Everfound

Beyond that were dozens of ghosties, all doubled over, moaning in pain. The doctors had said the ghosties weren’t real, and in his confused state, he thought that maybe they were right. He knew how to make them go away, though. All he had to do was cover his dead eye with his dead hand and he couldn’t see them anymore.

He stood up, feeling dizzy, as if he were in a fun house and the world was shifting beneath his feet. With his dead eye covered, all he saw was a massive plain of fused sand with clear skies above it, but the angry swirling maelstrom of a hurricane raging beyond the perimeter. A few yards to his right was a dead soldier with a gun in his hand, and far away, straight across the patch of fused sand, was a jeep.

Clarence didn’t know very much at that moment, but he did know this was not a place he wanted to be. So, with his dead eye covered and his good eye to lead the way, he staggered across the dark expanse of fused sand toward the jeep.

At that same moment, Allie was incapacitated by the pain, but she knew it gave her an advantage. While the others were doubled over, Allie stumbled over to the Afterlight who had handcuffed her, and thrust her hand into his pocket, retrieving the key. Ignoring the pain in her gut, she jammed the key into the small keyhole, turned it, and freed herself from the handcuffs, dropping them on the ground.

“What have I done?” she heard Mary wailing as storm clouds began to billow beyond the deadspot. Allie tried to advance on Mary, but the pain ended as abruptly as it had begun and everyone began to recover. Allie would not make the same mistake twice: Hurling herself at Mary now would result in the exact same situation she had been in a moment ago. She saw that Clarence was gone, and if she escaped, there would come another time, and another place, to battle Mary. Maybe next time luck would be on her side. And so Allie retreated, ru

High up in the catwalks and deep infrastructure of the Hindenburg, the crowded souls of Chitchén Itzá went about their perpetual party, for they had known nothing else for so very long. The mourning pang hit with such unexpected ferocity that they were broken out of the rhythm of revelry, and it took several minutes for them to get things going again. The warriors, crammed like sardines into the passenger promenades, used the pang to help fuel them for battle. “It is a strike against us by the Eastern Witch,” they told one another, “but we shall strike back with twice the force!”

Joh

“That was worse than before,” said Jix, understating the obvious, as he recovered.

“Do you suppose it was Mary who was extinguished?” Nick said, trying to mask his concern.

“No,” said Mikey with authority. “Remember, she’s my sister and we crossed into Everlost together. If she was extinguished, I’d feel it.”

None of them wanted to guess who might have been the victim of this extinguishing, for any speculation led them to answers they didn’t want to consider. Then, as if to give weight to their worries, a sudden rainstorm in the living world hid the view before them and penetrated the ship, pouring through their spirits with such severity it made them shiver. And yet, they could also hear the rain on the Ship’s skin.

“No es possible!” said Jix. “The storm is in both worlds!”

And the Hindenburg began to violently lurch in the raging wind.

In the clear eye of that swirling storm, at the southern edge of the deadspot, Mary and her children had all recovered from the mourning pang, but a sense of dread still filled every soul. Although she was far from the cluster of beds where her latest batch of Interlights had been laid, she knew that they had awoken in this second Great Awakening, and she would soon know how many of them were skinjackers.

The living-world sands just beyond the edge of the deadspot had become inundated so quickly by the rain that it looked like an ocean out there, rather then a desert. Even if they wanted to leave now, they couldn’t, for the living-world sand had become so soft and wet that they would all sink after only a few steps.

“The storm covers the whole world,” someone said.

“Nonsense,” said Mary. “It will pass like all storms.”

The immediate order of business was to locate Allie, but before Mary could organize her Afterlights into a search posse, something within the storm stole their attention. Some children pointed, some even fled, but most took their cues from Mary, and stood their ground as an impossibly huge object emerged out of the blinding sheets of rain, like a planet plunging from the heavens toward them.

Mary instantly knew it was her airship—and it was coming in too fast and too low. The Hindenburg’s nose pushed forth into the airspace of the deadspot, then the low-hanging control gondola, and the ship’s entire underbelly, hit the ground hard, scraping along, knocking over everything in its path until finally it came to rest like a massive beached whale.

When Mary looked into the windows of the passenger compartment, she saw faces—hundreds of faces. All of them angry. All of them foreign. Then, when she lowered her eyes to the windows of the control room, she saw, standing beside the pilot, three spirits she never thought she’d see again.

Mikey, Jix, and Nick.

Mary turned to her children, who all looked to her for strength and solace, and she said to them, “Run!”

CHAPTER 49

The War of Souls

Now, that’s what I call an entrance,” said Joh

Everyone expected King Yax to lead the advance against the Eastern Witch, but the king was still nowhere to be found. With so many souls packed within the higher reaches of the airship’s aluminum skeleton, it was very possible that the king was wedged in with all the humanity, and had yet to make his way out. No one knew for sure.

Without the king to order his subjects about, command of the siege was left to Jix. This was fine with him. While Mikey could play the occasional deity, and Nick could be their conscience, Jix was, and always would be, the hunter. True, he was not a pack hunter, but he did not mind having more than a thousand warriors under his command. Jix had seen fear in Mary Hightower’s eyes when they landed, and for the first time in a long time, he felt the excitement a jaguar feels the moment it smells blood.

With Mary and her children in full retreat, Jix ordered his warriors to pursue them, subdue them, and force Mary’s surrender. There were several problems, however: