Текст книги "Everlost"

Автор книги: Neal Shusterman

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 14 страниц)

Nick couldn’t look away from Alary. He was captivated from the moment he saw her. It wasn’t just that she was beautiful—she was also elegant, and her manner was as velvety smooth as her dress. Everyone introduced themselves, and when Nick took Mary’s hand, she smiled at him. He was convinced that her smile was just for him, and although his rational mind told him otherwise, he refused to believe she smiled at everyone that way.

“You must be tired from your journey,” Mary said, turning and leading them deeper into her apartment.

“We can’t get tired,” Allie said.

“Actually,” said Mary, “that’s a common misconception. We do get tired, exhausted even —but it isn’t sleep that refreshes us. We’re refreshed by the company of others.”

Allie crossed her arms. “Oh, please.”

“No,” said Vari, “it’s true. We gain strength from each other.”

“So what about Lief? ” Allie asked. By now, Lief had gravitated to the window, more interested in the view than anything else. “He’s been alone for a hundred years, and he’s got plenty of energy.”

Mary didn’t miss a beat. “Then he must have found a marvelous place, full of love and life.”

She was, of course, right. Lief’s forest had been a sustaining place for him.

Allie didn’t know how to feel about this “Miss Mary.” Allie hated know-it-alls, but in this case, Mary actually did appear to know it all.

“We’ve turned the top floors of this tower into living quarters—but most of them are still empty. You’re free to choose where you’d like to stay.”

“Who said we were staying?” said Allie.

Nick nudged her with his elbow, harder this time. “Allie…” he said between his teeth, “it’s impolite to turn down an invitation in this world. Or in any world for that matter.”

But if Mary was offended, she didn’t show it. “Consider this a rest stop, if you like,” Mary said cordially. “A way station on to wherever it is you’re going.”

“We weren’t going anywhere,” Nick said with a smile. He was trying to sound charming, but instead wound up sounding heavily sedated.

Allie was fully prepared to smack that starry gaze clear out of Nick’s eyes, but she restrained herself. “We were going home,” she reminded him.

“Of course that would be your first instinct,” Mary said with supreme patience.

“You couldn’t be expected to know the consequences.”

“Please stop talking to me like I’m ignorant,” said Allie.

“You are ignorant,” said Van. “All Greensouls are.”

It infuriated Allie that it was true. She, Nick, and even Lief were at a disadvantage.

Vari went over to a cabinet, and pulled out three books. “Here; a crash course in Everlost.” He handed them each a book. “You have to forget what you know about the living world, and get used to the way things are here.”

“What if I don’t want to forget the living world?” Allie asked.

Mary smiled politely. “I understand how you feel,” she said. “Letting go is hard.”

“Tips For Taps,” Nick said, reading from the cover of the book. “‘By Mary Hightower.’ That’s you?

Mary smiled. “We all must do something with our afterlife,” she said. “I write.”

Allie looked at her own volume, impressed in spite of herself. She leafed through the book. Three hundred pages at least, and each page handwritten, with painstakingly perfect penmanship.

Well, thought Allie, we came here looking for answers—and now we’re in the company of the Authority of Everlost. What could be better? Yet for some reason Allie didn’t feel all that comforted.

In her book Death Be Not Dull, Mary Hightower writes, “Afterlight Greensouls are precious. They are fragile. There are so many hazards for them here in Everlost, for they are like babies with no knowledge of the way things are – and like babies they must be nurtured and guided with a loving, but firm hand. Their eternity rests on how well they adjust to life in Everlost. A poorly adjusted Afterlight can warp and distort in horrifying ways. Therefore Greensouls must be treated with patience, kindness, and charity. It’s the only way to properly mold them.”

CHAPTER 8 Dominant Reality Mary Hightower detested being called Mary Queen of Snots, although there was some truth to it. Most of the Afterlights in her care were much younger than her. At fifteen, she was among the oldest residents of Everlost. So when kids closer to her age arrived in her towering domain, she paid extra-special attention to them.

