“I understand that skinjackers can’t skinjack forever,” Mary said, “and that Jill has been skinjacking much longer than you.”

“Jill has been in Everlost for more than twenty years, I have been here for four,” he told her. “I do not think she will be able to skinjack for much longer.”

She looked at him a bit differently than before, as if she were searching his eyes, and Milos held the gaze, hoping she would find whatever she was looking for. “I know you’re not like Jill,” she said, “but there may come a time that I will need you to do what she does… .” They were standing close now. Close enough to be deep within each other’s afterglow.

“If I asked you to, Milos, would you do it for me?”

He knew the question was coming, but he didn’t want to believe she would ask it. There was no more hiding behind a gentle gaze and inscrutable eyes. He needed to make a choice. What Mary called “saving innocent children,” would be called something very different in the living world. It would be called murder. Would he do that for Mary? Should he? His own words came back to him. “You should never be afraid to tell anyone ‘no’,” he had once told Allie—but if he said no to Mary, he would lose everything. He would lose her. Losing Mary was not an option for Milos, and once he realized that—once he realized what he truly wanted, the choice became clear.

“Would you do it, Milos? Would you do it if I asked?”

He took Mary’s hand, and his afterglow blushed lavender. “Yes,” he told her. “I would do anything for you.”

PART SIX
City of the Dead

CHAPTER 31
On the Banks of Eternity

The city of Memphis is gone.

This once great river city—the very center of civilization—now lies in ruins, eternally buried by time and river silt. That is to say, the Egyptian city of Memphis, capital of ancient Egypt when that kingdom was at its height, over 3,000 years ago. The great palaces have crumbled, and the towering stone obelisks, once wonders of the upper and lower Nile, have fallen like trees, and now lay hidden beneath farmland.