“She will. You have experience, the new ones don’t. And your experience makes you very valuable to her. So play her game, do her dirty work . . . and find the real names of all of her skinjackers.”

“I can give you two names right now,” she said with a smirk. “Vitaly Milos Vayevsky, and Mitchell Terrence Moessner: Milos’s and Moose’s real names.”

Jix regarded her with wonder. “You’ve always known their real names?”

“Not always,” said Jill. “But when you’re a skinjacker, it’s a good idea to find out the true identity of your friends, just in case they become your enemies.”

Then Jix said something he had never said before, either in life or in Everlost. “I love you,” he told Jill.

“Then you’re an idiot,” she replied, and kissed him hard enough to hurt the living.

CHAPTER 34
Separate Ways

They furjacked the jaguars once more, and headed northwest by night beside the highway, constantly sniffing the air for the scent of skinjacking and perhaps something even more exotic. They found it at dawn, just twenty miles out of Corpus Christi: a powerful scent indefinable and terrifying, like the deep fumes of tornado-torn earth blended with the bitter noxious tang of imminent death, an unearthly scent that could turn a herd into a panicking stampede. “I believe it’s the smell of a scar wraith,” Jix told Jill.

He convinced Jill to wait out of sight, because he suspected anyone traveling with the scar wraith would know Jill and instantly see her as an enemy. Then he quickly put the cat into a deep sleep, peeled into Everlost, and climbed back up to the highway.

There they were: Allie, the wraith, the Chocolate Ogre, and two others that Jix didn’t recognize. One was a small girl with loose laces, and the other a boy who hung close to Allie, in a protective sort of way. Jix might have been wary if he hadn’t already chosen to be on their side.

They stood in a face-off, the little girl hiding behind Allie. “He’s one of them,” she said.

“Stay back,” said the boy close to Allie, and Jix could swear he began to grow horns, or perhaps antennae. No, definitely horns.

But Allie, who knew, or at least suspected, that Jix’s intentions held no danger for them, asked, “Are you here to help us, Jix, or cause us more problems?”

“We share the same problem,” Jix told her. “Her name is Mary.”

Allie hesitated for a moment, then asked, “So where is she?”

Jix chose not to answer that question because it didn’t matter. “Elsewhere,” he said. “I’m sure she and her vapor circled around to the north just to avoid you. And even if you do find her, you won’t defeat her. She’s too cunning, too smart, too good at what she does. You will not stand a chance against her.”