Forcing change, however, had always been a different matter. It didn't happen in an explosive burst of memory, it was slow, imperceptible. It took weeks to make the smallest of physical changes stick--but no one else he had ever met could do it. Sure, everyone changed over time as they forgot their lives on earth, but Mikey could choose how he changed. He could make himself into whatever he wanted.

But not anymore. Ever since becoming his former self, he hadn't physically changed in the least. "It's your fault!" he had told Allie in one of his weaker moments, but Allie had just shrugged it off. "Don't blame me for your morphing issues," she had said--but it was her fault in a way ... because for Mikey to change, he had to truly want it. And since Allie liked him just the way he was, he simply didn't want it enough.

But Allie was off skinjacking, wasn't she? She was practicing her unique talent, so why shouldn't Mikey practice his? And if he changed just a little, at least it would prove that he still could do it! It would prove that being Mikey McGill, the all-American Afterlight, was a choice, and not a sentence. So as he waited for Allie at the edge of the small town, he concentrated on his hand, training his thoughts on forcing some new reality upon himself. It didn't matter what the change was, as long as it happened. He concentrated so hard he could swear the sun dimmed slightly in the sky.

And something happened!

As he stared at his fingers, the skin between them began to grow. He watched in building excitement, as the fingers of his right hand became webbed! True, it was only down at the lowest knuckle, but it had happened--and much faster than ever before. This kind of change would take days to cultivate, when he was the McGill. And it occurred to him that perhaps having been nonhuman for so long, had made him more elastic.

All it took was half an hour away from Allie!

It was that thought that brought his euphoria to a sudden end, because as illuminating as the moment was, it also cast a chilling shadow.

Does this mean I'll turn back into a monster if I'm not with her?

Through the space still left between his fingers, he saw Allie, hurrying across the street toward him. The second he saw her, he reflexively hid his hand behind his back. He could have cursed himself for not being more subtle about it.

"We're done here," she said.

"You took way too long!" She shrugged. "Lots of articles to read." Mikey thought he had gotten off easy, until she asked, "Why are you hiding your hand?"

"I'm not." Still he held it behind his back.

Then she got a troubled look in her eye, perhaps thinking about something she had seen or read during her little skinjacking expedition.

"Let's get out of here," she said. "I don't like this place."

Mikey glanced at the horse--and that's when she grabbed his wrist, pulling his right hand into full view. He grimaced, realizing he had been caught red-handed--or web-handed, as it were ... But to his surprise the flaps of skin linking his knuckles were gone.

"Hmmm," said Allie. "Nothing. I guess you were telling the truth."

He folded his fingers over hers, interlocking them. "What reason would I have to lie to you?"

Allie squeezed his fingers tighter and smiled. "You're human now; lying is a favorite human pastime."

As they climbed onto the horse, Mikey decided he must be more human than he thought--because not only had he lied, but he had gotten away with it.

The town soon gave way to countryside, and they came across an old rural route that was no longer a part of the living world. Here, Mikey dug his heels into the horse and the horse took off in a cantor that was so much more efficient, something it couldn't do while plodding through that soft stuff that made up the living world. With Allie so close to him on the horse, Mikey wished he could read her mind, for even with her so close behind him, she felt miles away. He was still frustrated by the time she spent skinjacking, but he knew better than to make an argument of it. Allie was the sharpest, most argument-winning girl he had ever met. He knew she would make a convincing case for why she had every right to skinjack whenever she felt like it, and leave him waiting. After all, it wasn't her fault he couldn't do it.

"If I understood how it worked," she had once told him, "don't you think I would teach you?"

Well, maybe she would, and maybe she wouldn't. After all, he had been a monster and who knew if such power in his hands would be a good thing? Now as he rode up and down the hills of Virginia and into Tennessee, he had to admit to himself something he had been avoiding for all their time together. He was very good at being a monster-- but as a boy he was mediocre at best.

As it happens, Mikey's sense that Allie was a bit distant was right on target. At that moment, her thoughts were wandering far from the horse they rode. Her mind kept being drawn back to the town they had just left, and the one before that, and the one before that. She was relieved to be away from civilization, and yet in her thoughts, she couldn't leave it all behind, because the taste of the living was becoming too tempting--and it was a taste--an inner hunger that was powerful and all-consuming. She felt herself becoming like a vampire, feasting not on blood, but on experience. The silky smooth sensation of flesh. The flavor of other people's lives. Even now she longed to be wrapped in the living--but she could share none of this with Mikey. He wouldn't understand. Empathy was not his strongest point--even the nature of his own feelings were still a mystery to him, so how could Allie expect him to understand hers? And so even though she sat in a close saddleback embrace, a wall had fallen between them. Allie kept her yearning for flesh a secret, certain that she could control it ... but then it started to rain.

In life, Allie had always loved the rain. When other people would bundle up and pull out their umbrellas, Allie would revel in the feel of the rain against her hair, against her face. "You'll catch your death of cold!" her mother would always tell her, never imagining that Allie would soon catch her death in an entirely different way.

In Everlost, however, rain was different. It washed through you instead of over you, tickling your insides like an itch you couldn't scratch. It was an unpleasant sensation that Allie had never gotten used to.

As a drizzle became a shower, and the shower became a downpour, Allie longed for the feel of it on her instead of in her. She longed to be wet--not just wet but so completely drenched that the only remedy was a warm fire.

On their travels, they stuck more to rural routes than highways, but the route they now traveled ended at a large lake, with a road continuing to the left and right. They paused for a few moments, and the rain became heavier.

"Which way?" Mikey asked. It was part of Allie's job to check maps when she skinjacked, and navigate their course. She already knew that they needed to go to the left, and yet she said, "I don't know, I'll have to check."

Mikey grunted his disapproval, but Allie ignored him as she dismounted. There was a small boat dock in front of them, and a few hundred yards away, a convenience store and gas station. Needless to say, she had no intention of checking a map. This skinjacking would serve an entirely different purpose, and as Allie made her way toward the convenience store, she hoped she hadn't missed the worst of the rain.

In the store was a tattooed man buying beer. He was a skinjacking possibility, but only as a last resort. The cashier was a tired-looking old woman, whose joints were probably already aching from the weather, and wouldn't appreciate being thrust out into the rain. Allie was beginning to fear she'd have to settle for the tattooed guy, but then a woman hurried inside, wearing one of those hideous plastic rain ponchos the color of a traffic cone.