She sensed, however, that Allie was going to be a problem. To say that Mary didn’t like Allie would be a stretch. Mary, quite simply, liked everyone. It was her job to like everyone, and she took it very seriously. Allie, however, was dangerously willful, and could spell disaster. Mary hoped she was wrong, but had to admit that she seldom was. Even her worst predictions came true—not because she had any glimpse into the future—but because her many years in Everlost had made her a keen judge of character.

“The Greensouls are taken care of,” Vari announced after he returned. “The boys chose a room together facing south, the girl chose a room alone facing north.

All on the ninety-third floor.”

“Thank you, Vari.” She gave him a kiss on the top of his curly head, as she often did. “We’ll give them a few hours to settle in, and I’ll pay them a visit.”

“Would you like me to play for you?” Vari asked. “Mozart, maybe.”

Although Mary didn’t feel like listening to music, she told him yes. It gave him pleasure to bring her happiness, and she didn’t want to deny him that. He had been her right-hand man since before she could remember, and she often forgot that he was only nine years old, forever trapped at that age where he wanted to please. It was wonderful. It was sad. Mary chose to focus on the wonderful. She closed her eyes and listened as Vari raised his violin, and played a concerto she had heard a thousand times, and would probably hear a thousand times more.

When the sun sank low, she went to visit the three Greensouls. The boys first.

Their “apartment” was sparsely furnished with flotsam and jetsam furniture that had crossed over. A chair here, a desk there, a mattress, and a sofa that would have to suffice as a second bed.

Lief sat on the floor trying to make sense of a Game Boy. It was an old device by living-world standards, but certainly new to him. He didn’t even look up when Mary entered. Nick, on the other hand, stood, took her hand, and kissed it. She laughed in spite of herself, and he blushed bright red. “I saw that in a movie once. You seemed so … royal, or something, it just seemed like the thing to do.

Sorry.”

“No, that’s fine. I just wasn’t expecting it. It was very…gallant.”

“Hey, at least I didn’t leave behind chocolate on your hand,” he said. She took a long look at him. He had a good face. Soulful brown eyes. There was that hint of Asian about him that made him seem…exotic. The more Mary looked, the deeper his blush. As Mary recalled, a blush was caused by blood rushing to the capillaries of one’s face. They no longer had blood or capillaries – but Greensouls were still close enough to the living world to mimic such physiological reactions. He may have been embarrassed, but for Mary, that crimson tinge in his face was a treat.

“You know,” she told him, gently touching the chocolate on the side of his lip, “some people are able to change the way they appear. If you don’t like the chocolate on your face, you can work on getting rid of it.”

“I’d like that,” he said.

Mary could sense that he was having another physiological reaction to her touching his face, so she took her hand back. She might have blushed herself, if she was still capable of it. “Of course, that sort of thing takes a long time.

Like a Zen master learning to walk on hot coals, or levitate. It takes years of meditation and concentration.”

“Or I can just forget,” offered Nick. “You said in Tips for Taps that people sometimes forget how they look, and their faces change. So maybe I can forget the chocolate on purpose.”

“A good idea,” she answered. “But we can’t choose what we forget. The more we try to forget something, the more we end up remembering it. Careful, or your whole face will get covered in chocolate.”

Nick chuckled nervously, as if she were kidding, and he stopped when he realized she wasn’t.

“Don’t worry,” she told him. “As long as you’re with us, you’re among friends, and we will always remind you who you were when you arrived.”

In the corner, Lief grunted in frustration. “My fingers don’t work fast enough to play this.” He banged his Game Boy against the wall in anger, but didn’t stop playing.

“Mary…can I ask you a question?” Nick said.

Mary sat with him on the sofa. “Of course.”

“So…what happens now?”

Mary waited for more, but there was no more. “I’m sorry … I’m not sure I understand the question.”

