Everfound

“Very well,” Jix said. “But not now. There are too many others who can hear us.” And sure enough, a few Neons passed by the saddle room, taking note of them.

Jill nodded her reluctant acceptance. “I really hate you, you know that?” Then she stormed away.

In truth there were several reasons for Jix to stay. Bringing Mary to the king was just one of them. But there was also something about this jukebox which caught in his mind. Only a fool would worship a ridiculous machine—and while the Neons weren’t the smartest, they had been able to avoid detection and resist being conquered by His Excellency. Did the jukebox have something to do with that? Was their devotion to this machine based on something real?

Jix knew there were signs in Everlost. Signs that truly pointed to something beyond all of this. The most obvious ones were the coins: objects which were from neither the living world nor from Everlost, and had the ability to transport a soul to the next world, whatever that might be.

And then there were the fortune cookies—which they knew about even on the Yucatan peninsula, although they were harder to come across there. Everyone knew how in Everlost, all fortunes were true. Each one provided actual guidance, speaking to every Afterlight individually.

There was one time Jix had been sent to scout out a band of Afterlights that had been gathering newcomers in Mexico City with hopes of raising an Everlost Aztec Empire at Tenochtitlan. Thanks to Jix’s help, His Excellency conquered them. Jix was rewarded with one of the king’s own personal fortune cookies. Not just an ordinary one, but one coated in white chocolate—and those were supposed to contain the most powerful fortunes in all of Everlost.

Jix’s fortune had read, “You will free them.”

When His Excellency had asked what it said, Jix told him “The jaguar gods smile on you.” It was the only time Jix had ever lied to the king. That fortune was always at the back of Jix’s mind and he often wondered who it was he was meant to free.

When it came to the jukebox, it also said exactly what needed to be said—so in that sense, it was not all that different from the fortune cookies.

CHAPTER 17

And Then Along Came Mary . . .

A few days later, Mary’s coffin mysteriously disappeared from the root cellar, where all the other Interlights were being kept, and appeared in the middle of the common room. No one knew who had carried it there. Avalon, too proud to admit things were going on behind behind his back, made it seem as if he meant for it to happen.

“You may look at my property,” he told everyone, “but you may not touch it.”

There was a small African-American boy who walked around with a big ceramic piggy bank as if it was his only friend in the world. Everyone called him Little Richard. One day Jix caught him staring at Mary, as if she might open her eyes. Impossible, of course, considering she still had several more months of hibernation before her.

“Wurlitzer meant for her to come here,” said Little Richard. “It’s like that ‘Let It Be’ song. You know, ‘In times of trouble, and all that.’”

“Did Wurlitzer ever play that?” Jix asked him.

“No,” said Little Richard. Then he said with absolute confidence, “But he will when she wakes up.” Clearly he was part of whatever conspiracy had moved her here.

The Neons, fancying themselves a military unit in everything they did, set up a twenty-four-hour watch over Mary’s coffin, in case someone moved her again, or as some Neons secretly believed, she teleported herself to a different location.

By now, both Jix and Jill had come to understand the nature of the Neons’ constant battle-readiness, and why everyone there was macho to the extreme—even the girls.

“This place oughta be called the Abyss of Abysmal Aggression,” Jill told Jix, after getting into an all-out brawl with another girl.

It was Jix who figured it out. “The vortex above us is filled with the adrenalina of all the men who died here, I think. Down here, we still feel its effects. It can turn anyone into a warrior.”

“So how come it doesn’t affect you?” Jill asked.

Jix smiled and puffed out his bare chest. “It doesn’t get more macho than this.”

Jill scowled at him. “You’re an idiot.”

In truth, Jix did feel the effect of the vortex. There was a powerful urge to fight, and to challenge Avalon. But he was also disciplined and knew how to control those impulses. He had to have that much discipline to control the impulses of the cats he furjacked.

By now both Jix and Jill had come to see that the Neons’ various activities were, like so many Afterlights, repetitive day after day until they had become like rituals. The group of kids who played poker, then fought; the girl who read the same book cover-to-cover every day, then fought; the gym-rats who bench-pressed a barbell that would be far too heavy for them to lift in the living world, then fought. Only scouts and lookouts left the cramped labyrinth to search the city for Afterlights with coins, and to protect their hideout from nonexistent attackers. The Neons lived their deaths as if they were an army under siege.

While Jill wanted nothing to do with the Neons, Jix smoothly inserted himself into their routines, just as he had done on the train, making sure that each Neon knew him, and was comfortable with him. Comfortable enough to answer i

“How long has Avalon been high priest?”

“Since Wurlitzer played ‘See You Later, Alligator’ to the last one.”

“How did Wurlitzer even get down here?”

“Probably the Crocket Street tu

“Has it ever played on its own, without someone asking a question?”

“No—why would it?”

There was one girl rumored to have been here so long, she had no memory of being anywhere else. Her name was Dio

“How many songs does Wurlitzer play?” Jix asked. “Thirty? Forty?”

Dio

Her answer confirmed what Jix had suspected; that this machine was not a simple mechanical device. It was something much, much more. Wurlitzer held the memory of every song that anyone has ever loved.

Then he asked the big question: “Has Wurlitzer ever been wrong?”

Dio

“Once,” she said. “But if you ask me, it was Avalon’s mistake, not Wurlitzer’s.” Then Dio

“Sì,” Jix agreed, “loco.” But Jix knew it wasn’t loco at all. The only reason Milos rammed the train into the mansion was because of that church. If that church hadn’t been on the tracks, Milos would never have been led to think the mansion could be knocked off the tracks, too. If it hadn’t been for the church, they would simply have sealed up the train when they saw the Neons coming, like a turtle pulling into its shell—which means Jill and Jix and Mary would not have been here now . . .