Nick was all choked up, and it wasn’t just the chocolate. “You have no idea what this means to me, Zin.”

“Does that mean I get to be a lieutenant?”

“Not yet,” Nick told her. “But soon. Very soon.”

Nick would have hugged her if he thought he could do it without covering her in stains.

CHAPTER 22
Cram That Sucker

Zin was a good soldier, and proud of it. Being a ripper didn’t leave a person with much self-respect, so Zin squeezed all the self-respect she could out of her military service. The Chocolate Ogre was now her general, and she would do her job to the best of her ability. A good soldier follows orders. A good soldier doesn’t ask questions. But she couldn’t help but wonder about some of the requests the Chocolate Ogre made of her. Particularly the secret ones he called “special projects.”

The first request involved an all-day sucker. The kind as big as your face, all colorful and sticky, that gets stuck in your teeth when you bite it, and makes your molars hurt. This sucker had crossed over with a little kid who had probably been working on it since the day he crossed over. The thing was half-eaten, and would stay half-eaten no matter how much the kid licked it.

The Ogre took Zin and the sucker-boy to a candy shop— not an Everlost one, but a living-world shop, where fleshies went about their business buying and selling sweets.

“I want you to rip him a new sucker,” the Ogre ordered. Zin couldn’t see why, as this sucker wasn’t going anywhere, but she followed orders.

“Yes, sir. A’ course, sir.”

There was a stand that held suckers like a little metal tree. Zin reached into the living world, and ripped the kid a brand new sucker that was bigger and better than the one he started with. Then she proceeded to rip the old sucker from the boy’s hand—something only she could accomplish—and replaced it with the new one. The boy acted like a kid in a candy shop, which, in fact, he was.

But then things started to get weird.

After the boy ran off hopping and skipping with his new sucker, the Ogre pointed to the old one in Zin’s hand and said, “Now that he’s got a better one, I want you to put this one back.”

Zin was confused. “What do you mean ‘put it back’?”

“I mean exactly what I said. Rip a hole, and put the sucker back into the living world.”