“We’re dead, right.”

“Well, yes, technically.”

“And like your book says, we’re stuck in this Everlost place, right?”

“Forever and always.”

“So…what do we do now?”

Mary stood up, not at all comfortable with the question. “Well, what do you like to do? Whatever you like to do, that’s what you get to do.”

“And when I get tired of it?”

“I’m sure you’ll find something to keep you content.”

“I’m not too good at contentment,” he said. “Maybe you can help me.”

She turned to Nick, and found herself locked in his gaze. This time he wasn’t blushing. “I’d really like it if you could.”

Mary held eye contact with Nick much longer than she expected to. She began to feel flustered, and she never felt flustered. Flustered was not in Mary Hightower’s emotional dictionary.

“This game’s stupid,” said Lief. “Who the heck is Zelda, anyway?”

Mary tore herself away from Nick’s gaze, angry at herself for allowing a slip of her emotions. She was a mentor. She was a guardian. She needed to keep an emotional distance from the kids under her wing. She could care about them – but only the way a mother loves her children. As long as she remembered that, things would be fine.

“I have an idea for you, Nick.” Mary went to a dresser, and opened the top drawer, getting her errant feelings under control. She pulled out paper and a pen. Mary made sure all arriving Greensouls always had paper and pens. Crayons for the younger ones. “Why don’t you make a list of all the things you ever wanted to do, and then we can talk about it.”

Mary left quickly, with a bit less grace than when she arrived.

Allie found the paper and pens long before Mary showed up in her “apartment,” or “hotel room,” or “cell.” She wasn’t quite sure what to call it yet. By the time Mary arrived, Allie had filled three pages with questions.

When Mary came, she stood at the threshold until Allie invited her in. Like a vampire, Allie thought. Vampires can’t come in unless invited. “You’ve been busy,” Mary said when she saw how much Allie had written.

“I’ve been reading your books,” Allie said. “Not just the one you gave us, but other ones I found lying around.”

“Good—they will be very helpful for you.”

“—and I have some questions. Like, in one book, you say haunting is forbidden, but then somewhere else you say that we’re free spirits, and can do anything we want.”

“Well, we can,” said Mary, “but we really shouldn’t.”

“Why?”

“It’s complicated.”

“And anyway—you say that we can have no effect on the living world—they can’t see us, they can’t hear us … so if that’s true, how could we ‘haunt,’ even if we wanted to?”

Mary’s smile spoke of infinite patience among imbeciles. It made Allie furious, and so she returned the same “you’re-an-idiot-and-I’m-oh-so-smart” smile right back at her.

“As I said, it’s complicated, and it’s nothing you need to worry about on your first day here.”

“Right,” said Allie. “So I haven’t read all the books yet, I mean you’ve written so many of them—but I haven’t been able to find anything about going home.”

Allie could see Mary bristle. Allie imagined if she had been a porcupine all her quills would be standing on end.

“You can’t go home,” Mary said. “We’ve already discussed that.”

“Sure I can,” Allie said. “I can walk up to my house, walk in my front door.

Well, okay, I mean walk through my front door, but either way, I’ll be home. Why don’t any of your books talk about that?”

“You don’t want to do that,” Mary said, her voice quiet, almost threatening.

“But I do.”

“No you don’t.” Mary walked to the window, and looked out over the city. Allie had chosen a view uptown: the Empire State Building, Central Park, and beyond.

“The world of the living doesn’t look the way you remembered, does it. It looks washed out. Less vibrant than it should.”

What Mary said was true. The living world had a fundamentally faded look about it. Even Freedom Tower, rising just beside their towers, seemed like they were seeing it through fog. It was so clearly a part of a different world. A world where time moves forward, instead of just standing still, keeping everything the way it is. Or, more accurately, the way it once was.

“Look out over the city,” Mary said. “Do some buildings look more…real…to you?”

