Without even touching him, she knew. Without holding a mirror to his lips to check for breathing, she knew.

She sat in the chair beside the bed, wrapped her arms around her chest, and began rocking back and forth, sobbing his name over and over. She wailed with the deepest grief she had ever known . . . and yet somewhere within that grief was secret gratitude that after so many years, she had finally been given permission to cry.

CHAPTER 37
Skinless

It happened in an instant. One moment Milos was skinjacking a worker, preparing to blow the entire gas main, and the next moment, he wasn’t skinjacking at all. He was just standing on the plant floor, slowly sinking into the living world.

Something had changed.

He could sense it—a sudden lightness, a sudden disconnection. The living world, which always seemed a bit blurry and faded, seemed even more so now—one step further removed. There was a panic in Milos, and with it came a sense of irretrievable loss that he could not put into words. He tried to deny it, refused to even think about what it might mean, and he attempted to skinjack the worker again. He stepped right through the man, and out the other side. Milos did not feel flesh, nor did he hear a single thought.

“No!”

He leaped again and again, but it was like leaping at shadows. Finally Jill and Moose peeled out of their hosts, and stared at him.

“What’s wrong with you?” Jill asked.

“Nothing,” Milos insisted. “Get on with the mission.”

But neither of them moved. Now the other skinjackers were peeling out of their hosts as well, wondering what was going on, and Milos was at the center of their attention. He screamed in fury, and leaped at every living blur that moved around him, but it was hopeless.

“I’m stopping the mission,” said Jill.

“No, you can’t stop the mission. I’m the lead skinjacker. I give the orders.”

“Sorry,” said Jill, “but you can’t be the lead skinjacker if you can’t skinjack.”

Mary’s children were overjoyed that the disaster was prevented. Mary, however, was not—but she was wise enough not to show her disappointment. If Milos had been able to rupture the gas main, the resulting explosion would have taken out several residential blocks. The story would have been much different. The fact that he could no longer skinjack posed a whole set of problems she would have to quickly address.