the quake, and now was reporting live from the playground disaster. A teacher being interviewed spoke of a disheveled, scar-faced man who had saved them.
“Hey!” yelled the bartender. “Are you the guy?”
Clarence sighed. “Yeah, I’m the guy.”
“That’s great, man. Hey, your drink is on the house!”
“That’s good, because I can’t pay for it anyway.”
Then Clarence left with the invisible chocolate boy before the bartender could call the media.
Nick met Mikey and Allie back at the playground. Clarence kept his distance, hiding his face because reporters still swarmed the accident scene in search of the mysterious scarred hero. Nick then led them halfway across town to the crossed bank, only to find it deserted. The vault was empty and not a single Afterlight was in sight.
“Milos could have left the city by now,” Mikey said, furious at himself for not going after him right away. “He could be anywhere!”
“I don’t understand,” said Nick, peering into the empty vault. “It was full of sleeping spirits. The ‘Angels of Life’ couldn’t have carried them away-there were too many.”
Then they heard a small voice somewhere behind them. “That’s because they all woke up.”
Allie recognized the voice right away. “Lacey?” Allie searched the bank, and found her hiding under the teller counter. She sat knees-to-chest, looking numb. Looking lost. Allie told the others to stay back. The last thing that Lacey needed was an audience. Then Allie knelt down to her and gently asked, “What happened, Lacey?”
“All the kids we reaped woke up. Mary woke up too, and she came to take them away.”
“Mary’s awake?” It was too much for Allie to process. How on earth could Mary be awake? It hadn’t been nine months. Allie had never heard of an Interlight waking up prematurely.
“I was glad Mary woke up at first, because I thought for sure the bad stuff would stop,” Lacey said. Then her voice got soft as if she was afraid Mary might hear. “But then I heard them all talking. Mary likes what Milos did. How could she like it? How could she?” Lacey looked up to Allie, her eyes pleading for an answer.
“I don’t know” was all Allie could say. Then she looked up to see Mikey and Nick peering over the counter. They had both heard. She couldn’t imagine the mixed feelings they must have had-Nick so in love with Mary for so long, in spite of all the awful things she’d done; Mikey struggling to reconcile the memory of his sister with the self-righteous power-hungry spirit she had become. And they didn’t even know the worst of it. Only Allie did, for only she had seen into Mary’s mind.
Allie returned her attention to Lacey. “Do you know where they were going?”
Lacey shrugged. “Kind of. But it didn’t make sense. I heard them talking about chickens. ‘It’s a chicken,’ they said. ‘We’re going somewhere far away, and it’s a chicken.’”
Allie went off with Nick and Mikey to puzzle all this out. Clarence stayed to entertain Lacey, who, amazingly, was not frightened by his creepy appearance. She had dozens of questions about both sides of his face-like whether or not he needed glasses, and how do you find glasses that have half-crossed?
Allie took Nick and Mikey into the vault, and they sat there, a summit meeting of three questionable superpowers: a skinjacker, an ex-ogre, and a part-time monster.
“This is going to be hard to hear,” Allie told them, “but you need to hear it. And then we have to decide what to do.”
Mikey took her hand and smiled at her, but Nick just looked down sullenly. “I’m remembering more and more about Mary,” he said. “I kind of wish I didn’t.”
Allie wasn’t sure how much Nick remembered, and how much Mikey even knew about that fateful day the bridge blew up, so she told them how she helped drag Mary, hair-first, out of Everlost, and into the living world. “When Mary was crammed back
into the living world, she had a body. She was flesh and bone… at least she was before Milos re-killed her. And while she was alive… I skinjacked her. I saw Mary’s deepest thoughts. Everything she hoped for, everything she believed, everything she planned to do.” Allie hesitated, not wanting to say it, but knowing she had to. “Mary believes she was put on earth to bring an end to the living world.”
Both Nick and Mikey just stared at her.
“What do you mean… end?” asked Mikey.
