So what should we do with all this stuff?” Allie asked Nick as they looked out at the Trinity deadspot, sitting fifteen feet high on a sofa piled on top of a dozen other sofas.

“Leave it all here,” said Nick. “If anyone left in Everlost needs furniture, we’ll know where to send them.”

Allie could see in Nick a kind of peaceful resolve, but also a certain sorrow deep in his eyes. Or maybe it was just a reflection of her own sadness at having to give Mikey over to the light. Both she and Nick lost someone they loved today, but in very different ways.

“I’m sorry,” Allie said.

“Don’t be,” Nick told her. “You know what they say—what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger, right?”

“Well, sure,” said Allie. “But being that you’re already dead, I don’t know if that applies.”

Nick laughed. “You don’t have to worry about me. The light didn’t take me, but it did give me some pretty cool door prizes.”

“It took away the chocolate, for one,” Allie said.

“Yeah, but that’s only part of it. I remember now, Allie. I remember everything! Who I was, who I am, and even who I will be.”

“Oh, so now you can see the future?”

“Not exactly,” said Nick. “But I know my place in it.”

“And that would be . . . ?”

Nick smiled at her. It was a genuine smile. “I’m the new Mary.”

Allie leaned away from him and the sofa shifted treacherously on the pile. “That’s not funny,” she said.

“No, I’m serious,” Nick told her. “That’s why I felt so connected to her. It was in her heart to help and protect everyone who came to Everlost, but she couldn’t separate herself from her calling. Once it became all about her, it got sick and twisted until it destroyed her and almost destroyed the world.”

“So how do you know that won’t happen to you, too?”

Nick shrugged. “Because I turned to chocolate. Because I was melted and got put back together again. Because I saw what happens when you believe you’re the most important person in the universe. It all sort of humbed me, you know?”

Allie thought about that, remembering how helpless she felt inside the coyote. She had always been an ambitious girl, but that awful experience had taught her that there were more forces at work in a balanced world than her own willpower; there was nature, there was wisdom, there was knowledge and understanding. Without life’s humbling experiences, Allie could have been just like Mary Hightower.

Allie looked off to where Jix talked to the skinjackers. Not just SoSo, Sparkles, and the lot, but the new ones that Mary had so successfully created too. Twenty-three of them, to be exact.

“Do you believe that everything happens for a reason?” Allie asked Nick, as she watched them.