The fact was, he loved Allie so intensely it frightened him. There were times when he looked at her that his own afterglow mellowed from pale blue to almost lavender. He realized that love must have its own spectral shade, and wondered if Allie ever noticed it.

His own reaction to Milos caught Mikey off guard. When he was the McGill no one dared challenge Mikey’s authority. He ruled supreme. Although things were different since teaming up with Allie, in all this time, no one had penetrated the little circle he and Allie had made. The two of them were always on the move—other Afterlights they met passed in and out of view like the scenery.

Now, however, their circle had become an unpleasant fellowship of five. It wasn’t Moose and Squirrel that troubled Mikey. Milos was the threat. Milos, and his easy smile, and his exotic accent, and the wispy hint of facial hair that might have been a beard had he lived a year longer. Allie called him charming—and although Mikey knew she had said it just to tease him, it did more than that. It goaded him. It taunted him. Mikey had no idea whether or not Milos was a good spirit, or bad, all he knew was that he hated Milos for simply existing.

For two days as they walked along Interstate 81, and then Interstate 40, nobody skinjacked. This was by Milos’s decree—out of respect for Mikey, so he said. By twilight of the second day, Moose and Squirrel were itching for it. Mikey could tell that Allie was too. As they rested on a set of deadspots, beneath what must have been a particularly lethal overpass, Mikey could see Allie’s restlessness.

“You weren’t like this before,” Mikey said to Allie as they sat on a spot a dozen yards away from the others. “You never needed to skinjack.”

Allie didn’t answer right away, but she didn’t shrug it off either.

“I’ve been skinjacking more lately,” she finally said, “and the more you skinjack, the more you need to. Don’t ask me to explain it, because I can’t.”

“Do you want to be like them?” he asked her, pointing to Moose and Squirrel, who were twitchy and irritable, like drug addicts needing a fix.

“I’ll never be like them,” Allie said, although she didn’t seem too confident. “And anyway, once we get to Memphis, they’ll go their way, and we’ll go ours.”

“And which way is that?”

Again, Allie didn’t have an answer for him. This wasn’t like her—Allie tended to have an answer for everything, even if it was wrong.

“Everything’s changed now,” Allie said, although she didn’t say why.

“I know what’ll happen,” Mikey said. “You’ll see your family, and you’ll take your coin and go. I know you will.”