Yet even though this mission had been botched, Mary was a girl with a positive outlook. In spite of her frustration, she couldn’t help but see the glass as half full. She looked out at her huge cumulus of Afterlights, and quickly came to realize that far from being a failure, the morning had, in an unexpected way, been a grand success. Her children all believed that the disaster had been averted because of the skinjacker’s efforts—which meant they now believed fully and completely that Mary had the power to see and to change the future. After today, they would trust her decisions even more than before, and follow her guidance without question. In this case “failure” made her stronger. Thinking about it lifted her spirits, and left her ready to prepare the next mission—which she knew would be a resounding success. She would make sure of it.

For eleven years, Milos had taken his ability to pop in and out of the living world for granted. To do something as simple as grab himself a burger if he wanted to, or, if the whim struck him, to ski down a white, powdered slope in the body of a fleshie who actually knew how to ski.

Deep down he knew it couldn’t last forever, but Everlost has a way of making one dismiss tomorrow as just another version of today. He never considered what existence without skinjacking would be like, so he wasn’t prepared for the shock of his body dying.

For Milos, it was nothing short of horrific. The constant hunger, with so little food to satisfy it. The slow drift of memories being lost. The relentless chiseling away of one’s identity. How could ordinary Afterlights stand it? What made it worse was the speed at which a skinjacker reverts—as if making up for lost time. Memories didn’t just fade, they were sucked out into a vacuum. Milos suddenly realized his mind, which had been so sharp, was now an open box, and if he took out a memory to treasure, or even to just ponder, it was lost by the mere act of thinking about it. In just one day, he had forgotten his last name—which he had remembered all these years—and he quickly came to realize with increasing dread that he had no yardstick with which to measure the depth of the things he had already forgotten.

“Get over it,” Jill had told him, clearly thrilled at the prospect of his misery. “Learn to be ordinary, I’m sure you’ll excel at it.”