“You may not have realized this,” she told the six of them, “but you are very, very special. All Afterlights are special, of course, but you have a purpose and a destiny that makes you more important than you could possibly imagine.”

The youngest boy raised his hand as if he were in a classroom. “Does it have to do with the way we get stuck inside living people?” he asked.

Mary smiled and the warmth of her smile seemed to light the overcast day as brightly as the sun. “You are skinjackers, and part of an elite team now. Milos, Moose, and Jill will show you how to use your powers.” But when Mary turned to Jill, Jill was gone. Mary searched the dock and the living world beyond it, but she was nowhere—and Mary wondered if perhaps she was too harsh on the poor girl. Surely she would realize that Mary had her best interests at heart, and return. Regardless, Mary could not allow this to distract her. There was still one more thing to be done.

“Little Richard,” she called, looking for him in the crowd. “Will you come here, please?”

Little Richard pushed his way through the crowd, his bank now jangling with coins Mary had asked him to gather from all the Greensouls.

“You lost many friends today, didn’t you?”

The boy nodded.

“I want you to close your eyes, make a wish for them . . . and once you’ve made your wish, kiss the bank, and hand it to me.”

Little Richard did as he was told. He made a silent wish, kissed the bank, and put it in Mary’s hands.

Then she cast the piggybank full of all the Greensouls’ coins into the sea.

CHAPTER 33
Creature Discomforts

Jix had plunged to the bottom of the bay. He had seen the others helplessly disappear into the ocean floor beneath him. There was nothing he could do to save them, but he knew he might be able to save himself. It would take split-second timing, the sum of his skills as a skinjacker and the largest amount of luck he had known. He knew it was his only chance. As he fell, nearing the ocean floor, he spread out his arms wide and kept his eyes open for something alive, but there was nothing.

Then, just at the moment of impact on the ocean floor, he felt it: a sea slug not much larger than his finger, squirming in the mud. He leaped toward it, bringing his arms together and squeezing his spirit in upon itself like a collapsing sun, until he found the primitive nervous system of the slug and invaded it, flooding its tiny consciousness with his soul.

Darkness. Numbness, an emptiness of all thought and feeling, and absolutely no sense of time. It was the hardest thing he ever had to bear, to hold his full consciousness in the primitive flesh of a tiny spineless creature. But he did it. He did it long enough to sense a passing crab and he quickly leaped into that. Jix’s consciousness was so great that he killed the sea slug the moment he left it.