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Milos looked back to the church, and wondered what Mary would do . . . but he wouldn’t be getting advice from her anytime soon.
As he strode alongside the train, considering the situation, Jackin’ Jill came up to him. As always, her blond hair was wild and full of nettles, as if she had been attacked by a tumbleweed. Was it Milos’s imagination or were the nettles in her hair multiplying?
“If you’ve gotten us stuck again, then we should go skinjacking,” she said. As a skinjacker, she, like Milos, was much closer to life, and did not settle as easily into daily routines. But Milos knew Jill didn’t just want to go skinjacking. When she wanted to possess the living, she had a darker purpose in mind.
“Call it what it is,” said Milos. “You don’t want to go skinjacking. You want to go reaping, don’t you?”
“My last orders from Mary were very clear,” Jill said. “I won’t put everything on hold just because you’re a wimp.”
Milos turned on her sharply. He would never strike a girl, but Jill often brought him to the very edge of his temper. “What I did for Mary proves I am anything but a coward.”
“So why do you only let us reap once a week?”
“Because there needs to be limits!” Milos shouted.
“Mary’s vision has no limits, does it?” The fact that Jill could stay calm made him even angrier, but he resolved to calm himself down. Losing his temper gave her control, and he was the one in charge here. He had to remember that.
“The difference between you and me,” said Milos, “is that I reap because it is what Mary wants. But you do it because you enjoy it.”
Jill did not deny it. “In a perfect world,” she said, “shouldn’t we all enjoy our jobs?”
Milos agreed to lead the skinjackers on a reaping excursion that night, but under the strictest of rules. “We will take no more than we can carry, and I will choose where and when.”
“Whatever floats your boat,” Jill said, caring only that she would get her chance to do her dirty work.
Moose and Squirrel were also part of the skinjacking team, bringing their number to four. Although Allie was also a skinjacker, Milos knew she would never come reaping, even if he did set her free from the train.
“Can I take two, Milosh?” Moose asked. “Pleashe?” Moose was a linebacker who had made his unfortunate crossing into Everlost during a high school football game. As such, he was doomed to wear a blue and silver football uniform. That uniform included a helmet and an eternal mouth guard stuck between his teeth, so everything he said came out slurred.
“Yeah, yeah,” said Squirrel, “Moose can carry mine back to the train.”
“Thatsh not what I meant!” said Moose.
Squirrel was a twitchy rail of a kid. Milos never knew the manner in which Squirrel had crossed into Everlost, only that his exit from the world of the living had been supremely embarrassing, as evidenced by the way Squirrel’s cheeks and ears would go red at the mention of it. Since Afterlights had no flesh or blood, one had to be severely embarrassed for the distant memory of blood to turn one’s face red.
o;Why don’t you just give up,” suggested Allie, who was in the perfect position to heckle them. “After all, Milos, you should be used to failure by now—and you’re so good at it!”
He glared at her. “Maybe we should crash right through it,” Milos suggested, “using your face as the battering ram.”
Allie shrugged. “Fine with me,” she said, knowing that it was impossible for her to be hurt in Everlost. “I just want to see the look on your face when the train derails and sinks to the center of the earth.”
Milos just grunted, knowing she was right. One would think that ramming a wooden building would just shatter it, and the train would chug on through—but Everlost was not the living world. The church had crossed into Everlost, and things that cross into Everlost are permanent. They can’t be broken, unless it was their purpose to break. They can’t be destroyed unless destruction is what they were designed for. So crashing into the church was likely to derail the train, since the church’s memory of staying put was probably more powerful than a speeding locomotive.
“How did it even get here?” Speedo asked, fuming. As the engineer, he had a singular mission: get the train moving. Anything other than forward momentum was his own failure as far as he was concerned. Typical for a thirteen-year-old. Milos, who had crossed into Everlost at sixteen, was a bit more calm about it. Still, Allie secretly relished the fact that every problem they came across made Milos look less competent in his role. Charisma went only so far.
“It got here,” Milos calmly explained, “because it was built and torn down before the tracks were.”
“So,” said Speedo, impatient as ever, “why is it in our way?”
Milos sighed, and Allie chimed in her response. “Because, genius, if the living world tears two things down in the same place, and both cross into Everlost, we’re stuck with both of them.”
“We didn’t ask you!” snapped Speedo.
“But she is right,” Milos admitted. “Mary called it ‘jamnation.’”
“Right. And then there’s ‘Marification,’” Allie added. “That’s Mary Hightower making up words so she’ll sound smarter than she really is.”
Speedo glared up at her. “You shut up about Miss Mary, or your new place will be inside the boiler.”