Now that Mary had mentioned it, there were buildings that stood out in clearer focus. Brighter. Allie didn’t need to be told that these were buildings that had crossed into Everlost when they were torn down.

“Sometimes they build living-world things in places where Everlost buildings stand,” Mary said. “Do you know what happens when you step into those places?”

Allie shook her head.

“You don’t see the living world. You see Everlost. It takes a great effort to see both places at the same time. I call it ‘dominant reality.’”

“Why don’t you write a book about it,” snapped Allie.

“Actually, I have,” said Mary with a big old smirk that made it clear Mary’s was the dominant reality around here.

“So the living world isn’t that clear to us anymore. That doesn’t mean anything.”

“It means that Everlost is the more important of the two worlds.”

“That’s one opinion.”

She thought that Mary might lose her cool, and they’d get into a nice fight about it, but Mary’s patience was as eternal as Everlost itself. Keeping her tone gentle and kindly as it always was, Mary gestured at the city beyond the window, and said “You see all of this? A hundred years from now, all those people will be gone, and many of the buildings torn down to make room for something else – but we will still be here. This place will still be here.” She turned to Allie. “Only the things and places that are worthy of eternity cross into Everlost. We’re blessed to be here—don’t taint it by thoughts of going home. This will be your home far longer than the so-called ‘living world.’”

Allie looked to the furniture around the room. “Exactly what makes this folding table ‘worthy of eternity’? “

“It must have been special to someone.”

“Or,” said Allie, “it just fell through a random vortex.” She held up one of Mary’s books. “You said that happens yourself.”

Mary sighed. “So I did.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t you just contradict yourself? “

Still, Mary lost none of her poise. In fact, she rose to the challenge better than Allie expected.

“I see you’re smart enough to know there are no simple answers,” Mary said.

“It’s true that things sometimes do cross over by accident.”

“Right! And it’s not a blessing that we’re here, it’s an accident.”

“Even accidents have a divine purpose.”

“Then they wouldn’t be accidents, would they?”

“Believe what you want,” said Mary. “Eternity is what it is —you can’t change it. You’re here, and so you must make the best of it. I’d like to help you, if you’ll let me.”

“All right—but just answer me one question. Is there a way out of Everlost? “

Mary didn’t answer right away. For a moment Allie thought she might tell her something she had never written in any of her books. But instead, all she said was, “No. And in time you’ll know the truth of it for yourself.”

In just a few days, Allie, Nick, and Lief came to know all there was to know about life in Mary’s world. The daily routine was simple. The little kids played ball, tag, and jumped rope all day long in the plaza, and when it got dark, everyone gathered on the seventy-eighth floor to listen to stories the older kids told, or to play video games, or to watch the single TV that Mary had acquired. According to Meadow, there were kids out there who traveled the world searching for items that had crossed over, and they would trade them to Mary.

These kids were called “Finders.” One Finder had brought a TV, but it only played TV shows that had aired on the day it crossed over. The same ancient episodes of The Love Boat and Happy Days played every single day during prime time, and presumably would continue to play until the end of time. Strangely, there were some kids who watched it. Every day. Like clockwork.

Nick watched the TV for a few days, amazed at the old commercials and the news more than anything. Watching it was like stepping into a time machine, but even time travel gets dull when you’re constantly traveling to April 8, 1978.

Allie chose not to watch the TV She was already sensing something profoundly wrong with Mary’s little Queendom, although she couldn’t put her finger on it yet. It had to do with the way the little girls jumped rope, and the way the same kids would watch that awful TV every single day.

If Nick felt that anything was wrong, it was lost beneath everything that was right about Mary. The way she always thought of others before herself, the way she made the little kids all feel loved. The way she took an interest in him.

Mary always made a point of coming over to Nick and asking what he was up to, how he was feeling, what new things he “was thinking about. She spoke with him about a book she was working on, all about theories on why there were no seventeen-year-olds in Everlost, when everyone knew eighteen was the official age of adulthood.

