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“Oh, brother,” mumbled Jill, and was shaken again.
Avalon deposited an Everlost coin into the slot. It rattled down into the machine’s mechanism and jangled as it dropped into the coin box. Then he asked his question. “What shall we do with these two prisoners?” Then he pressed a selection button.
Wurlitzer whirred and spun through a number of records.
“How fair is it,” Jix said to his guard, “if he gets to choose the song?”
“Don’t matter what he chooses. Wurlitzer’s got a mind of its own.”
The jukebox finally settled on a song, and through its little window, Jix could see a 45 vinyl record lifted up and dropped on the turntable. The needle moved toward it, the record popped and clicked, and an old crooner’s voice began to sing:
“Please release me, let me go . . .”
The crowd breathed a singular moan and Avalon turned to them. “Silence!” he shouted, as pompously as he could. “Wurlitzer has spoken.”
The guards immediately removed Jix’s and Jill’s bonds.
“I’m glad Wurlitzer didn’t play ‘Fly Me to the Moon,’” said Jill.
As the song continued, Avalon came up to both of them. “I suppose Wurlitzer doesn’t care about keeping you until we get your stupid bucket of coins,” he said. “You’re not important enough to him.”
“How do you know it’s a ‘he’?” Jill asked snidely.
“Shows how little you know,” Avalon said. “For your information Wurlitzer can be a boy or a girl. It all depends on who’s singing.”
When the song ended, Avalon covered the jukebox and the warriors went about their normal business of entertaining themselves much the way Mary’s children had—but the Neons’ games and conversations were wilder and ruder.
Avalon, resigned to Wurlitzer’s decree, said, “All right then, you’re free to go.”
And to Jill’s absolute horror Jix said, “I prefer to stay.”
“What?!”
“You go if you want,” Jix told her. “I want to learn the way of Wurlitzer.”
“Tell me you’re joking.”
“I don’t joke like that.”
Avalon smiled broadly, exposing what looked like railroad tracks in mud. “You want to be one of us?”
Jix didn’t answer, but Avalon took his silence as acceptance. “All right, then! You won’t regret it.” He looked back at the blanket-covered jukebox. “See? There was a reason why Wurlitzer chose to let you go. It was because he knew you would stay.” He looked at Jill, in mild disgust, then pointed to one of the guards. “You—take her upstairs and throw her out.”
“No!” said Jill, clearly furious at Jix. “I guess I can stay for a while. I mean, it’s not like I’ve got anywhere better to go, right?”
“All right then,” said Avalon. “But you don’t get war paint until you prove yourself worthy.”
Jackin’ Jill was not a good girl. She was not a nice girl. In life she had been a constant source of trouble to her family, and was even more trouble as a skinjacker. She always thought her parents would see her coma as a blessing to them, and wondered why they hadn’t just pulled the plug years ago.
Whether or not her sociopathic streak was hardwired or was a reaction to the harsh realities around her, she didn’t know and didn’t care. She liked doing bad stuff. She was bad. That’s what she was always told, and so she had embraced it.
Reaping souls from the living had begun as a way of maintaining status in the inner circle. First in Pugsy Capone’s Chicago, and then for Mary—dear, sweet, goody-two-shoes Mary Hightower, who loved all children, and wanted to protect her widdle babies from the big bad world, by having Jill reap them into Everlost.
Jill didn’t know why she enjoyed reaping. All she knew was that there was an exhilaration in doing something so horribly wrong, and yet being rewarded for it. She would never admit that she had mixed feelings about it. She was good at it, and when her conscience tried to rear its ugly head, she would smack it back down, reminding herself that her only worth was in what she could do.
o;I believe every wayward Afterlight can be rehabilitated. It begins with the purging of living memory, and ends with the joyous discovery of one’s perfect day, to be relived forevermore. On occasion we can find powers we never knew we had—all the more reason to leave behind as many memories as we can!”
CHAPTER 16
