CHAPTER 23

Uptown Boy

While Allie was freeing the innocent, and Mikey was preparing his ultimate weapon, the Neon Nightmares were hunkering down in their lair, lying low.

With the threat of the Chocolate Ogre somewhere in the city above, the Neons had set their security alert on red. All lookouts were given orders to sink themselves if spotted, rather than lead the monster back to the Alamo again. They had been lucky the first time, but would not escape detection a second time.

After the first few days in lockdown, Jill went through a sort of skinjacking withdrawal, aggravated by the adrenaline rush infused into them all by the vortex above. It was like being wired on caffeine twenty-four hours a day, and since sleeplessness was the normal state of Afterlights, it only made things worse. In the Alamo basement, everyone was an insomnoid.

Knowing how hard it was on Jill, Jix decided to give her a gift.

The Crockett Street tunnel was guarded by two Neons whose routine involved endless knock-knock jokes. Unfortunately they only knew about twenty, and so they just kept repeating the same ones over and over.

“I’ll tell you a new knock-knock joke,” Jix told them, “if you let Jill out the back entrance, and let her return without telling Avalon.”

The two Neons agreed that it would all depend on the joke . . . and so Jix introduced them to the Interrupting Cow, which is perhaps the only knock-knock joke in existence that is actually funny.

The joke sent the guards into a giggling fit that lasted the better part of an hour, and it bought Jill the right to come and go as she pleased. When Jix told Jill, she was thrilled by the possibility of escaping the dungeon, if only for a while.

“Why don’t you come with me?” Jill asked, but Jix had inserted himself into so many of the Neons’ routines, he knew his absence would be noticed.

“Go skinjack,” he told her, “but I see no need for you to reap.”

“I’ll do what I want,” she answered.

Jill left first thing the next morning for her day on the town, and once she was gone, Jix went about his own day; the same games, the repeated conversations. In this way he maintained a foothold in the routines of as many Neons as he could—because by becoming a cog in the routine, it gave him the power to bring the gearwork to a grinding halt if he wanted to.

After he made his obligatory rounds, he took some time to visit the root cellar, which was the farthest, darkest room in the maze of the Alamo underground. Few places were actually dark down there, because there were so many Afterlights that their glow illuminated most spaces—but this room was where they put all the Interlights captured from the train—those sleeping souls waiting to be born into Everlost. The Interlights gave the Neons the creeps because they didn’t glow, so Jix could go there and not be bothered.

He found the girl he had inadvertently killed, and sat beside her. He had no idea what her real name was, so he called her Inez. Inez was his sister’s name, and it comforted him to think of this girl in that way. As he sat there, he thought about Jill. It intrigued him that she felt no remorse for the souls she had intentionally brought into Everlost, but also troubled him. It troubled him enough to find his own Afterlight dousing the room into darkness, just as Jill said a truly bad feeling would. He practiced it, strobing his light on and off. He couldn’t say he enjoyed it, but as stealth was an important part of being a scout, the ability to feel miserable, and douse his afterglow, was a skill worth knowing.

Then, at a point when his light was fully doused, he realized there was still a glow in the room. He looked up to see Jill standing there at the entrance to the chamber.

“I thought I might find you here,” Jill said. She wove through the sleeping Interlights, and noticed which one Jix sat closest to. “What is it with you and that girl?”

“I stole her life. The least I can do is look after her.”

Jill crossed her arms and shook her head. “I still don’t get you,” she said, which was fine. Jix still wasn’t sure he wanted to be “gotten.” Then Jill sat down beside him. “You promised you would tell me about yourself. So far you haven’t told me a thing.”

Jix had promised her that, but he also hoped the opportunity would never present itself. His specialties were reconnaissance, stalking, and observing. Putting himself out in the open and making himself vulnerable was something he just didn’t do.

“Don’t you dare make me say ‘please,’” Jill said. “I don’t do the P word.”

“Tell me about your day skinjacking.”

“Don’t change the subject.”

“Did you reap?”

“I said don’t change the subject.”

“You didn’t come to the chamber to find me,” Jix said. “You came to bring a new Interlight, didn’t you? Where did you leave it, in the passageway so that I wouldn’t see?”

Jill looked at him coldly. “I do other things than just reap,” she said. “How do you know I didn’t go to a ball game or eat a lobster dinner?”

“Did you?”

“No,” Jill admitted. “But I didn’t reap, either.” Then she paused and looked away from him. “Maybe it’s like you said; I have better things to do with my ‘hunting instincts.’” She reached out and touched Inez’s hair. It gave off a dark, smooth sheen, reflecting their afterglows. “She has nice hair,” Jill said. “Not all of us are lucky enough to die with nice hair.”

“Now who’s changing the subject?”

She gave him an irritated sigh. “If you must know, I skinjacked a girl in her twenties, which is how old I would be if I wasn’t here. I chose her because she was pregnant, and I wanted to see what it was like to feel a baby kick.”

Jix never dreamed that Jill would have such a thing in mind when she went skinjacking, but he didn’t show her any sign of his surprise.

“I took a long bath,” Jill continued, “. . . and then I brushed her hair.”

Jix reached out to touch Jill’s hand, but she pulled it away before he could. “Your turn,” she said. “Tell me all the things about yourself that you don’t want me to know.”

Since she didn’t back off, Jix had to keep his word. He wouldn’t lie to her, or tell her half-truths. She would probably know if he did. He told her the truth as clearly and as simply as he could.

“I am the long-distance scout for His Excellency, Yax K’uk Mo’, the Supreme King of the Middle Realm. My mission is to find out if Mary Hightower poses a threat to him, and capture her if I can.”

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 runny nose, which would now continue to run for as long as he stayed in Everlost.

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 wanna see a magic trick?” Jix asked. The boy’s answer was a wet sniff. Jix then told him to take out his tissues.

“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 grinned, and wiped his nose.

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 tunnel. A look of resignation came over Avalon, and he heaved a heavy sigh. “All right, then . . .” And before everyone’s eyes, he lurched forward, and vanished in a rainbow twinkling of light.

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.