"But don't you see," said Mary. "It is wonderful." Mary spread her arms out wide, and spun in a slow circle, feeling as if she was at the center of a gloriously expanding universe. "Look at all these children, Jill! You've saved them all!"

Everything changed for Mary after discovering Jackin' Jill's mysterious ability to keep children from the light. In the right hands, it was a power that was more awe-inspiring than any in Everlost. Mary could not help but feel that it

211

was some kind of divine will that had brought this power to her. Now she saw everything as if refracted through the multifaceted blue topaz in the center of Jill's amulet. The future was sparkling and bright, and as her dreams sailed higher and higher, her sights became more firmly fixed on the western horizon.

She shared all this with Speedo, but he seemed more likely to shove his head in the earth rather than see Mary's big picture.

"If Chicago's not enough for you, we could go south to New Orleans, or north to Canada," Speedo said, pacing the Starboard Promenade. As the ship was moored and grounded--at least temporarily, Speedo had little to occupy his time beyond worrying. "We could even go back to New York."

"You're missing the point!" Mary said, with the most patient exasperation she could muster. "We must challenge the unknown, and the west is Everlost's greatest mystery."

"This isn't like you," Speedo whined. "Stability-- routine-- that's the Mary Hightower I know."

"I will find a peaceful routine for every child in my care," she assured him, "but to build a better Everlost, I must be willing to sacrifice my own routine for the sake of others."

"Build a better Everlost? Everlost is already here--you can't build what's already here."

Mary thought about Jill's incubator, and smiled. "I beg to differ."

Speedo just threw up his hands. It was no use--true, he was the closest Mary had to a confidant, but his thinking was numbingly limited in scope. She longed for someone she could share her revelations with--someone who could not only understand, but see the same vast horizon that she now saw. The future--her future--in fact the entire future of Everlost was spread out before her like a frontier. It wasn't merely her hope to subdue it--she had come to realize it was her destiny. Why else would Jill have come to her? Why else would she have such an urge to move beyond the bounds of the known afterworld?

"With Jill's help, and my guidance, we will save all the children we can, both here and in the west," Mary told Speedo. "And in so doing we will unite Everlost."

"There might not even be a 'west,'" he pointed out.

"Yes, I've heard the stories too," Mary said with a dramatic wave. "A giant cliff that falls off into nowhere. An ocean that pours off the edge of the earth. A wall of fire through which nothing can pass."

"What if one of those things is true? What if they're all true?"

"Didn't you tell me the Hindenburg made regular trips to Roswell, New Mexico, before it came into your possession--doesn't that prove there is something west of the Mississippi?"

"That's according to the finder who sold it to me--but finders can't be trusted--I know because I was one. He would have said anything to unload this thing!"

Mary sighed. "Let's not put the cart before the horse, shall we? Chicago first, and then we'll see where providence leads us from there. And of course we must not forget the threat of the Chocolate Ogre."

"Nick? He's probably forgotten all about you by now." Mary bristled at that. "I'm sure he hasn't! And I would prefer that you not call him by his living name. He is the Chocolate Ogre now."

"He was never an ogre, and you know it."

"After what he did, he deserves to be demonized."

Speedo backed down, not up for the battle. "Whatever you say."

Mary studied him closely. "After all this time, are you regretting the choice you made to stay with me?"

"Of course not," Speedo said. "It's just that sometimes ... sometimes you scare me." In her book Order Now, Question Later, Mary Hightower has this to say about her enemies:

"In Everlost, just as in the living world, there are those who put their own selfish desires ahead of that which is clearly and obviously right. In these cases I have always found such enemies of virtue will eventually destroy themselves if left to their own devices. Although occasionally some assistance might be required."

CHAPTER 19 Eminence Green

Had there been any outside observers--biographers to mark the afterlife of Megan Mary McGill, better known as Mary Hightower--they would have marveled at how thoroughly she infiltrated Pugsy Capone's rule. How brilliantly, how slyly it was done! Mary, however, would never call herself sly, or even cunning. Ascendant, she would call herself. The way cream rises to the top. The way the wise are naturally elevated above the masses. Mary was the eminence gris--the shadow power--behind Pugsy's very short-lived "golden era," and while Pugsy had always been very good at tooling people to his own purposes, he himself was not the sharpest tool in the shed. So he never knew that his power was slowly being usurped.

"Your organization needs structure," Mary told him in confidence.

"It works fine the way it is," Pugsy insisted.

"Oh, yes, it does," Mary admitted, but she pointed out how very afraid of him his own subjects were. It was something Pugsy took great pride in, in fact. And so Mary proposed a little test. She asked Pugsy to call in one of his loyal subjects, and order him to perform a simple but time-consuming task. Curious as to where this was going, Pugsy called in a kid whose name he did not remember, and told him to do a head count of the hundred or so Afterlights living in the administration building, and then create a graph, plotting how each of them had died.

"I want it before sunset," Pugsy demanded. "Or else!"

The boy obediently ran off, took the entire day, and returned just as the day settled into twilight. He presented Pugsy with a list and a competent graph, and he cowered until Pugsy nodded his acceptance.

Then Mary asked the same of one of her own children--a boy known as Bedhair--to graph the demise of all ninety-three in her care. The boy took only two hours, and he returned with a list, and not just one graph, but three: a coordinate graph, a bar graph, and a pie chart.

"You cheated!" Pugsy insisted. "He already knew the answers."

"Do you really believe that?" Mary asked in a calm and condescending way. "My children obey my requests because they want to, not because they fear what will happen if they fail. Consequently, they perform their tasks better."

It didn't occur to Pugsy that Mary never actually denied that Bedhair already knew the answers.

Mary also discovered that Pugsy did not personally attend to the transitioning Interlights that Jill continued to bring to the agricultural building. He found it beneath him, and left their assimilation to his flunkies. This provided Mary with a great opportunity.

She marked her personal calendar with the date that every sleeping Interlight would awaken, and made sure she was there to greet them when they did.

"Welcome to Everlost," she would tell the confused, and often frightened, children. "My name is Miss Mary, and you are among friends." Then she would present each of them with a volume of Tipsfor Taps, her definitive book for new arrivals to Everlost--each book painstakingly handwritten by her children on paper scavenged from Pugsy's troves. Grateful for her kindness, these new children would imprint on her like ducklings, ensuring their allegiance, while Pugsy became little more than a distant figure in their minds, a footnote in their world at best.