“She doesn’t know what she’s talking about!”

“Then all the more reason to help her, if you know things she doesn’t.” And when Mary didn’t say anything more, Nick put his cards on the table. “If you don’t help then I’ll go there without you.”

“That,” said Vari, slumped in a chair in the corner, “is the best idea I’ve heard yet.”

They both ignored him. “The McGill will destroy you,” Mary said. “You can’t fight him.”

“You’re probably right, but if you won’t help, I’ll have no choice but to go alone.”

Mary turned away, and pounded a fist against a window. Nick couldn’t tell if she was angry at him or herself. “I … I … can’t …”

Nick was not bluffing, and soon Mary would realize that. He knew his feelings for her were strong, but he also knew that some things were stronger. “I love you, Mary,” he said, “but there are things I have to do, even if you won’t.” And he turned to leave.

She called to him before he reached the door. Nick had truly thought she wouldn’t, because, in his experience, when Mary made up her mind, the case was closed. But maybe she was changing, too.

“I won’t put my children in danger,” she said again, fiddling nervously with the locket around her neck. “But I can’t leave a thousand children in the McGill’s hands either. So I’ll go with you.”

“What!” said Vari.

Nick wasn’t expecting that either. “But … but that won’t help. We need an army to fight the McGill.”

But apparently Mary knew better, as Mary always did.

Mary had a secret cache of clout that ran deeper than anyone knew. In other words, she could get her hands on things that most Afterlights could only dream about, were they able to dream. Today, she had arranged luxury transportation: a ghost train out of old Penn Station.

She did not say good-bye to the children, because she didn’t want to worry them. She left Meadow in charge, and Vari, who refused to be left behind, became the third member of their traveling party. “Do you think I’m going to let you take all the glory?” Vari told Nick as the three of them trudged uptown. “One way or another I’m going to end up on top. Just see if I don’t!”

“Personally,” said Nick, “I think you’d look best hanging upside down by your ankles.”

Vari sneered at him. “You’ve got more chocolate on your mouth than ever. Pretty soon it’ll cover your whole stupid face.”

Nick shrugged. “Mary doesn’t seem to mind.”

Nick suspected that if Vari had had his violin he would have kabonged him over the head.

“Will you two stop,” chided Mary. “We’re supposed to fight the McGill, not each other.”

Actually, Nick found himself enjoying his bickering with Vari—maybe because he finally had the upper hand.

It was dusk by the time they reached old Penn Station—a glorious stone-faced, glass-domed building that had been torn down half a century ago, in the questionable name of progress, and replaced with a miserable underground rat warren beneath Madison Square Garden. The new Penn Station was generally considered the ugliest train station in Western civilization, but luckily, the old Penn persisted in Everlost, if only out of its own indignation.