“That’s not actually true,” Nick offered. “That’s voting age, but drinking age is twenty-one. In the Jewish religion, adulthood is thirteen, and I know for a fact there are fourteen-year-old Jewish kids here.”

“That still doesn’t explain why kids older than us aren’t admitted into Everlost.”

Admitted to Everlost, thought Nick. That sounded a lot better than Lost on the way to heaven. Her way of thinking was such a welcome relief from his own propensity toward gloom and doom. “Maybe,” suggested Nick, “it’s a very personal thing. Maybe it’s the moment you stop thinking of yourself as a kid.”

Vari, who was lingering at the door, snickered. He had snickered at every single comment Nick made.

“Vari, please,” Mary told him. “We value a free flow of ideas here.”

“Even the stupid ones?” Vari said.

Nick couldn’t really see why she kept Vari around. Sure, he had musical talent, but it didn’t make up for his attitude.

Mary took Nick to show him how her books were made. The sixty-seventh floor was the publishing room. There were thirty kids there, all sitting at school desks.

It looked like a classroom with kids practicing their penmanship.

“We’ve yet to find a printing press that’s crossed over,” she told him. “But that’s all right. They enjoy copying by hand.”

And sure enough, the kids in the publishing room seemed thrilled to do their work, like ancient scribes copying scriptures on parchment.

“They find comfort in the routine,” Mary said, and Nick accepted it, without giving it much thought.

Allie, on the other hand, had begun to understand the nature of the “routines”

these children found comfort in. She grabbed Nick one day, during one of the times when he wasn’t following Mary around.

“I want you to watch this kid,” she told Nick. “Follow him with me.”

“What for?”

“You’ll see.”

Nick was reluctant, but it wasn’t like he had anything pressing to do, so he played along at whatever game Allie had up her sleeve. For Allie, it wasn’t a game, though. It was very serious business.

The boy, who was about seven, was on the plaza playing kickball with a dozen other kids.

“So what are we looking for?” Nick asked, growing impatient.

“Watch,” said Allie. “His team is going to lose. Nine to seven.”

Sure enough, the game ended when the score reached nine to seven.

“What are you telling me? You can tell the future.”

“Sort of,” Allie said. “I can when there is no future.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just follow him.”

Nick was intrigued now. Keeping their distance, they followed the boy into the lobby of Tower Two, where several other kids had gathered with a deck of cards to play go-fish.

Allie and Nick hid behind a pillar, but it didn’t seem to matter—these kids didn’t notice, or care that they were being watched.

“He’s going to ask for threes,” Allie said.

“Got any threes?” the kid asked the girl next to him.

“Go fish,” Allie whispered to Nick. “Got any sevens?”

“Go fish,” said the girl. “Got any sevens?”

Now Nick was a little bit freaked. “How do you know thus?”

“Because it’s the same. Every day. The same score in kickball, the same game of cards.”

“No way!”

“Watch,” said Allie. “In a second the kid we followed here is going to throw down his cards and accuse the little girl of cheating. Then he’s going to run out the third revolving door from the left.”

It happened just as Allie said.

It was the first time since arriving in Mary’s world that Nick felt uneasy.

“It’s like … it’s like …”

Allie finished the thought for him. “It’s like they’re ghosts.” Which, of course, they were. “You know how there are those ghost sightings – people say they see a ghost doing the same thing, in the same place, every day?”

Nick wasn’t willing to let it sit at that. He ran toward the boy before he reached the revolving door. “Hey!” Nick said to him. “Why did you leave the card game?”

“They were cheating!” he said.

“I dare you to go back.”

The boy looked at him with mild fear in his eyes. “No. I don’t want to.”

“But didn’t you play the same game yesterday?” Nick said. “Didn’t they cheat in the same way yesterday?”

“Yeah,” said the boy, like it was nothing. “So?”

The boy pushed through the revolving door and hurried off.

