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But the real question was hidden beneath her words. She was more interested in knowing how much time he had left.
“The time will come that my slumbering body dies, and I can no longer furjack, just as that time will come for you.”
“So you know about that. . . .”
Jix nodded. His Excellency had explained to him right away about how his body was in a coma—and how his gift of skinjacking was only a temporary one. “When I can no longer do it—when I become a normal Afterlight, I will find a coin, and pay my passage into the light.”
“You mean you don’t have your coin now?”
“No.” The truth was, His Excellency had his own special use for Evercoins, but Jix wasn’t about to tell Jill that. “Why is your hair like that?” he asked her.
“Tornado,” she answered, and shook her nasty, nettled hair. “You hate my hair, don’t you? Everyone hates it. I don’t care.”
“It’s wild,” he told her. “I like wild.”
She squirmed at that. “How about you?” she asked. “How did you wind up in Everlost?”
“I was attacked in my sleep,” he told her. What he didn’t tell her was that he was attacked by a jaguar that had wandered into the village. He liked to think that maybe he had furjacked that same cat once or twice in his travels.
When the train reached Austin, Jill had asked Jix to join them when they went out reaping. “You can jack a circus tiger,” she suggested, “and eat some really obnoxious kid in the crowd.” Jix couldn’t tell whether or not she was kidding, so he made up an answer that was equally unnerving.
“Humans don’t taste good to a cat,” he told her. “I only eat them when there’s nothing better.”
He did not join them, because he was not convinced the gods would approve of reaping. True, the Mayan gods were fairly bloodthirsty—particularly the jaguar gods—but there was a proper sense of nobility to those ancient stories of carnage. There was nothing noble about reaping.
When they reached Austin, there was finally a dead westbound track, heading toward San Antonio. Southwest, more accurately, but there was a very good chance that once they reached San Antonio, it would become a northwest track, heading toward the western states. Then, right around sunset the next day, as they neared San Antonio, the train came screeching to an abrupt halt.
All of Jix’s senses peaked to high alert, and he instinctively knew there was going to be trouble.
Milos left the parlor car, furious at Speedo for bringing the train to such a jarring stop—but even before he reached the engine, he saw the reason.
“Problem!” shouted Allie from the front of the train. “We’ve got a problem here!”
“I can see that!” Milos shouted back.
Once again, there was a building on the tracks. Speedo had managed to stop the train about a quarter mile away from it this time—but seeing it from this distance was almost worse. It wasn’t something so small and quaint as a clapboard church. You couldn’t even call it a house. This thing was a mansion.
Speedo leaned out of the engine compartment, looking like he was dripping sweat instead of pool water. “H-H-How many Afterlights do you think it took to move that onto the tracks?” asked Speedo, nervously. Milos did not want to consider the answer.
“We’ll send a team to investigate,” Milos said.
The skinjackers now peered out of the parlor car at Milos for an explanation.
“What gives, what gives?” asked Squirrel. “Did you find out why we stopped so hard?”
Then Jix, leaning out of the entrance to the parlor car, pointed over Milos’s shoulder, to the south. “There! Do you see that?”
Milos looked to where he was pointing. Night was falling quickly; the sky was already dark . . . and yet there was light coming from behind a nearby hill.
“Is that a city?” suggested Jill, probably hoping she could go reaping again.
“I don’t think so,” Milos said, his worry building. It looked like headlights in a haze, but the source of the light was still hidden by the hill. “It’s getting brighter.”
Jix released a growl that sounded much more like the real thing than any of his previous attempts. “We can’t stop here!” he told them. “We have to leave. Now!”
“We can’t leave!” Milos told him, pointing to the building in their path.
“Then go backward!” Jix shouted.
