Everfound

As the song reached its chorus, both he and Jill were grabbed by dozens of maniacal hands that practically tore them apart as they lifted them off the ground. Downtown! The song sang, Everything’s waiting for you . . .

And as Jix looked one last time at that shining, faceless jukebox, he couldn’t help but feel that it was laughing at him.

The Neons had to take Jix and Jill up before they could push them down. For the first time since the attack on the train, all the Neons climbed the stone steps and walked out through the gift shop wall into the Vortex of the Aggravated Warrior. It was daytime, and although the Alamo was open, it was a slow day. Only a few tourists milled about the grounds in the living world—and none of them within reach of either Jix or Jill. There were so many hands holding them, they could barely move, much less reach out toward a fleshie and skinjack their way to freedom.

“Take them out the front gate,” the Bopper ordered, then he turned to Jix, offering a moment of sympathy. “Sorry,” he said, “but Wurlitzer knows best.” Jill spat at him, which did not help the situation. He scowled at her then turned to the Neons and said, “We’ll throw them into the river. That way, they’ll be sure to sink fast.”

Then, as they were carried out through the Alamo’s main gate, Jix saw a glorious sight.

Boy scouts!

At least twenty of them, milling around just outside the main entrance. Never had Jix been so pleased to see living, breathing human beings.

“Do you see that?” he called to Jill.

“I’m way ahead of you!” she answered.

The Neons, who never paid much attention to the living, just walked right through the mob of scouts, and the moment they did, Jix pushed himself into the first fleshie he came in contact with and—

—candy / candy toys candy / gift shop / twenty bucks / how many toys / how much candy / and a keychain with my name too—

He quickly put the scout to sleep, took full control of his body, then looked around to orient himself. It never ceased to amaze him how the same spot could be so full of turmoil in Everlost, and yet be so calm in the living world. No sign of the Neons anywhere around them. He could just walk away from here, and never have to face any of this again if he wanted to. Jix looked around and caught sight of another scout looking just as disoriented. “Jill?”

The other kid nodded. “In the flesh.”

A few other kids in troop thirteen looked at them fu

“Hey,” said one of the other kids. “Scoutmaster Garber wants us to wait here!” But fortunately the scoutmaster was at the ticket booth, too busy to notice.

Once they were far enough away for no one to hear them, Jill said, “The boy scout look suits you. Now let’s get outta here.”

And although he knew it wasn’t what she wanted to hear, Jix said, “I’m going back.”

“What?” She stared at him, shaking her head. “No! No way! Not this time. If you go back, you go alone.”

“Don’t you see—the Neons don’t know about skinjackers!”

“Yeah,” said Jill. “Lucky for us.”

“More lucky than you think!” Then without any further explanation, Jix peeled out of the scout and returned to Everlost, leaving both the scout and Jill completely bewildered.

In Everlost, the Neons were at a total loss. As far as they were concerned, the two prisoners simply vanished into thin air. It was at least ten seconds until someone asked the obvious question: “Uh . . . where’d they go?”

“I don’t know,” said the Bopper, “but I don’t like it.”

Then, just as quickly as he’d vanished, Jix appeared, standing ten yards away.

“Grab him!” yelled the Bopper, but when they tried, he vanished once more into a flurry of live people, only to appear somewhere else a few moments later.

Now the Neons were scared—which is exactly what Jix was counting on. Then an exceptionally a

“Wh . . . what are you?” someone dared to ask.

It was Jill who answered. “He is the son of the jaguar gods,” she said in a commanding voice, “and the jaguar gods are very . . . very . . . angry!”

Eyes widened, jaws dropped, and some of the smaller kids ran back into the Alamo to hide, but the rest were too shocked to move at all. In fact they were so frozen in place, they were sinking in up to their ankles.

“You mean there really are jaguar gods?” said Little Richard, timidly. “And they’re mad at us?”

“Furious!” Jill said. “But they can be calmed, if you do exactly as Jix says.”

Even though Jix never told her of his plan, she instinctively said all the right things. They were working as a team now! Jix puffed out his chest and matched her commanding tone. “You no longer serve the music machine,” he told them. “You will feed it no more coins, and its name will never be spoken again.”

The Neons all looked to one another. “But . . . But . . .”

“Do as he says, or you will face the wrath of the jaguar gods!” Jill threatened.

Jix wanted to grin at how well their ploy was working, but he kept his face dark and menacing, staring down as many Neons as he could. “You are all now subjects of His Excellency, the Supreme King of the Middle Realm.”

“The who of what?” someone called out.

“Silence!” shouted Jill, clearly relishing every moment of this.

“So . . . there are jaguar gods, and a king?” asked Little Richard.

“Yes,” Jix told them. “But mercy will be shown to those who are obedient . . . and come with gifts.”

“Whaddya mean, ‘gifts’?” the Bopper asked.

“The girl in the glass coffin,” Jix told him. “She will be your gift to the king.” Then he stood there waiting to see what they would do.

The Neons had a very difficult decision to make. For as long as they could remember they had done Wurlitzer’s bidding. Their entire purpose had been to steal coins from stray Afterlights, just so they could hear Wurlitzer “speak.” But Wurlitzer did not move, or disappear, or threaten as this son of the jaguar gods did. In fact, Wurlitzer didn’t do anything without a coin. This gave Jix an advantage—and although Afterlights by their very nature resisted change, they could also adapt when they had to.

The Bopper looked around, gauging the Neons’ reaction to the ultimatum. No one rose in defense of Wurlitzer. The Bopper, who now spoke for all of them, turned to Jix and Jill and made his decision. “What do you want us to do?”

Once Jix made his plans known, the Neons were quick to carry out his orders. They were, after all, an army that was used to doing what they were told—and Jill was more than happy to be their taskmaster.

The first order of business was to move Wurlitzer out of the common room. Jix had them move it into the small room full of old saddles. The Bopper, a bit repentant for how he had treated Jix, led the moving team, and in just a few minutes, this device that everyone had worshiped was now nothing but a relic.

“You know, in all this time, that machine never played a song I liked,” the Bopper said, after setting Wurlitzer in its new resting place. “It’s good that you sent Avalon uptown.”

With Wurlitzer out of sight, Jix hoped it would quickly be out of mind, and when the Neons all began to take off their bright war paint, he knew the machine had truly been defeated.

“We’re leaving here,” Jix told them. “There are boats in Corpus Christi that have crossed into Everlost—enough to carry all of us, and all the sleeping Interlights, south to the Great City of Souls.”

“So . . . ,” said Little Richard, who now followed Jix around. “There’re jaguar gods, a king, and a city of souls?”

“Yes,” Jix told him.