Jix discovered that, while Wurlitzer was fed every coin the Neons stole, there was one “emergency coin” inside Little Richard’s piggy bank. One problem, however: The piggy bank was the old-fashioned kind—it didn’t have a rubber plug on the bottom, it was solid all the way around. The only way to get the coin out was to smash the bank . . . but in Everlost, things didn’t break unless it was the object’s purpose to break. One might argue that a piggy bank’s purpose was to eventually be shattered, but the universe would argue back that such a thing could not happen until the bank was full. In such arguments the universe always won. Thus, the piggy bank was about as secure as Fort Knox.

Little Richard spent much of his days holding the piggy bank upside down and shaking it to make the coin come out of the tiny slot. He had been at it for several years.

“It will come out when it wants to,” Jix told him. But that didn’t stop him from shaking the bank.

Jill, who was listening, looked at Jix doubtfully. “You talk like the coin has a mind of its own.”

“Not a mind,” Jix said. “But a purpose. Nothing exists without a purpose.”

Jill smirked. “Did the jaguar gods tell you that?”

Jix knew it was meant as an insult, but he chose not to take it as one. “No,” he answered. “My mother did.”

Jill was not impressed. In fact, she was never impressed by anything. Ever. This fact impressed Jix a great deal. At least once a day, Jill would get in Jix’s face, insisting that they leave. “We’re skinjackers, we need to skinjack,” Jill said to him one day. “Even if you don’t, I do!”

They had been there about a week, by Jix’s reckoning, although the days did blend together—especially when they couldn’t see daylight.

“You would leave Mary?” he asked Jill.

Jill looked over to the glass coffin. It sat like a centerpiece in the common room, like a diamond in the middle of its setting. While Wurlitzer was covered with a quilt, Mary’s glory remained unhidden. More and more Neons had begun to revere the beautiful girl in the green satin gown. They knew nothing of her, had read none of her writings on the nature of Everlost. She arrived here without the thunderstorm of legend that usually preceded her arrival. Yet still, these Afterlights were drawn to her.

Jill considered Mary for a moment more, then said, “I don’t owe her anything, and right now she’s useless to me.”

Jix smiled. “Self-interest suits you, verdad? But sometimes a predator needs to look further than the eyes can see.”

“What are you blathering about? More of that jaguar-god nonsense?”