Everwild (Skinjacker #2)

"We'll be heading north," he told her, his voice raised against the whistling wind. "The Afterlights in Nashville heard rumors of a skinjacking girl up in Illinois."

"Jackin' Jill?"

"One can only hope."

Behind them, Moose and Squirrel milled around impatiently, but Milos took his time. "I hope you find your family," he told Allie. "And once you do, you will see things in a whole different light." Then he kissed her hand, and turned to go.

Moose and Squirrel both gave her quick, obligatory waves good-bye. Then the three of them skinjacked some random fleshies, and they were gone.

Later that day, in a Memphis church, Kevin David Barnes, twenty-four, married Rebecca Lynn Danbury, twenty-two. The groom, a bit scruffy in real life, was quite handsome in his tuxedo, and everyone agreed the bride was the most perfect vision of a bride that anyone had ever seen.

When the minister said those momentous words to conclude the glorious ceremony, Kevin Barnes lifted his new wife's veil to give her that long-awaited kiss. He had no way of knowing that Allie was secretly hiding behind the bride's wild, racing thoughts--not stealing the moment, but lurking within it, hoping to claim the tiniest fraction of it for herself. When the kiss ended, Allie found her spirit bursting into tears. She cried for Mikey, the boy she had lost, for Milos, the boy she had shunned, and she cried because she knew that this moment was someone else's, and she'd never grow to be twenty-two like Rebecca Lynn Danbury. She'd never go to a prom, or walk down the aisle, or be a mother. She was an Afterlight, and Afterlights knew no such things.

Although Allie tried to contain herself, her emotions touched the bride, making her cry as well. And the crowd applauded, so very pleased to see the bride's tears of joy. In her book Tips for Taps, Mary attempts to shed some of her own personal light on Afterlights who suffer from negative emotions.

"Surely sorrow will accompany any Afterlight when they cross from the so-called living world into Everlost--much the way a baby will cry upon being born. This is only natural. However, the healthy Afterlight will quickly put such negative emotions aside, lest they fester into anger or bitterness. I have seen the ravages of bitterness, and it is not pretty.

In Everlost, we have a responsibility to find happiness, and relive that same happiness day after day until eternity finds us filled with joy, and void of anything else whatsoever."

Chapter 15 The Flight of Mikey McGill

Mikey McGill remembered the fateful day he first awoke in Everlost, more than a hundred years ago, when he arrived home with his sister, and realized that they were ghosts. He remembered sinking through the wooden floor, while his sister clung to a bedpost screaming. Neither of them yet understood anything about Everlost, and both were terrified.

But nothing he ever experienced in life, or in death, half compared to what he felt when he saw Milos and Allie kiss.

He had followed them to the party. Until that night, Mikey had resisted the urge to spy on the two of them, but there was only so long he could fight his own curiosity. He kept far behind them, out of view, until seeing them skinjack that disgustingly beautiful couple. Once the two were ensconced in flesh, their eyes would see only the living world, and so Mikey could come right up to them, just inches away, and see it all, without them ever knowing he was there. To Mikey, they now just looked like a living teenage couple, but he knew Milos and Allie were inside them. He could tell by the way they walked and the things they said to each other.

He was there when Milos asked her to dance, and he witnessed Allie's initial reluctance--which gave him a brief moment of hope ... but she gave in far too easily, as if her refusal was nothing more than her being coy.

He watched them dance. He watched them dance close, and then he followed them outside to the pool, where it seemed everyone was a couple.

And then they kissed.

The first kiss was horrifying, and the second was devastating--because it wasn't Milos shoving his lips against Allie anymore--the second kiss was Allie kissing him back. This confirmed everything he suspected, everything he feared--and what made Mikey even more furious was that he had trusted her. How could he have been so stupid?

He screamed at them, a primal wordless howl, but they couldn't hear him.

Mikey knew what he would do to Milos once he was back in Everlost--he would push Milos right through that pool deck so hard, he would have made an express trip to the center of the earth, but Mikey knew if he let his fury loose, once he was done with Milos, he would turn his wrath on Allie, and do the same to her. He couldn't let that happen, and so he ran.

He never saw Allie pushing Milos away.

He never heard her tell him "no."

Mikey's grief and rage was unbearable, and yet familiar-- so much like the rage that filled him when he commanded the Sulphur Queen. And as he ran, he let his fury transform him.

His rage became red-hot spikes erupting from his skin. His frustration became jagged shark teeth, multiplying row after row, and when his mouth couldn't fit them anymore, it stretched. His jealousy pulled his eyes into narrow glaring slits, and his sorrow hardened his Afterlight skin into a shell as hard as steel.

Spiked armor encased him now, his whole body was like the surface of a medieval mace--but it didn't slow him down. His armored shell thundered with each footfall, setting off seismic ripples in the living world that no one could account for. And, fully encased in that armored exoskeleton, he stormed all the way back to Nashville, right into the factory, and the den of Nashville Afterlights.

