Everfound

If Jill was shocked, she didn’t show it. In this way, she was a lot like him. “The Middle Realm?” she asked.

“What you call Everlost.”

“So . . . there are more like you?”

“There are many Afterlights in the City of Souls . . . but only one like me.”

Jill smiled. “Good,” she said, then she got up to leave. “As far as secrets go, I’d give that a six out of ten.” Then she added, “I thought you were going to tell me you were an alien.”

The next day, one of the Neons’ lookouts found a stray Afterlight.

It wasn’t one of the train refugees; it was a Greensoul, a new spirit, freshly woken from some accidental crossing nine months before.

“He was just wandering around, calling for his mama,” the lookout told everyone. The Neons all laughed at the poor kid, and his lip quivered. He couldn’t have been any older than six. He had a ru

Avalon stomped up to him. “Give me your coin!”

“I don’t got money,” the boy said.

Avalon turned to the Bopper—one of the more intimidating Neons. “Take it from him!” But Jix firmly grabbed the Bopper’s shoulder.

“I’ll do it.” Jix said, and since Jix had become a regular in the Bopper’s daily poker game, he politely said, “Oh, sure, Jix.”

“I didn’t ask you!” Avalon snapped.

“But I can grab the coin without going into the light,” Jix reminded him.

Avalon never changed his unpleasant expression. “All right, then.”

Jix knelt down to the boy. “Do I scare you?” Jix asked.

The boy shook his head, then nodded. “Only a little,” the boy said.

“I won’t hurt you,” Jix told him gently, “but they might, if they don’t get what they want.”

“Yeah, but I don’t got money, just some tissues in my pocket,” the boy whispered.

“You wa

“Now,” Jix said, “unfold them.”

The boy did, and as the tissues spread apart, a coin dropped right into Jix’s open hand. The boy gasped. “Where did that come from?”

“Magic,” Jix said, because indeed it was.

The boy gri

Avalon had no patience for this, or anything else for that matter. “Put it in my shirt pocket,” he ordered Jix. Jix went over to Avalon and gave him a wide smile.

“Here you go . . .”

Then he grabbed Avalon’s hand and slapped the coin right into the center of his palm, forcing Avalon’s fingers closed over it.

“What? No!”

Avalon struggled, but Jix held Avalon’s fist closed. Everyone was so shocked, no one knew what to do.

“No! No!” Avalon shouted. “I’m not ready! I’m not ready!” But apparently he was, because he looked off toward something that no one else could see. No one, that is, but Jix and Jill, for only skinjackers can see someone else’s tu

There was absolute silence. No one spoke until a kid called Foul-Mouth Fabian declared something holy that wasn’t holy at all.

“He sent Avalon uptown!” someone said. “What do we do? What do we do?” But without a leader, no one could agree.

“Send Jix down!”

“Throw Jix out!”

Jill looked at Jix incredulously. “You’re crazy,” she said. “You’ve lost your mind!”

But Jix just winked at her, and said loudly enough for everyone to hear, “Ask Wurlitzer!”

Everyone fell silent again.

“We can’t ask Wurlitzer,” the Bopper finally said. “You gave Avalon the only coin!”

“There’s one more,” Jix reminded him, then he looked to Little Richard. Everyone’s eyes turned to the kid, and he backed away.

“Not my problem,” Little Richard said. But it was. The Bopper pointed to the bank, and Little Richard went to pick it up. Turning the bank upside down, he shook it. The coin just rattled around inside, as it always did. “See?” Little Richard said. “It’s not going to—” And then the coin fell out of the tiny hole and onto the dusty ground.

“No way!” said Foul-Mouth Fabian, although he did squeeze in a third word in the middle.

“Wow . . . ,” said Jill.

“Just like my mother said,” Jix told her. “Todo tiene su propósito. Everything has its purpose.” It had been a wild gamble, but he had a feeling that the coin was waiting for him. It frightened him that he had been right, almost as much as it would have frightened him if he had been wrong.

The Bopper, now taking the role of High Priest, carefully lifted the coin up in his fingertips and went over to Wurlitzer. Then, with his free hand, he pulled off the quilt. Wurlitzer’s neon glow lit the room in shades of yellow, green, and red. The moment the jukebox was revealed, the Neons fell to their knees, including the little Greensoul boy, savvy enough to get with the program.

The Bopper dropped the coin into the machine, and it rolled around, then dropped into the coin box with a clink. Then he said, “Oh, mighty Wurlitzer, what should we do with Jix and Jill?”

“Avalon already asked that,” Jix reminded him. “It said to let us go.”

“That was then,” said the Bopper. “But things change.”

Then he pushed a button, and Wurlitzer came to life, its record bank spi

In her book Caution: This Means You!, Mary Hightower has this to say about Objects of Power, or O.O.P.s:

“One may, on occasion, come across Objects of Power. These are, like many things in Everlost, best left alone. They usually come in the form of a machine that has crossed over—often due to sunspot activity—never because someone loves it. Nobody loves an Object of Power. Thus, love is exactly what it craves. It will, however, settle for subservience. There are those who feel that these objects are possessed by some unknowable spirit, but I say they are merely filled with some faint leftover consciousness of creation, like the irritating static spark when you grasp a door handle on an exceptionally dry day.

Foolish Afterlights will argue until the end of time whether such objects are forces of good or evil—but I know the answer. They are neither. These so-called Objects of Power serve no one but themselves. Therefore if an entity or object:

A) takes something of value from you,

B) claims to know things it can’t possibly know, and

C) draws followers like rotting meat in the living world draws flies;

then lift your slowly sinking feet out of the earth, and run as fast, and as far, as you can, for the thing in question will never do you any good.”1

CHAPTER 24

Face the Music

The smile lingered on Jix’s face, his mouth refusing to accept what his ears were telling him. When you’re alone, and life is making you lonely, You can always go . . . Downtown!

The Neons all looked to one another—this was one song it didn’t take a high priest to interpret. They all listened to a mockingly upbeat woman repeat the word “Downtown” in almost every line as she sang about the city’s energy and itsneon signs.

“It said Neons!” Someone shouted! “The song knows our name!” and they turned to Jix and Jill with sudden singular purpose, becoming a raging mob.

The friendships that Jix had formed, the way he had delicately woven himself into the Neons’ social structure—none of that mattered now . . . because Wurlitzer had spoken.

“Downtown!” shouted the Neons. “They’re going Downtown!”

And all at once Jix realized his folly. It was the coins! They should have been a tip-off. Anything truly helpful—anything truly good—would never demand an Afterlight’s coin. Such theft was reserved for monsters and dictators, and, yes even “His Excellency,” who, when it came down to it, was not excellent at all, only power hungry.