Allie came up beside Nick. “I joined their card game a few days ago. It threw them off, but the next day, they were back to the same old routine.”

“But it doesn’t make sense…”

“Yes it does,” said Allie. “I’ve been thinking about it a lot. You know when you’re listening to music, and the CD starts to skip? Well it’s like our lives are CDs that started to skip on the very last note. We never got to the end, we’re just sort of stuck. And if we’re not careful, we start to fall into ruts, doing the same things over and over and over.”

“…Because there’s comfort in the routine, …” said Nick, echoing Mary’s words.

“Is that what’s going to happen to us?”

“Not if I can help it.”

“We are not like the living,” Mary writes in her book The First Hundred Years.

“We are beyond life. We are better than life. We don’t need to complicate our existence with a thousand meaningless activities, when one will do fine. Just as the world’s great artists learn the value of simplicity, so do we Afterlights learn to simplify. As time goes on, we fall into our perfect routine; our Niche in space and time, as consistent as the rising and falling of the sun.

This is normal and natural. Routine gives us comfort. It gives us purpose. It connects us to the rhythm of all things. One must feel a certain pity for Afterlights who never do find their niche.”

CHAPTER 9

Endless Loop Nick spent the next few days following other Afterlights in Mary’s domain, and it confirmed what Allie had shown him. For these kids, each day had become a repetition of the same day—and although he wanted to ask Mary about it, he didn’t, because he knew she would find some way of giving it a wonderful, positive spin. He wanted to sit with it for a while and think about it himself without Mary’s input.

That didn’t stop him from spending as much time as he could with her, though.

Mary was not routine. Each day was different for her—the kids she spent time with, the things she did. It eased Nick’s mind to know that endless repetition was not an irresistible force. A person had choice in the matter, if they were strong enough.

It was a constant irritation to Nick that he and Mary could never have time alone. Wherever Mary ‘was, Vari was there, too, like her own personal valet. Or like a lap dog. Clinging to Mary kept the boy’s life from becoming repetitive, like the others—although Nick wished Vari would just lock himself in a room, and play endless Beethoven to the walls for a few hundred years.

“Do you always have to hang around her?” Nick asked him. “Don’t you ever want to do anything else?”

Vari shrugged. “I like what I do.” Then he studied Nick with a certain coldness in his eyes. “You’ve been spending lots of time with Mary,” he said. “Maybe it’s time for you to do something else.”

Nick couldn’t quite read Vari’s emotions, only that they were unpleasant ones.

“It’s a free spirit world – I can do what I want,” Nick said.

“She’ll grow tired of you,” said Vari. “She likes you because you’re new, but you won’t be new forever. Soon you’ll be just another Afterlight, and she won’t even remember your name. But I’ll still be here.”

Nick huffed at the suggestion. “She won’t forget my name.”

“Yes she will. Even you will.”

“What are you talking about? “

“Your clothes, and your chocolate-face might cross over with you, but your name doesn’t. Not really. It fades just like any other memory. Soon everyone’ll just call you Chocolate. Or Hershey.” Vari grinned, but it wasn’t a pleasant grin.

“Yeah, that’s it. You’ll be Hershey.”

“No I won’t. And I won’t forget my name.”

“Really,” said Vari. “Then what is your name?”

He was about to answer, when suddenly he drew a blank. It only lasted for a second, but a second was way too long to not remember your own name. It was a profoundly frightening moment. “Uh…Uh…Nick. My name is Nick.”

“Okay,” said Vari. And then he asked: “What’s your last name?”

Nick opened his mouth, but then closed it again and said nothing. Because he couldn’t remember.

When Mary arrived, she noticed the distressed look on Nick’s face immediately.

“Vari, have you been teasing our new friend?”

“We were just talking. If he thinks that’s teasing, that’s his problem.”

Mary just shook her head, and gave Vari a kiss on his curly blond hair. Vari threw Nick a gloating grin when she did.

