In Everlost the chasing squad car lights were muted, and the voices of emergency workers faint. Allie raced into the theater, but there was no sign of the culprits. They were long gone, leaving only carnage and deadspots—so many deadspots—and each one marked the place where someone’s life had ended.

“Who would do this?” Allie said furiously, knowing that no one was there to answer her. But someone did.

“Us,” said the voice of a young girl. “We would do it.”

Allie turned to see a single Afterlight there, standing all alone in the center aisle. She couldn’t have been any older than seven or eight when she crossed.

“He said Mary wanted us to, but I don’t believe it. Ever since Mary found me in the playground, and took me up in her silver balloon, she’s been nice to me. She would never do such a horrible thing.”

Well, obviously this girl hadn’t been watching when Mary had her skinjackers blow up the bridge—but this wasn’t the time to argue.

“I know you’re Allie the Outcast, but I don’t care. If you do something terrible to me, maybe I deserve it anyway.”

But Allie just took the girl into her arms and held her. Allie never considered herself the motherly type, but this girl needed someone to comfort her from the things she had seen, and maybe the things she had done.

“What’s your name?” Allie asked.

“They call me Lacey.”

Allie could see why. Her shoelaces were untied and must have been that way since arriving in Everlost.

“What happened here, Lacey?”

Lacey closed her eyes. “He told us to do it.”

Although Allie already knew the answer, she had to ask, “Who told you?”

“Milos,” she said. Now it was Allie’s turn to close her eyes and swallow the news. To think that once, she had trusted him. To think that once, she had even been attracted to him. But how could she know way back then, that this type of darkness was lurking inside his heart? How could she know he could become a . . . She couldn’t even say the word. So, holding on to Lacey almost as desperately as Lacey held on to her, Allie asked, “Why?”

“Because we need more,” Lacey said. “More and more and more. That’s what he says.”

“More what?”

And for the first time, Lacey looked her right in the eyes, as if trying to read something there. “More of us,” she said. “More Afterlights. They don’t glow like Afterlights—not yet anyway—but they will once they wake up.”

When the truth hit Allie, it hit with force enough to pound her halfway to the center of the earth, and it might have too, if she wasn’t standing on a deadspot.

More Afterlights . . .

Now it all made sense in a horrible, twisted way.