She saw the rightness of Mary’s vision! How Mary had struggled for so long to create a perfect world—for wasn’t that the goal of every society, every culture, every spirit from the beginning of time? To build the perfect world? And not just any world, but one filled with the spirits of children untainted by a life of disappointment and compromise; souls rescued at the purest and brightest moment of human potential! Such a world wouldn’t be complete without things and places to fill it as well. After all, shouldn’t the universe be given the golden opportunity to choose which works of man deserve to remain perfectly preserved forever?

Why, the living world was merely a womb! Yes, the pains of birth are great, but oh, the reward! In the end, the womb must become barren, so that Everlost can shine as the glowing product of love’s labor. It was the perfect formula for eternity: Everlost equals the product of Mary and her children—soon to multiply exponentially!

Allie’s eyes were wide with understanding now . . . except for one thing.

Mary was wrong.

Even though Allie’s soul had been injected with Mary’s overpowering vision, as beguiling as moonlight, Allie knew that Mary’s light was false—a trick, just like the glow of the moon, which is nothing more than a dead rock reflecting the light of something far greater than itself.

The living world is not a womb, Allie would have told Mary if she could. It’s the nursery, the school, the home, and the hearth. It is the source of all possible futures. And Everlost? Everlost is no more and no less than the portraits that hang on life’s walls. This would be a bland and bare universe without Everlost, but like a portrait, its place is on the side, not in the center.

Mary’s coiling of Allie’s soul did not win Allie over. Instead, it transformed Allie’s hatred of Mary into pity . . . for Allie realized that Mary could never escape from the dark place in which she existed. There would never be a doorway of illumination for her. How could there be doorways when you’re blind to everything but the walls?

Their spirits were now so intertwined that Mary could sense exactly what Allie was feeling—and what Allie now felt coming from Mary was a virulent, deadly kind of hatred. The kind of hatred that ends worlds.

Mary pulled back, separating her light from Allie’s. Then she looked Allie dead in the eye and said, “I’ve given you one last chance to do the right and proper thing, but now I know there is nothing right or proper left inside you.” She turned to the Afterlights beside her.

“Would you be so kind as to bring the sarcophagus?”