When they saw this thing, this horrible miscreation before them, they didn't know what to do. Some scattered, others froze in place, others fell to the ground and covered their heads like the world was ending.

Mikey opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. Instead, he vomited his entire being out through that gaping mouth, completely turning himself inside out. The armor folded in behind him, and into him, becoming a jagged skeleton within a veiny, sinewy inner self--a mockery of ruined flesh. His whole body was now an open wound.

"I am the McGill!" he roared in a ghastly, earthshaking voice. "I am the McGill! Look upon me and tremble!"

And they did.

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PART THREE The Great White City In her book Everything Mary Says Is Wrong, Allie the Outcast takes a moment to ponder the hereafter:

"I don't know whether we come to Everlost by accident or by design. Some will say we are abandoned here--lost between the cracks of an unfeeling universe. Others will say we have been selected to be here by an almighty hand, and then they will use that to justify everything they do as God's will.

Whether my ability to skinjack is an accident or intentional, I do know this: I've seen the light at the end of the tunnel, so I know the universe is not cold. I've read the fortunes; they are evidence that we are not alone. And I've seen Afterlights hold their coins, remember who they once were, and finally get where they were going.

I have seen enough to know that there is something beyond Everlost, but the nature of it is just as mysterious here as it is to the living.

So beware those in Everlost who say they know God's will, because they are no different from those who say the universe is soulless and cold. Both are two sides of the same coin, and it's not a coin that will get you anywhere you want to go."

Chapter 16 Mary's Master Plan

It would be untrue to say that Mary Hightower had, from the very beginning, planned the various things she would soon accomplish, and the many things she would soon attempt. Ideas take root, plans blossom, and old ones wither and die--in Everlost, just as in the living world.

Back in her days at the towers, Mary had dedicated herself to taking stray Afterlights under her wing, and finding for them the one activity that would occupy them until the end of time. She believed this to be a noble calling. Nick, however, had dazzled her children with those abominable coins, then dispatched them all into that mysterious light at the end of the tunnel, from which there is no return.

She could not blame the children, for what child could resist such a mystery? It was all Nick's pigheaded wrongmindedness, and she marveled at how much damage a single individual could do to her controlled, perfect little universe.

She hated him with a ferocity and passion that was only matched by how much she also loved him--and the endless conflict of those two emotions made it impossible to go back to the way things were before. She supposed in some ways, she owed Nick a debt of gratitude, because if he hadn't freed her children from Everlost, Mary would never have been rousted out of her own pattern; she never would have seen the larger picture, and she never would have cultivated grander plans.

Certainly she would still gather and protect as many Afterlights as she could, but that would soon become a small part of a master blueprint so massive, it would make Mary light-headed every time she was to think of it.

When she came to Chicago, however, the plan was still merely an inkling--a seedling just beginning to sprout something green. She had yet to realize how deep the roots would take, and how large the limbs would grow.

Chapter 17 The Death Boss

Mary allowed her reputation to precede her. In fact, she pushed it ahead of her with a mighty hand. As the Hindenburg cut a slow path across the sky, she would send out emissaries ahead of her, with copies of her various books. Then those emissaries would strategically spread stories about her to any Afterlights who would listen--which was just about everyone, for Afterlights all love the telling of stories. Mary's disciples would spread tales of wonder, and proudly tell the stories of Mary's many good deeds. If the stories themselves didn't leave kids gaping in awe, the sight of the massive airship descending from the sky certainly would.

Because Mary had a high regard for honesty, she insisted that they be told only that which was true. Of course she handchose her emissaries of good will, selecting loyal Afterlights who would portray her in the most favorable light.

Mary's emissaries arrived in Chicago several weeks before she did, and so, by the time the Hindenburg came in over Lake Michigan, there was not an Afterlight in all of Chicago who had not heard her name and didn't wonder if the stories were true.

Mary had Speedo circle the city three times so every Afterlight below would have a clear view of it. Speedo was clearly apprehensive.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" Speedo asked her. He had asked this over and over again, as if asking might get her to change her mind. "There's got to be a reason why the kids we sent out never came back."

"We'll discover the reason soon enough."

On the second loop above the city, Mary decided where they'd set down. It was a city full of deadspots, thanks to the great Chicago fire--but one place stood out. Mary recognized it as the grounds of the 1893 Columbian Exhibition--a giant world's fair. It was more than a mile across--the largest deadspot Mary had ever seen--and even from this height, Mary could see it was quite literally swarming with Afterlights.

"There," said Mary, pointing at the largest square, in the center of the fairgrounds. "That's where we'll set down."

Speedo quaked in his wet bathing suit. "But shouldn't we land somewhere away from the city? Far, far away?"

"No, Speedo," Mary said calmly. "This time, I want to be right in the thick of it."