“End means end. Complete and total destruction. She wants to kill everyone and everything. She wants to bring down every building, burn every forest, empty every ocean of life. She wants to turn the earth into a dead planet…”
Nick looked to her with eyes almost as pleading as Lacey’s. “But. .. why would she want to do that?”
“Because to her, Everlost is the only world that matters.”
Mikey nodded, finally understanding his sister’s twisted logic. “And once the living world is gone… anything worth keeping will cross…”
“Exactly,” said Allie. “Imagine a world that’s nothing but the memories of a dead one. That’s the future Mary wants. She wants no future at all.”
No one said anything for a while. Allie silently fantasized that they could close themselves in that vault, and just make the rest of the world go away. But that would be no better than what Mary wanted, would it? So this was their great reunion. Things were much different now than the last time the three of them were together. Allie had thought she was dead, Mikey had been a full-time monster determined to be king of the world, and Nick was just an Afterlight boy with a small smudge of chocolate on his face. For a place that was supposed to stay the same forever, quite a lot had changed for them in Everlost.
Mikey was the first to speak. “She can’t do anything without skinjackers.”
“No,” said Allie, “she can’t.” As a skinjacker, Allie knew that more than anyone. She knew how easy it was to change things in the living world by skinjacking just the right people at just the right time-and there were many ways to end the world if you could slip into anyone anywhere and take them over. But without skinjackers, Mary was completely powerless over the living.
“So it’s not her we have to stop, then,” said Mikey. “We have to end her skinjackers before they end the world. We have to extinguish all of them.”
“No!” The three of them turned to see Clarence standing on the vault threshold. “No! I won’t do it! You can’t make me do that!”
Mikey stood up. “What if it’s the only way to save the world?”
“Then the world’s gonna end!” Clarence pointed an accusing finger at Mikey. “You didn’t blot someone out of the universe! You didn’t feel his soul die. I would rather see everyone go down the tunnel to judgment than ever see another person snuffed into nothing!”
Mikey glared at Clarence’s cold Everlost eye, but then backed down, looking beaten, perhaps even ashamed. After all, Mikey brought Clarence as a weapon. It was Mikey’s fault his weapon misfired.
“The little girl wants you,” Clarence told Allie. “She’s already bored with me.”
“Tell her I’ll be out in a minute.”
Silence fell once more when Clarence left, until Nick, who had been mostly silent, said, “Maybe they all went to Rhode Island.” Allie and Mikey looked at him strangely, and he shrugged a chocolate shoulder. “‘Rhode Island Red.’ It’s a chicken.”
Allie sighed at the thought. “Lacey must have gotten it wrong.”
“Maybe it’s some kind of secret code,” suggested Mikey.
“Well, if we’re going to stop them, we’re going to have to figure out where they went.”
Even though Allie had no need to breathe, she forced her lungs to fill, and let out a long slow breath. “What if we don’t have to find them?” she said. “What if there were a way to stop Mary’s skinjackers without having to know where they’ve gone… just where they’ve been?”
Mikey shook his head. “I don’t follow.”
Allie closed her eyes and shook her head, there was an idea taking form in her thoughts that she did not dare consider, so she shook the thought away before she could even put it into words. “Never mind,” she said. “I don’t know what I was thinking.” Then she went to Lacey, and asked her to point out the direction Mary and her new vapor of Afterlights had gone. While Lacey couldn’t help with a destination, she had no trouble pointing out a direction. They were heading southeast out of San Antonio.
“Body of Christ!” said Clarence, and they all looked at him strangely. He just stared back at them in disbelief. “Don’t you know your Latin? Corpus Christi, Texas. ‘Body of Christ’-although that’s one body I’m sure never set foot on the Gulf Coast. Not even on vacation. If this crazy Mary of yours went southeast, then she’s headed toward Corpus Christi.”
“Right,” said Allie with a sick little grimace. Where else would Mary would go after rising from the dead?
CHAPTER 31
The Road to Corpus Christi
S ince the moment Mary left the safety of her towers more than three years ago, she had felt something pulling her westward. At first, she thought it was the strength of curiosity, a calling to know what lay in the mysterious western Everwilds. But Mary had never suffered from a curious soul. No, there was more to this western gravity-and gravity is exactly what it was. She was compelled by some unknown force to take her and all her children someplace west. It was a place she would know only when she arrived.
