thank you for sending them to the train. It makes it easier that way.'
Mary's reaction was not what Nick expected. She tossed back her hair, and shifted her shoulders in proud defiance.
'Oh, but Nick, I think you misunderstood. As I said, I have more than two hundred Afterlights, and I didn't lie.' Then she smiled a terrible smile. 'I have a thousand. That's certainly more than two hundred, isn't it?'
As the words hit him, and he realized what it meant, his own will began to collapse. She had a thousand souls. She would handily defeat his army. Now the pressure inside of him-the pressure he had been holding back since stepping into the vortex-could no longer be held. He felt a dam inside him rupture. His vision blurred and went dark. He felt everything begin to dissolve as the last bit of him gave in to the sickly-sweet cancer. What began as a small stain on his face was now all that remained of him.
'Now, sir?' asked Zin. 'Should I do it now?' Yes, that was it! Although he might not have his victory against her children, maybe he could still have his victory against her.
I give you a gift, Mary, he tried to say, just as he did in his fantasy, but he could no longer speak the words, for his mouth could only make a moaning sound like a cave in the wind. Before his thoughts could become too muddled, he sent Zin forward. 'Now,' he tried to say-and she must have understood, because Zin lunged toward Mary, grabbed her by the shoulders, and began to push.
Mary had thought she had a contingency for everything.
In her mind the Ripper was a minor threat. A nuisance at best. Let the Ripper steal whatever she wants from me, Mary thought. I'll survive. But the moment the Ripper began to push, Mary realized that she had miscalculated. There was a tingling in the back of her head unlike anything she had ever felt before. It moved down across her face to her shoulders as the ripper pushed her backward. What was happening to her? The Ripper wasn't ripping at all!
Mary opened her mouth and gasped-she actually gasped, drawing in a breath of air like a living, breathing person would, and then it finally dawned on her exactly what the Ripper was doing. She was pushing Mary into the living world! How could that be? Was such a thing possible? She didn't want to find out-so she fought back. Grabbing this horrible child, Mary tried to pull herself back into Everlost.
Zin had never felt so strong.
She knew it was the vortex helping her-the vortex had made opening a portal into the living world as easy as slicing butter, and Mary was sliding on through… until Mary began to fight back. As strong as Graceland made Zin, its effect on Mary was even more intense. Mary's greatest asset had always been the sheer force of her will. Now her will was horribly amplified-and Mary did NOT want to be alive!
'This will not happen,' Mary asserted, her voice loud and echoing in both worlds. 'I will not be forced out.'
The commanding sound of Mary's voice sucked away Zin's strength. Mary was halfway into the real world, but she dug her heels in, and each time she spoke, Zin felt weaker.
'I will not be forced out of Everlost!' Inch by inch Mary pulled herself back through the portal.
'I will not be beaten by a by a sniveling, illiterate fool!'
'Help!' Zin cried to Nick. 'Sir! I need your help!'
But Nick was not himself. He was barely anything at all. He was a lumbering boneless mass. His fingers were dissolving until there was not enough of him to reach out, until there was not enough of him to know why he'd even want to.
'Help me!' Zin cried.
What is this all about? thought Nick. Why am I here? What's happening? I have to stop and think. So he crawled away into a corner, leaving bits of him behind as he went.
'I can't do this alone!' yelled Zin
What is that commotion over there? It has to stop so I can think. If only I can clear my mind, I'll know why I'm here. I'll know who I am.
And so the dissolving spirit closed its eyes, and melted into a corner, spiraling down into the bittersweet darkness of its own thoughts, trying to find something to grasp on to that wasn't chocolate. In a moment he was gone, and a layer of chocolate slowly spilled out across the floor like a lava flow, burying the green shag carpet.
Nick had lost. And now Zin was losing, too.
Mary had pulled herself back through the portal into Everlost, and although Zin still grabbed at her, trying to push, it was useless. There was no way she could fight against the monumental force of Mary Hightower's overwhelming presence. Mary pulled the last of her head through, and behind her the portal began to close. She grabbed Zin by the front of her uniform.
'You will be rehabilitated,' Mary bellowed, her will still magnified. 'You will learn to use your powers for good. You will learn to use them for ME.'
Mary took a step forward, but something snagged in her hair. She tried to pull free, but whatever it was pulled back-hard enough make her chin jut upward-and all of a sudden she felt that tingling sensation in her head again. She began to lose her balance, falling backward, and in front of her, the ripper lunged at her once more.
Allie had soul-surfed her way back to Graceland as quickly as she could, but it wasn't fast enough. She arrived too late to save Nick, but she could not let herself mourn what had happened to him. The only way she could help him now was to finish the job he'd begun. She didn't understand what was going on until Mary had pulled herself back into Everlost from the living world. Had Mary been alive? As in flesh-and-blood alive? Well, at least the top half of her had been. This kid in the gray uniform had done it somehow-but now the hole into the living world was closing.
Neither of them had seen Allie lurking there. Good. Quickly she skinjacked a female security guard coming into the room.
From a living world point of view, the Jungle Room seemed perfectly normal-except for an overpowering smell of chocolate, and a shrinking hole in midair the size of a grapefruit. Through that hole Allie could see the back of Mary's head. So Allie took her fleshie and reached through the hole into Everlost, grabbing Mary's hair, and she began to tug with all her might.
As she pulled, Mary fought like a shark on the end of a line, but she had lost her balance. Allie pulled again.
'Let me GO!' Mary demanded. Her will was almost strong enough to send Allie flying away from her, so Allie twisted her hand, making sure her fingers were snagged and knotted in Mary's long copper hair, unable to be freed no matter how Mary worked against her. Then Allie added her other hand as well, pulling on her hair like it was a tug-ofwar.
There were two of them working against Mary now, Allie pulling, and Zin pushing, but it still wasn't enough. Then suddenly there was a third hand in Mary's hair, and a hand pulling on her chin, and two hands grabbed her by the armpits-yet somehow all those hands were Allie's. She had skinjacked a guard-but two tourists had come into the room as well, and Allie was now seeing things through three different sets of eyes.
The Intolerable Nexus of Extremes had a different effect on every Afterlight, and now Allie wasn't just skinjacking a single person, she was skinjacking three at the same time-and all three of them had a single purpose: to pull Mary Hightower out of Everlost, and into the world of the living!
'This will not happen!'
But for all her will, for all her fury, Mary could not fight that many foes. As the tingling passed through her chest, her waist, and down her legs, she knew that there was no stopping this. But if she was going, she was not going alone! She grabbed onto the Ripper, with hands as tight as claws, and pulled on her. Both of them slid through into the living world.
Zin was so focused on pushing Mary, she had no idea what had happened to her until she finally let go and looked around. The strange double-vision view of Graceland was gone. The chocolate flood was gone. Mary stood across the room in shock. One tourist suddenly fainted, and the other tourist screamed at the top of her lungs and ran up the stairs. The guard who had first helped Zin, now stared at Mary in disbelief.
Zin turned around to see the portal shrink down to nothing and vanish. She reached out a hand and tried to create a fresh portal back to Everlost, but the living have no such powers. She was no longer a ripper, she was just a living human girl. She knew, not just because of what she saw-and not just because it hurt when she pinched herself. She knew, because, for the first time in a hundred and fifty years, her cap fell off her head, and tumbled to
