No one said anything for a while. Allie silently fantasized that they could close themselves in that vault, and just make the rest of the world go away. But that would be no better than what Mary wanted, would it? So this was their great reunion. Things were much different now than the last time the three of them were together. Allie had thought she was dead, Mikey had been a full-time monster determined to be king of the world, and Nick was just an Afterlight boy with a small smudge of chocolate on his face. For a place that was supposed to stay the same forever, quite a lot had changed for them in Everlost.

Mikey was the first to speak. “She can’t do anything without skinjackers.”

“No,” said Allie, “she can’t.” As a skinjacker, Allie knew that more than anyone. She knew how easy it was to change things in the living world by skinjacking just the right people at just the right time—and there were many ways to end the world if you could slip into anyone anywhere and take them over. But without skinjackers, Mary was completely powerless over the living.

“So it’s not her we have to stop, then,” said Mikey. “We have to end her skinjackers before they end the world. We have to extinguish all of them.”

“No!” The three of them turned to see Clarence standing on the vault threshold. “No! I won’t do it! You can’t make me do that!”

Mikey stood up. “What if it’s the only way to save the world?”

“Then the world’s gonna end!” Clarence pointed an accusing finger at Mikey. “You didn’t blot someone out of the universe! You didn’t feel his soul die. I would rather see everyone go down the tunnel to judgment than ever see another person snuffed into nothing!”

Mikey glared at Clarence’s cold Everlost eye, but then backed down, looking beaten, perhaps even ashamed. After all, Mikey brought Clarence as a weapon. It was Mikey’s fault his weapon misfired.

“The little girl wants you,” Clarence told Allie. “She’s already bored with me.”

“Tell her I’ll be out in a minute.”

Silence fell once more when Clarence left, until Nick, who had been mostly silent, said, “Maybe they all went to Rhode Island.” Allie and Mikey looked at him strangely, and he shrugged a chocolate shoulder. “‘Rhode Island Red.’ It’s a chicken.”

Allie sighed at the thought. “Lacey must have gotten it wrong.”

“Maybe it’s some kind of secret code,” suggested Mikey.

“Well, if we’re going to stop them, we’re going to have to figure out where they went.”

Even though Allie had no need to breathe, she forced her lungs to fill, and let out a long slow breath. “What if we don’t have to find them?” she said. “What if there were a way to stop Mary’s skinjackers without having to know where they’ve gone . . . just where they’ve been?”

Mikey shook his head. “I don’t follow.”