Subject: We’re in the City of Souls

It’s Jix. Good work Allie with milos & moose. Worried about Jill. King hard 2 convince 2 join us. Mikey says stay safe, allie. Guess what? Hindenburg is here.

Sent from bob’s iphone

After several days home, Jix was getting increasingly anxious. Home simply did not feel like home anymore. All the noise and excitement seemed to pale now that there was something truly worthy of his attention. And someone. Jix would skinjack tourists on a regular basis, using their iPhones, or whatever they had, to check the e-mail address that Allie set up, hoping for a message from Jill, but usually the “stopmarynow” mailbox was either empty or had an update from Allie. The fact that no e-mails had come from Jill was a very bad omen, and made him want to get back to a place where he could help her, or at least find her. He knew that Mikey felt the same about Allie. The distance, and the lack of interest from the king in their cause, made them feel helpless.

From past experience, Jix knew that the king could be conjoled into doing many things if he thought it was his own idea. Such cajoling, however, could take months. Usually time was not an issue, but they didn’t have months. The one good thing was the airship. It could provide them with a fast means of getting them where they needed to go, if only the king would see how serious the threat was. If not, Jix resolved that he, Mikey, and Nick would take it themselves . . . although without the king, his power of unremembrance, and his army, their chances against Mary Hightower were slim.

Johnnie-O and Choo-choo Charlie had no idea where or what Chichén Itzá was when the Hindenburg arrived. All they knew was that being there was heaven on earth. The angels—who turned out not to be actual angels at all, but redheaded kids with wings—brought the drifting airship down from the heavens. The arrival of the giant airship was enough to bring the king out to personally greet them, thinking it might be the long-awaited arrival of the gods. When they turned out not to be gods, the king’s vizier adamantly insisted they be sent to Xibalba, but he was overruled when Johnnie-O presented the king with the bucket of coins. As far as the king was concerned, that bottomless bucket was more valuable than all the gold in Everlost. It was, in short, the greatest tribute that the king had ever received.