Everfound (24 page)

“Send Jix down!”

“Throw Jix out!”

Jill looked at Jix incredulously. “You’re crazy,” she said. “You’ve lost your mind!”

But Jix just winked at her, and said loudly enough for everyone to hear, “Ask Wurlitzer!”

Everyone fell silent again.

“We can’t ask Wurlitzer,” the Bopper finally said. “You gave Avalon the only coin!”

“There’s one more,” Jix reminded him, then he looked to Little Richard. Everyone’s eyes turned to the kid, and he backed away.

“Not my problem,” Little Richard said. But it was. The Bopper pointed to the bank, and Little Richard went to pick it up. Turning the bank upside down, he shook it. The coin just rattled around inside, as it always did. “See?” Little Richard said. “It’s not going to—” And then the coin fell out of the tiny hole and onto the dusty ground.

“No way!” said Foul-Mouth Fabian, although he did squeeze in a third word in the middle.

“Wow . . . ,” said Jill.

“Just like my mother said,” Jix told her.
“Todo tiene su propósito.
Everything has its purpose.” It had been a wild gamble, but he had a feeling that the coin was waiting for him. It frightened him that he had been right, almost as much as it would have frightened him if he had been wrong.

The Bopper, now taking the role of High Priest, carefully lifted the coin up in his fingertips and went over to Wurlitzer. Then, with his free hand, he pulled off the quilt. Wurlitzer’s neon glow lit the room in shades of yellow, green, and red. The moment the jukebox was
revealed, the Neons fell to their knees, including the little Greensoul boy, savvy enough to get with the program.

The Bopper dropped the coin into the machine, and it rolled around, then dropped into the coin box with a
clink
. Then he said, “Oh, mighty Wurlitzer, what should we do with Jix and Jill?”

“Avalon already asked that,” Jix reminded him. “It said to let us go.”

“That was then,” said the Bopper. “But things change.”

Then he pushed a button, and Wurlitzer came to life, its record bank spinning like a wheel of fortune. Everyone waited in anticipation, and Jix grinned, wondering what song it would choose.

T
he smile lingered on Jix’s face, his mouth refusing to accept what his ears were telling him.
When you’re alone, and life is making you lonely, You can always go . . . Downtown!

The Neons all looked to one another—this was one song it didn’t take a high priest to interpret. They all listened to a mockingly upbeat woman repeat the word “Downtown” in almost every line as she sang about the city’s energy and itsneon signs.

“It said Neons!” Someone shouted! “The song knows our name!” and they turned to Jix and Jill with sudden singular purpose, becoming a raging mob.

The friendships that Jix had formed, the way he had delicately woven himself into the Neons’ social structure—none of that mattered now . . . because Wurlitzer had spoken.

“Downtown!” shouted the Neons. “They’re going Downtown!”

And all at once Jix realized his folly. It was the coins! They should have been a tip-off. Anything truly helpful—anything truly
good
—would never demand an Afterlight’s
coin. Such theft was reserved for monsters and dictators, and, yes even “His Excellency,” who, when it came down to it, was not excellent at all, only power hungry.

As the song reached its chorus, both he and Jill were grabbed by dozens of maniacal hands that practically tore them apart as they lifted them off the ground.
Downtown!
The song sang,
Everything’s waiting for you . . .

And as Jix looked one last time at that shining, faceless jukebox, he couldn’t help but feel that it was laughing at him.

The Neons had to take Jix and Jill up before they could push them down. For the first time since the attack on the train, all the Neons climbed the stone steps and walked out through the gift shop wall into the Vortex of the Aggravated Warrior. It was daytime, and although the Alamo was open, it was a slow day. Only a few tourists milled about the grounds in the living world—and none of them within reach of either Jix or Jill. There were so many hands holding them, they could barely move, much less reach out toward a fleshie and skinjack their way to freedom.

“Take them out the front gate,” the Bopper ordered, then he turned to Jix, offering a moment of sympathy. “Sorry,” he said, “but Wurlitzer knows best.” Jill spat at him, which did not help the situation. He scowled at her then turned to the Neons and said, “We’ll throw them into the river. That way, they’ll be sure to sink fast.”

Then, as they were carried out through the Alamo’s main gate, Jix saw a glorious sight.

Boy scouts!

At least twenty of them, milling around just outside the main entrance. Never had Jix been so pleased to see living, breathing human beings.

“Do you see that?” he called to Jill.

“I’m way ahead of you!” she answered.

The Neons, who never paid much attention to the living, just walked right through the mob of scouts, and the moment they did, Jix pushed himself into the first fleshie he came in contact with and—

—candy / candy toys candy / gift shop / twenty bucks / how many
toys / how much candy / and a keychain with my name too—

He quickly put the scout to sleep, took full control of his body, then looked around to orient himself. It never ceased to amaze him how the same spot could be so full of turmoil in Everlost, and yet be so calm in the living world. No sign of the Neons anywhere around them. He could just walk away from here, and never have to face any of this again if he wanted to. Jix looked around and caught sight of another scout looking just as disoriented. “Jill?”

The other kid nodded. “In the flesh.”

A few other kids in troop thirteen looked at them funny. Jix motioned for Jill to step away with him, for a moment of privacy.

“Hey,” said one of the other kids. “Scoutmaster Garber wants us to wait here!” But fortunately the scoutmaster was at the ticket booth, too busy to notice.

Once they were far enough away for no one to hear them, Jill said, “The boy scout look suits you. Now let’s get outta here.”

