“What is this, some sorta funhouse?” asked Zin, but Nick suspected there was no fun to be had for anyone but the tourists. This is a vortex, Nick realized. He sensed it would be wise to leave, but he said he would meet Mary here, and he wouldn’t go back on his word.

He had come with a team of Afterlights, but told them to wait outside, as he went in with Zin. They moved through rooms that alternated between elegant and absurd, and the air was filled with the faint echoes of a thousand parties. Of course, all the living heard was “Love Me Tender” pumped in through the speaker system, but they were beginning to notice an uncanny aroma of chocolate.

Toward the back of the mansion, Nick and Zin found the infamous Jungle Room, full of leopard- and zebra-skin furniture and green shag carpeting—not just on the floor, but on the ceiling, too. There they waited for Mary.

Nick didn’t feel well at all, and this was troubling, because you couldn’t feel sick in Everlost. Yet there was a fever burning within him, rising from the deepest part of his soul, radiating out.

Zin nervously doodled on her prop notepad to pass the time. “What if she don’t come?”

“She’ll come,” said Nick.

When all the clocks in the house struck five, and Mary hadn’t arrived, Nick began to worry. Mary was never late, and with each passing minute Nick felt worse.

“She’s not comin’” said Zin. “Let’s get outta this place, it gives me the creeps.”

“She’ll be here.”

Nick’s fever peaked, and then it finally broke. He began to sweat, but as he tried to wipe it away, he realized it wasn’t perspiration he was sweating. It was chocolate.

Please let her come soon, he thought.

Nick had arrived twenty minutes early. Mary arrived ten minutes late.

She approached Graceland alone with no outward fear, but she could not deny that inwardly she was terrified. Not fear of Graceland, but fear of her own reaction when she saw Nick. The plan, she thought, stick to the plan. Speedo had his part, Milos and the skinjackers had theirs, and so did she. Mary comforted herself in knowing that she had the moral high ground over Nick, which meant that if there was any justice in the universe, she would be properly rewarded for her efforts today.

Twenty of Nick’s Afterlights stood outside the Graceland mansion, looking at the troublesome way it shifted in and out of focus. As Mary approached, they parted, staring at her in awe and in fear, but she only smiled at them.

“Take heart,” she told them. “Whatever your worries, I promise things will be better for you from now on.” Then she walked into the vortex.