Mary, always an insomnoid, looked out from the beautiful, freshly crossed gazebo at the wonderful ruins of Eunice that night. All her children had found deadspots around the center of town, and either slept, or were engaged in various activities. Only the church was off-limits, for it was full of Interlights.

Mary had assigned two Afterlights who seemed content to tell knock-knock jokes to each other, to be the sentinels of the church.

“When the rest of us leave, you will stay here to guard the ones who sleep,” Mary told them. “And when they awake, you will be in charge. But always remember that it is I who am in charge of you.” Then she had given them a volume of her newest book, penned by hand and painstakingly copied for them by a girl with perfect penmanship who Mary had chosen as her personal scribe.

“Read this,” Mary had told the two jokesters. “Read it daily and when these new souls awake, please have them read it too.”

This was a key part of Mary’s plan. In each place she went, in every location she tore free from the living world, she would leave a team of Afterlights to tend to the sleeping Interlights left behind. Then when they awoke they would have a town to call their own, and would be welcomed into Mary’s extended community.

Yet 178 new Afterlights was just a tiny drop in the bucket. There were more than six billion people in the living world, and one-fifth of those were young enough to be saved by Mary. Even if she did this every single day it would take thousands of years to complete the job. That simply wouldn’t do. The war she had spoken to Milos about simply had to happen: The living had to be turned against one another, but she was still not exactly sure how to bring that about.

As she stood, looking out from the gazebo, a wind blew in the living world, dragging the smoke from the smoldering town westward. Mary could feel her own westward pull as well, stronger now than ever before. The answer to everything lay in that direction, just ahead of her, just past the horizon. Somewhere out there was the center of this strange gravity, and when she found it, when she stood right in the middle of it, she would know exactly what to do.

As she pondered the days ahead, looking out at the smoke, and her Afterlights shining through it, she saw one Afterlight coming toward her. One who wore a helmet. Moose had finally returned, and hopefully with a good excuse as to what had taken him so long . . . but as he got closer, Mary could sense that something was very, very wrong.

* * *