They went down a narrow alley that opened up to a street with stone-paved sidewalks and crowds of living people. On one side of the street were older, living-world buildings, but their facades were insulted by garish, blinking signs advertising everything from a wax museum to a mirror maze, and across a large plaza was an old stone mission.

“I think itsh the Alamo,” said Moose. “But I thought it would be bigger.”

“Look at it, look at it!” said Squirrel, pointing at the familiar face of the structure.

The entire building, and the stone walls that surrounded the complex almost seemed to be squirming; randomly shifting in and out of focus. The stone itself appeared to swirl in and out of phase, as if it couldn’t decide whether it was in Everlost or in the living world.

“It’s a vortex,” Milos said. Milos didn’t even try to hide his disgust.

“You don’t think they’re in there, do you?” asked Moose.

“You can’t make me go into a vortex!” said the complaining Afterlight—the one who always doubted Milos. “You never know what a vortex will do to you!”

“If you don’t go, what I do to you will be much worse,” said Milos. No one else gave him an argument.

They crossed the plaza, then stepped into the main building, a stone church full of arches and iron chandeliers called “the Shrine.” The ground felt strange beneath their feet; one moment soft, the next moment solid.

“We shouldn’t be here. . . . ,” complained the complainer.

It was midday, and there were way too many tourists for Milos’s taste. He had been denying himself his skinjacking pleasures, putting the search for Mary ahead of his own desires, but having so many living, breathing bodies around him was insanely tempting. “We need to clear this place out,” Milos told Moose. “Go skinjack someone and pull a fire alarm.”

Then a living woman, blueberry-plump in a cranberry pants suit, looked at Milos. Not through him as if he wasn’t there, but at him—and she screamed. The vortex had made at least a part of his face visible for an instant. It was a complication he did not need.

The alarm began to blare before she stopped screaming, and guards ushered the living out. Milos was startled by the woman, but he could not be deterred from his mission. Vortex or not, he was finding the Neons.

After the living left, it was easier for Milos to move through the Alamo grounds and look for signs of Afterlight activity. Unfortunately, the alarm masked any sounds that hiding Afterlights might have made. He sent teams into every building, and through each courtyard and garden of the compound—and while voices in the Long Barracks were promising, they turned out to be the trapped words of soldiers, spoken more than a hundred and fifty years ago. A vortex could be annoying that way.