“Will you escort me to the lobby? There’s a Finder waiting for me, and I suspect he has some interesting things to sell.”

Vari stepped forward.

“No, not you, Vari. You’ve seen Finders before, but I thought Nick might like to learn how to barter with them.”

Now it was Nick’s turn to gloat.

Once the elevator door closed, and Vari was out of sight, Nick put him out of mind, dismissing what he had said—not just about his name, but his certainty that Mary would tire of Nick. Vari, after all, was only nine years old. He was a little kid, feeling little-kid jealousy. Nothing more.

What Nick didn’t realize was that Vari had been nine for 146 years. Little-kid emotions do not sit well after a century and a half. If Nick had realized that, things might have gone differently.

Lief stood in the arcade, staring at the video-game screen, and didn’t dare blink. Move the stick right. Up. Left. Eat the big white ball. The little hairy things turn blue. Eat the hairy things until they start to blink. Then run away from them.

Lief had become a Pac-Man junkie.

There was no telling what caused the old Pac-Man game to cross over all those years ago. Mary had bought it from a Finder who specialized in tracking down electronics that had crossed. Electronics did not cross very often. True, over the years people loved their gramophones, or Victrolas, or 8-track players, or iPods, but in the end, no one “loved” those things with the kind of soulful devotion that would cause the device to cross into Everlost. No love was ever lost on a CD player that broke. It was simply replaced and the old one forgotten. For that reason, Everlost electronics were mostly the result of sunspot activity.

Mary prided herself on keeping current on technology, so that arriving Greensouls would feel somewhat at home. It had taken patience, and work, but over the years, Mary had gotten herself quite a collection of video games, and had turned the sixty-fourth floor into an arcade. There were also countless black vinyl record albums that had crossed, because people did truly love their music, but she had yet to track down a record player on which to play them.

Up. Left. Eat the big white ball. The hairy things turn blue. Eat the hairy things until they start to blink. Run away.

Over and over. The repetition wasn’t so much soothing to Lief as it was compulsive. He couldn’t stop. He didn’t want to stop. Ever.

In the forest he had surely been a creature of habit. He had swung from the trees, playing his games alone—the same games day after day—but that was somehow different. There was no urgency to it. But the endless stimulation from this new-fangled machine demanded his focus in a way the forest never did. Other kids told him it was an old machine—but he didn’t care. The games were all new to him.

Up. Down. Left. Right. Eat. Run.

“Lief, what are you doing? How long have you been here?”

He was barely aware of Allie s voice. He didn’t even turn to look at her. “A while,” he told her. Up. Left. Down.

“I think you’ve been at that machine for five days straight.”

“So?”

“This is wrong. I’ve got to get you out of here! We’ve all got to get out of here!”

But Lief wasn’t listening anymore, because the funny little hairy things had turned blue.

It had been a long time since Greensouls had had such an effect on Mary. Lief was not a problem. He simply brought out in Mary the maternal feelings she had for all the children in her care, but Allie, with her incessant questions and her neurosis of hope, brought up feelings in Mary she would much rather have forgotten, and thought she had. Feelings of doubt, frustration, and a sense of remorse as deep as her towers were tall.

And then there was Nick. The feelings he brought out in her were of a different nature, but just as troubling. He was so very much alive. Everything from his anxieties to the flush of his face in her presence. His bodily memory of life was so charming, so enticing, Mary could spend every minute with him. That was dangerous. It was almost as dangerous as being envious of the living. There were whispered tales of Afterlights whose envy of the living had turned them into incubuses —souls helplessly, hopelessly attached to a living host. This was different, but still, it was a weakness, and she was not in a position to be weak. Too many Afterlights relied on her for strength. With all this on her mind, she found herself distracted, and uncharacteristically moody. And so, when no one was watching, not even Vari, she descended to the fifty-eighth floor, the place she went when she needed silence and solitude.