And although he knew it wasn’t what she wanted to hear, Jix said, “I’m going back.”

“What?” She stared at him, shaking her head. “No! No way! Not this time. If you go back, you go alone.”

“Don’t you see—
the Neons don’t know about skinjackers!
”

“Yeah,” said Jill. “Lucky for us.”

“More lucky than you think!” Then without any further explanation, Jix peeled out of the scout and returned to Everlost, leaving both the scout and Jill completely bewildered.

In Everlost, the Neons were at a total loss. As far as they were concerned, the two prisoners simply vanished into thin air. It was at least ten seconds until someone asked the obvious question: “Uh . . . where’d they go?”

“I don’t know,” said the Bopper, “but I don’t like it.”

Then, just as quickly as he’d vanished, Jix appeared, standing ten yards away.

“Grab him!” yelled the Bopper, but when they tried, he vanished once more into a flurry of live people, only to appear somewhere else a few moments later.

Now the Neons were scared—which is exactly what Jix was counting on. Then an exceptionally annoyed Jill appeared beside him. Jix was counting on that, too.

“Wh . . . what are you?” someone dared to ask.

It was Jill who answered. “He is the son of the jaguar gods,” she said in a commanding voice, “and the jaguar gods are very . . .
very . . . angry
!”

Eyes widened, jaws dropped, and some of the smaller kids ran back into the Alamo to hide, but the rest were too
shocked to move at all. In fact they were so frozen in place, they were sinking in up to their ankles.

“You mean there really are jaguar gods?” said Little Richard, timidly. “And they’re mad at
us
?”

“Furious!” Jill said. “But they can be calmed, if you do exactly as Jix says.”

Even though Jix never told her of his plan, she instinctively said all the right things. They were working as a team now! Jix puffed out his chest and matched her commanding tone. “You no longer serve the music machine,” he told them. “You will feed it no more coins, and its name will never be spoken again.”

The Neons all looked to one another. “But . . . But . . .”

“Do as he says, or you will face the wrath of the jaguar gods!” Jill threatened.

Jix wanted to grin at how well their ploy was working, but he kept his face dark and menacing, staring down as many Neons as he could. “You are all now subjects of His Excellency, the Supreme King of the Middle Realm.”

“The who of what?” someone called out.

“Silence!” shouted Jill, clearly relishing every moment of this.

“So . . . there are jaguar gods,
and
a king?” asked Little Richard.

“Yes,” Jix told them. “But mercy will be shown to those who are obedient . . . and come with gifts.”

“Whaddya mean, ‘gifts’?” the Bopper asked.

“The girl in the glass coffin,” Jix told him. “She will be your gift to the king.” Then he stood there waiting to see what they would do.

The Neons had a very difficult decision to make. For as long as they could remember they had done Wurlitzer’s bidding. Their entire purpose had been to steal coins from stray Afterlights, just so they could hear Wurlitzer “speak.” But Wurlitzer did not move, or disappear, or threaten as this son of the jaguar gods did. In fact, Wurlitzer didn’t do anything without a coin. This gave Jix an advantage—and although Afterlights by their very nature resisted change, they could also adapt when they had to.

The Bopper looked around, gauging the Neons’ reaction to the ultimatum. No one rose in defense of Wurlitzer. The Bopper, who now spoke for all of them, turned to Jix and Jill and made his decision. “What do you want us to do?”

Once Jix made his plans known, the Neons were quick to carry out his orders. They were, after all, an army that was used to doing what they were told—and Jill was more than happy to be their taskmaster.

The first order of business was to move Wurlitzer out of the common room. Jix had them move it into the small room full of old saddles. The Bopper, a bit repentant for how he had treated Jix, led the moving team, and in just a few minutes, this device that everyone had worshiped was now nothing but a relic.

“You know, in all this time, that machine never played a song I liked,” the Bopper said, after setting Wurlitzer in its new resting place. “It’s good that you sent Avalon uptown.”

With Wurlitzer out of sight, Jix hoped it would quickly be out of mind, and when the Neons all began to take off
their bright war paint, he knew the machine had truly been defeated.

“We’re leaving here,” Jix told them. “There are boats in Corpus Christi that have crossed into Everlost—enough to carry all of us, and all the sleeping Interlights, south to the Great City of Souls.”

“So . . . ,” said Little Richard, who now followed Jix around. “There’re jaguar gods, a king,
and
a city of souls?”

“Yes,” Jix told him.

“In Mexico?”

“The living call it Mexico,” Jix said, “but the City of Souls existed before there were nations.”

It was on the evening before their departure that Jix dared to go into the saddle room to face Wurlitzer one last time. He did it because, deep down, he still feared it. Jix knew the jukebox would give him nightmares if Afterlights were able to dream. He didn’t know why—it had neither arms to grab him, nor legs to kick him, and it had no voice but the one the Neons allowed it to have. Perhaps
that’s
what he feared—how much power a thing could have when it was given permission to have it.

“You are nothing now,” Jix told it. Wurlitzer said nothing. “Your own greed has left you with no one to worship you.” Still, the machine said nothing. “And now you will stay here undiscovered until the end of time.”

And then a voice behind him said, “Wurlitzer made all this happen.” Jix turned to see Little Richard standing there with his empty piggy bank. “He played that ‘Downtown’ song because he knew we would take you outside and you would show us your powers.” Then with enough arrogance
to make his point, but not enough to incur the wrath of the jaguar gods, Little Richard said, “Wurlitzer did this for you. You should thank him.”