Both his feline and human instincts told him to let it be. It was not his problem, or his place to interfere. If the living world was destined to fall, let it happen, let it pass into history once and for all. Who was he to try to save it?
But on the other hand, if the living world were lost, then there would never again be great cats to furjack . . . and couldn’t it be that hearing the actual ticking of the clock gave one the responsibility to stop it?
Chasing Mary, however, would lead to another confrontation, which he knew he would lose. He was not so proud to think that he could best her alone. She was master of what she did. Smarter. Slyer. If he were going to face her, he was going to have to have more cards stacked on his side. He’d have to set a new plan in motion.
He raised his nose to the air, and sniffed in the night—more out of habit than anything else. . . . He never expected he’d pick up the wet-lightning scent of skinjacker in the air. It couldn’t be Moose or Milos—they were long gone, and this scent was coming from the city itself. He followed the scent into Corpus Christi, and tracked it back to where he least expected. The city zoo.
Jill knew this was the closest she would ever come to being with Jix again: hiding within the flesh and fur of a jaguar. She was ashamed of it, but at the same time it gave her comfort. She knew the longer she stayed in the cat’s body, the more she risked being bound to it, but she didn’t care. Let it happen. She had no desire to leave or to be anyone or anything else anymore, and, as Jix had guessed, her spirit was in perfect tune with the cat. Wearing fur made her feel more complete than wearing skin.
She dozed for just a few minutes at a time, licking her emotional wounds. Then when she opened her eyes, she saw another jaguar—a male one—eyeing her curiously.
“Get lost!” she tried to say, but it came out as a halfhearted roar.
Still, the other jaguar just stared at her with eyes that seemed to peer even more deeply than feline eyes should. She thought she recognized something there, and her heart held for a long beat, then pounded powerfully just as the male jaguar pounced, not just knocking her over but knocking her out of her furjacked skin. Now she was back in Everlost, rolling, almost sinking in the living world as she tumbled—and there he was, beneath her, above her, all around her as she rolled.
It was Jix! Jix, hugging and laughing, nuzzling and cuffing her. Jill had to convince herself she wasn’t dreaming inside the cat. This was real, and Jix was truly there!
“How . . . ?” asked Jill. It was the only word she could get out.
“I really do have nine lives, verdad?” he told her, with a wicked grin. Then they pulled themselves out of the dirt of the jaguar pit before the living world left them too deeply grounded. They walked the paths of the zoo alone at dawn, and Jix told her everything. How Milos had caused the yacht to capsize. The way he watched so many of the Neons and poor Inez vanish into the depths. He told her of the slug and the crab, the fish and seal—the boy of so few words now spouted forth more than he’d ever said at one time. Then when he was done, he paused, regaining his stoic composure, and said, as plain and simply as he could, “You must go back to Mary.”
“I won’t!” Jill told him, the suggestion feeling like its own betrayal.
“Listen to me,” Jix said. “Right now we have no eyes or ears among her Afterlights. And her vapor will be growing. You must go back to her, prove to her you are still loyal—even kill more of the living to prove your loyalty if you have to—but you must get back into her inner circle.”
“She has six more skinjackers now,” Jill told him. “She won’t need me.”
“She will. You have experience, the new ones don’t. And your experience makes you very valuable to her. So play her game, do her dirty work . . . and find the real names of all of her skinjackers.”
“I can give you two names right now,” she said with a smirk. “Vitaly Milos Vayevsky, and Mitchell Terrence Moessner: Milos’s and Moose’s real names.”
Jix regarded her with wonder. “You’ve always known their real names?”
“Not always,” said Jill. “But when you’re a skinjacker, it’s a good idea to find out the true identity of your friends, just in case they become your enemies.”
Then Jix said something he had never said before, either in life or in Everlost. “I love you,” he told Jill.
“Then you’re an idiot,” she replied, and kissed him hard enough to hurt the living.
CHAPTER 34
Separate Ways
They furjacked the jaguars once more, and headed northwest by night beside the highway, constantly sniffing the air for the scent of skinjacking and perhaps something even more exotic. They found it at dawn, just twenty miles out of Corpus Christi: a powerful scent indefinable and terrifying, like the deep fumes of tornado-torn earth blended with the bitter noxious tang of imminent death, an unearthly scent that could turn a herd into a panicking stampede. “I believe it’s the smell of a scar wraith,” Jix told Jill.
He convinced Jill to wait out of sight, because he suspected anyone traveling with the scar wraith would know Jill and instantly see her as an enemy. Then he quickly put the cat into a deep sleep, peeled into Everlost, and climbed back up to the highway.
There they were: Allie, the wraith, the Chocolate Ogre, and two others that Jix didn’t recognize. One was a small girl with loose laces, and the other a boy who hung close to Allie, in a protective sort of way. Jix might have been wary if he hadn’t already chosen to be on their side.
They stood in a face-off, the little girl hiding behind Allie. “He’s one of them,” she said.
“Stay back,” said the boy close to Allie, and Jix could swear he began to grow horns, or perhaps antennae. No, definitely horns.
But Allie, who knew, or at least suspected, that Jix’s intentions held no danger for them, asked, “Are you here to help us, Jix, or cause us more problems?”
“We share the same problem,” Jix told her. “Her name is Mary.”
Allie hesitated for a moment, then asked, “So where is she?”