“I’ll tell you a new knock-knock joke,” Jix told them, “if you let Jill out the back entrance, and let her return without telling Avalon.”

The two Neons agreed that it would all depend on the joke . . . and so Jix introduced them to the Interrupting Cow, which is perhaps the only knock-knock joke in existence that is actually funny.

The joke sent the guards into a giggling fit that lasted the better part of an hour, and it bought Jill the right to come and go as she pleased. When Jix told Jill, she was thrilled by the possibility of escaping the dungeon, if only for a while.

“Why don’t you come with me?” Jill asked, but Jix had inserted himself into so many of the Neons’ routines, he knew his absence would be noticed.

“Go skinjack,” he told her, “but I see no need for you to reap.”

“I’ll do what I want,” she answered.

Jill left first thing the next morning for her day on the town, and once she was gone, Jix went about his own day; the same games, the repeated conversations. In this way he maintained a foothold in the routines of as many Neons as he could—because by becoming a cog in the routine, it gave him the power to bring the gearwork to a grinding halt if he wanted to.

After he made his obligatory rounds, he took some time to visit the root cellar, which was the farthest, darkest room in the maze of the Alamo underground. Few places were actually dark down there, because there were so many Afterlights that their glow illuminated most spaces—but this room was where they put all the Interlights captured from the train—those sleeping souls waiting to be born into Everlost. The Interlights gave the Neons the creeps because they didn’t glow, so Jix could go there and not be bothered.

He found the girl he had inadvertently killed, and sat beside her. He had no idea what her real name was, so he called her Inez. Inez was his sister’s name, and it comforted him to think of this girl in that way. As he sat there, he thought about Jill. It intrigued him that she felt no remorse for the souls she had intentionally brought into Everlost, but also troubled him. It troubled him enough to find his own Afterlight dousing the room into darkness, just as Jill said a truly bad feeling would. He practiced it, strobing his light on and off. He couldn’t say he enjoyed it, but as stealth was an important part of being a scout, the ability to feel miserable, and douse his afterglow, was a skill worth knowing.

Then, at a point when his light was fully doused, he realized there was still a glow in the room. He looked up to see Jill standing there at the entrance to the chamber.