Handless gloves gripped her tightly, and carried her to the door. “Come back when you are ready to learn,” the Haunter said.

Then they pulled open the heavy iron door, and hurled her out into the street, slamming the door behind her.

She tried to push herself up on her elbows but found she couldn’t, and realized she was sinking into the middle of the living-world street. She struggled to free herself, but only became more deeply embedded in the asphalt, which seemed more like tar trying to take her down. A garbage truck rolled over her, its wheels rolling straight through her head like it wasn’t there, and it only made her angrier. Angry enough that one of the rear tires blew as it crossed through her.

The truck slammed on its breaks, and pulled over to the side of the street up ahead.

Did I blow out that tire?

But if she did, she didn’t care. Not now. With a heavy force of will, she pulled herself upright. Now standing waist-deep in the asphalt, she worked her legs, and pressed with her hands until she had pulled herself out of the street.

She ran to the door of the Haunter’s lair. For a quick moment she forgot that it was not a living-world door, and slammed into it with full force, as if she could pass through it. She bounced off the solid steel, almost landing back in the street.

She pounded on the door over and over, ramming her shoulder against it. She tried to climb in through windows, but they were eternally blocked with security bars that had crossed into Everlost along with the rest of the building. For hours she tried to find a way in, and by dawn she was no closer to freeing her friends than she had been when she started.

As the jet-dark sky became the motley gray of a stormy morning, the rain turned to sleet, and the pinpricks of rain passing through her became sharp darts of ice. Discomfort, but not pain. Never pain, which just fed her rage. This dead/not-dead state robbed her of her right to feel with her body, and that made the anguish of her soul all the more severe.

Come back when you are ready to learn, the Haunter had said, but Allie already knew she would never be his student. She was no monster, and neither would she study under a monster. She would be back, though. She would come with a force of three hundred kids. Mary’s kids. They would tear the place down brick by brick if they had to, until there was not even a ghost of a ghost of a building.

Allie ran all the way back to the great marble plaza that marked the boundaries of Mary’s towering domain, and hurtled straight through a revolving door, ignoring the surprised looks of the kids on lookout. She raced into the elevator with such speed that she hit the back wall. The entire elevator shook, the doors closed, and in an instant she was surging upward.