and whispered, “A few years ago, Avalon asked Wurlitzer for a mission, and Wurlitzer played two songs in a row when only one coin had been dropped in. The first song was ‘The Chapel of Love’ and the second was ‘Chattanooga Choo Choo.’ Avalon’s usually pretty good at figuring out what it all means, and he seemed pretty sure about this one too. He made us trek all the way out to this little town called Love, Oklahoma, looking for a chapel that had crossed over-and sure enough, we found one. Then he said we had to lift it up, and move it over to some railroad tracks that had also crossed over. We went home, and nothing ever came of it. Crazy, right?”
“ Si,” Jix agreed, “ loco.” But Jix knew it wasn’t loco at all. The only reason Milos rammed the train into the mansion was because of that church. If that church hadn’t been on the tracks, Milos would never have been led to think the mansion could be knocked off the tracks, too. If it hadn’t been for the church, they would simply have sealed up the train when they saw the Neons coming, like a turtle pulling into its shell-which means Jill and Jix and Mary would not have been here now…
… which meant they were here because of Wurlitzer. Jix felt a phantom shiver run through his entire spirit. Wurlitzer didn’t just advise the Neons on matters of the present; it also anticipated the future-which meant it was truly a force to be reckoned with. Was it friend or foe? Jix wondered. Or was it fickle and unpredictable in its intentions?
When Jix crossed into Everlost, he had taken on the beliefs of his Mayan ancestors-for in this mystical world, a rich tapestry of magical beings suddenly seemed to make sense to him. Mayan gods were often mischievous, reveling in human folly, and there were dozens of them. It would have been less complicated if it came down to Wurlitzer being either the voice of God or the devil-but for Jix, there could be many other alternatives.
Or maybe it was just a talisman, a powerful luck-object. If it were like the coins and the cookies, then it was a messenger of comfort-a lifeline, thrown out to those caught in this middle realm. He wanted to believe that, but the only way to know for sure would be to ask it a question. The machine, however, was always guarded. And besides, Jix had no coin.
Jix discovered that, while Wurlitzer was fed every coin the Neons stole, there was one “emergency coin” inside Little Richard’s piggy bank. One problem, however: The piggy bank was the old-fashioned kind-it didn’t have a rubber plug on the bottom, it was solid all the way around. The only way to get the coin out was to smash the bank.. . but in Everlost, things didn’t break unless it was the object’s purpose to break. One might argue that a piggy bank’s purpose was to eventually be shattered, but the universe would argue back that such a thing could not happen until the bank was full. In such arguments the universe always won. Thus, the piggy bank was about as secure as Fort Knox.
Little Richard spent much of his days holding the piggy bank upside down and shaking it to make the coin come out of the tiny slot. He had been at it for several years.
“It will come out when it wants to,” Jix told him. But that didn’t stop him from shaking the bank.
Jill, who was listening, looked at Jix doubtfully. “You talk like the coin has a mind of its own.”
“Not a mind,” Jix said. “But a purpose. Nothing exists without a purpose.”
Jill smirked. “Did the jaguar gods tell you that?”
Jix knew it was meant as an insult, but he chose not to take it as one. “No,” he answered. “My mother did.”
Jill was not impressed. In fact, she was never impressed by anything. Ever. This fact impressed Jix a great deal. At least once a day, Jill would get in Jix’s face, insisting that they leave. “We’re skinjackers, we need to skinjack,” Jill said to him one day. “Even if you don’t, I do!”
They had been there about a week, by Jix’s reckoning, although the days did blend together-especially when they couldn’t see daylight.
“You would leave Mary?” he asked Jill.
Jill looked over to the glass coffin. It sat like a centerpiece in the common room, like a diamond in the middle of its setting. While Wurlitzer was covered with a quilt, Mary’s glory remained unhidden. More and more Neons had begun to revere the beautiful girl in the green satin gown. They knew nothing of her, had read none of her writings on the nature of Everlost. She arrived here without the thunderstorm of legend that usually preceded her arrival. Yet still, these Afterlights were drawn to her.
Jill considered Mary for a moment more, then said, “I don’t owe her anything, and right now she’s useless to me.”
Jix smiled. “Self-interest suits you, verdad? But sometimes a predator needs to look further than the eyes can see.”
“What are you blathering about? More of that jaguar-god nonsense?”
“No. I’m talking about successful stalking.” He looked around, and saw that the poker kids were beginning to get louder, preparing for their daily fistfight-which included a crowd of others cheering them on. Jix took Jill to the corner farthest away, so they could not be heard. “Cats stalk with their instincts-but you and me-we stalk with our minds. The way I stalked all of you on the train.”
Jill gave him a twisted grin. “You didn’t stalk anyone-we let you stay.”
“Why?” asked Jix. Jill had no answer for him. “I’ll tell you why. Because you never saw me as a threat. And yet I was. I knew you all so well-and had earned the respect of so many of Mary’s children, I could have easily taken over the train if I wanted to.”
Jill looked a little shaken. “Was that your plan? To take over?”
“No,” he told her, then leaned in closer. “But it is now.”
The following day, one of the lookouts-a skinny kid they called Domino-came down from up above, announcing that he had been seen by a group of refugees from the train crash. Avalon was not pleased. “I should push you down myself!” Avalon yelled at him. Then he ordered the Neons to prepare for battle. “We beat them once,” he said, “and we’ll do it again. And this time, we’ll send every last one of them downtown!”
“But they’ve got a monster now,” said Domino.
“What do you mean, monster?”
“I don’t know what else to call it. I’ve never seen anything that strong. And here’s the weird part,” he said, looking around, almost afraid to say it, as if they wouldn’t believe him, “It’s made… of chocolate.”
Jill gasped, then pretended she hadn’t.
“It’s true!” said the lookout, and showed them the brown stains on his clothes where it had grabbed him.
“And you led it right here, didn’t you?” said Avalon in disgust.
The lookout began to stammer. “I… I… I didn’t know what else to do.”
“Imbecile!”
Up above them, in the Alamo complex, a woman screamed and an alarm began to blare. Even though living-world business meant nothing to them, today it added to the tension. The Neons were all looking to Avalon for direction, so he pulled out the one remaining coin from his pocket. “We’ll ask Wurlitzer what to do.” Everyone agreed. He strode toward the machine, tugged off the blanket, and all the Neons fell to their knees. Even Jix did, for fear of angering it, whatever it was. Jill had to be forced to her knees.
Wurlitzer’s light cast a multicolored glow around the common room, caught and refracted by the many bits of glass that made up Mary’s coffin, which sat just a few yards in front of the jukebox. It almost seemed as if her coffin was a part of Wurlitzer now: an altar before the figure of a god. Jix couldn’t help but wonder if Wurlitzer wanted it this way-that even the attention given to Mary somehow reflected back on the mystical machine.
Avalon dropped the coin in and waited for it to clink its way down to the coin box and then he asked his question. “Mighty Wurlitzer, what do we do about this chocolate monster?” He pressed a random button on the machine’s console, and Wurlitzer came to life. It pulled a record from its apparently infinite spinning rack, dropped it on the turntable, and with clicks and pops the song began to play.
“Oh, don’t it hurt, deeeeep inside…” sang a man in falsetto.
“I don’t know this one,” said Avalon.
“What does it mean?” someone asked.
“Shh! Let me listen.” Avalon put his ear to the glass as if that might help his hearing, then he squinted through the next few lines as if squinting might make him smarter. “This is a difficult one.”
