Then, just a few minutes after they had gone, Allie was visited by the strangest spirit. A boy that seemed part cat. Clearly this was not one of Mary’s children.

“I thought you were bound by a spell,” he said as he approached, “but now I can see it’s nothing but rope that has crossed into Everlost.”

Allie had seen all sorts of body modifications in Everlost—some intentional, some not—but few were as exquisite as this boy’s. “Who are you?” Allie asked. She waited for an answer, but he gave her none.

“They fear you,” he said. “If they didn’t, they wouldn’t treat you this way.” She knew it was true, but it didn’t change her sense of powerlessness.

“Are there many of you?” Allie asked. “Are you going to attack the train?” If there was a whole army of cat-kids, then this could be a good thing. If they saw Milos and the others as enemies, then they could see Allie as a friend, and might free her.

“I am here as a guest of the Eastern Witch,” the cat-boy said, which, again, did not answer her question.

“There is no Eastern Witch,” Allie told him, taking a little bit of pride in the fact. “She won’t be back, no matter what her children think.”

The cat-kid raised an eyebrow. “Then who is it who sleeps in the last car?”

At first she thought she had misheard him. Then she thought he was making some sort of joke. Then she realized he didn’t have a sense of humor. He was dead serious. But if Mary was in the last car, she wasn’t just sleeping, she was hibernating. She was in transition between life, and—

“No!” Allie didn’t want to believe it. “No! Milos didn’t! He couldn’t have . . . he wouldn’t dare!” But she knew he would dare. Milos was audacious to an extreme—he would have no compunction about killing Mary, then pulling her out of the tunnel. It explained so many things. It explained why they were still pushing westward, following Mary’s directive, as if she’d be coming back.

Allie had thought that the one consolation of being on the front of a moving train was knowing that they were moving away from Mary. . . . Little had she known that Mary was with them all along.

This was the worst of all possible news—because Allie had seen into Mary’s mind, and knew the monster she was. Allie knew what Mary planned to do.

“You have to help me,” Allie said to the cat-kid. “Mary can never be allowed to wake up.”

“And why is that?”

“Because she plans to end the living world. She means to kill everyone and everything.”

CHAPTER 6
Cat on a Cold Tin Roof