Remembering that had helped her stay the course, but Mary was at a crossroads now, a tipping point, and all because of this scar wraith. The touch of a scar wraith was to be feared. Such a vile spirit had no place, no purpose in the world other than to defeat the effort of good souls like herself, and although her heart said west, fear of the wraith-and maybe even of a resurrected Nick as well-was driving her off her true path.
Still, in their southeastern march to Corpus Christi, Mary took the lead, for she always took the lead. There was an old road that had been torn out to build a four-lane highway. This was the road they used, and since they did not have to worry about the maddening softness of the living world, they traveled with relative ease.
“It’s wise of you to come with me to the City of Souls,” Jix told her as they traveled toward the gulf shore. “It will place you at the right hand of the king.” When he spoke, he often stood a bit too close to her, practically whispering in her ear, the sly voice of temptation.
“His Excellency believes in the magic of oracles and of mystics. Right now he has a nasty little spirit who serves as the royal vizier, an advisor, interpreting the stars and giving prophecies-but you could take his place. He’s the one who told the king about you. He’s the one who wanted you captured because of the threat you posed.”
Mary crossed her arms smugly. “I pose no threat to spirits who have good intentions.”
“All the more reason to come to the City of Souls,” Jix said. “If your intentions are pure, things will only go well for you.”
Temptation. It was a tricky thing to grapple with, for it was hard to sort out one’s own personal motives. This kingdom was clearly greater than any Mary encountered in all her years in Everlost. To have access to such a powerful leader and thousands of Afterlights already collected and subdued could be a major step toward her goal. In time she could replace the king and establish her own benevolent rule of kindness and orderly law. But if she went, it would also be fear of the scar wraith driving her, and Mary Hightower had never allowed herself to be motivated by fear.
“You make a persuasive argument,” she told Jix, but never gave him a definitive answer. She knew it was in her best interest to keep her options open and to keep questionable spirits like Jix dangling at the end of her finger.
Jix, however, was no fool. He knew he was being strung along, but he also knew the longer she kept him on the line, the more she risked entangling herself.
He had not lied to her. If he
r intentions were pure, she most certainly would do well in the City of Souls, for the king, as arrogant as he was, had a soft spot for simple, honest intentions.
What Jix didn’t mention was the cost of unpure motives.
If Mary’s intentions were as dangerous as Jix suspected they were, the king would know, and deal with her swiftly and effectively. So, bringing her to the City of Souls would solve the problem of the Eastern Witch one way or another. And no matter what happened, Jix would be rewarded for bringing her there.
This girl was a powerful personality to be sure, but Jix couldn’t help but believe that the feline predator always had the advantage.
Many things became clear to Mary on the trek to Corpus Christi. Her new illumination began when she finally admitted to herself that her own success was entirely dependent on the cooperation of her skinjackers and their commitment to her cause. Which also meant that everything now depended on Milos. In spite of his previous failures, he was now her greatest asset. While Jill was capricious, Jix enigmatic, and Moose, damaged by the loss of Squirrel, Milos was the one she could trust. His devotion was almost embarrassing. He would wait on her hand and foot if she allowed it, but she knew it was best for all involved if he maintained some dignity.
“There are difficult decisions to be made,” Mary told Milos, as they reluctantly rested on the second night of their march. It was an overcast night. Rain pelted the living world tickling their insides, and the Greensouls claimed to be exhausted, refusing to believe they didn’t really need sleep. Their combined afterglow made them a target if the scar wraith was in pursuit, so Mary posted lookouts in all directions, and wandered through the resting horde, giving comfort and courage to those in need. Through all of it, Milos kept her company.
“What are your thoughts on the City of Souls, and this so-called king?” she asked Milos, as they did their rounds.
“I think the ruler of an ancient kingdom will treat you as a piece of furniture,” he answered, clearly having given it plenty of thought himself. “Bringing you there will serve only one person’s interests, yes?”
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