“No!” said Jill, clearly furious at Jix. “I guess I can stay for a while. I mean, it’s not like I’ve got anywhere better to go, right?”

“All right then,” said Avalon. “But you don’t get war paint until you prove yourself worthy.”

Jackin’ Jill was not a good girl. She was not a nice girl. In life she had been a constant source of trouble to her family, and was even more trouble as a skinjacker. She always thought her parents would see her coma as a blessing to them, and wondered why they hadn’t just pulled the plug years ago.

Whether or not her sociopathic streak was hardwired or was a reaction to the harsh realities around her, she didn’t know and didn’t care. She liked doing bad stuff. She was bad. That’s what she was always told, and so she had embraced it.

Reaping souls from the living had begun as a way of maintaining status in the inner circle. First in Pugsy Capone’s Chicago, and then for Mary—dear, sweet, goody-two-shoes Mary Hightower, who loved all children, and wanted to protect her widdle babies from the big bad world, by having Jill reap them into Everlost.

Jill didn’t know why she enjoyed reaping. All she knew was that there was an exhilaration in doing something so horribly wrong, and yet being rewarded for it. She would never admit that she had mixed feelings about it. She was good at it, and when her conscience tried to rear its ugly head, she would smack it back down, reminding herself that her only worth was in what she could do.

And then along came this feline freak, who cut through all of it every time he opened his lousy mouth, and made her see herself in a new light. Jix called her a huntress—and said that there was nothing wrong with it, nothing evil. All she had to do was leave the path she was on, and find a better, nobler path for her tendencies. No one had ever suggested that there could be anything remotely redeeming about her. Did he really believe it?

Jill cornered Jix in a saddle room where half the saddles were crumbling to dust and the other half had crossed into Everlost. It was just one of many hidden chambers in the old Alamo tunnels.

“What were you thinking?” she demanded, pushing him against the wall. “You want to stay here with these nut jobs?”

Although Jill thought she caught him by surprise, Jix had actually seen her coming. He could have dodged her, but he let her rough him up. She needed to get it out of her system, and besides it was the first physical contact they’d had.

“If we left, they would have Mary,” he told her.

“Why do you care about Mary?”