I shouldn’t have done that, Allie told herself, but even so, she wanted to do it again. That scared her, and so she left Sixth Avenue, ducking down a smaller side street, making sure she had absolutely no contact with another living person for the rest of the day. I’ll have to tell Nick and Lief about this, she thought, and that reminded her that unless she rescued them, she would never get to tell them anything. They would spend the rest of their unnatural lives pickling.

The only way to rescue them was to find others who could help her, and she had to do it before a new routine set in. Mary and her little club were of no use, so Allie would have to gather her own allies. The question was, where would she find them?

She began looking for “ghosts” of buildings that had crossed over when they were demolished. Only a few buildings did. Maybe one out of every thousand that met the wrecking ball was deemed worthy by God, or the universe, or whatever, to cross into Everlost.

The old Waldorf-Astoria hotel was the most promising—after all, it was a hotel, so what better place for dead/not-dead kids to stay?

She pushed through the revolving door to reveal a lobby done up in plush art-deco splendor. Some singer, long dead, crooned through a big old-fashioned radio, singing “Embraceable You.” There was a huge bar just off the lobby, but no bottles graced its cherrywood shelves. Instead a big sign read BAR PERMANENTLY CLOSED DUE TO PROHIBITION.

“Hello? Is anybody here?”

She called twice, and rang the bell at the reception desk. Nothing. The combination of 1920s music and the absolute emptiness of the place gave her the horror-movie creeps. The hotel wasn’t merely deserted, it was soulless, like the Haunter’s hollow soldiers. She left as quickly as she could.

She had to face the fact that most every Afterlight in the city ended up moving in with Mary. Safety in numbers. Mary’s little kingdom was simply the place to be in this part of the world. But then, thought Allie, Everlost did have other territories. … Everlost CHAPTER 13

Time in a Bottle Lief was accustomed to being alone, but there was quite a difference between being alone in a lush green forest, and being jammed into a pickle barrel.

At first he felt sure Allie would rescue him right away. When it didn’t happen in the first few minutes, or the next, or the next, he began to get scared. Then the fear turned to anger, and then the anger itself pickled into resignation. He could hear very little in the brine, and could feel even less.

Then, as the days went by, his mind began to play the most amazing trick on him.

He was able to forget where he was. The darkness became a starless infinity that stretched into empty space. His spirit filled the emptiness from one end of infinity to the other. This, he knew, is what God must have felt like before creation. A single spirit in a formless liquid eternity. It was a feeling of such power, time itself seemed to stop in its tracks. Lief felt as if he was the entire universe, and nothing, at the same time. So glorious was this sensation of timelessness, that he was able to lock himself inside of it just as tightly as he was locked in the barrel.

Nick, on the other hand, was miserable.

CHAPTER 14

The Alter Boys WELCOME TO ROCKLAND COUNTY! It was a road sign Allie was sure she’d never see again. The last time she had seen it, she was pushed into the Earth, and if it hadn’t been for Lief and Nick, she wouldn’t have made it out. I intuit be crazy coming back here. Well, crazy or not, here she was.

“Johnnie-O!” she called out at the top of her lungs. “I want to talk to you, Johnnie-O!”

Allie knew it wasn’t just bad luck that had brought Johnnie-O and his little team of morons to them that night. The way Allie figured it, any new arrivals in Everlost in this area would follow the main highway, and would pass this way. If Johnnie-O wasn’t here himself, chances are he had a lookout keeping an eye on this very spot, waiting for some poor unsuspecting Greensoul to rest beneath the WELCOME TO ROCKLAND COUNTY! sign.

She figured right. It took a few hours of calling, and making noise, but finally word had been relayed back to Johnnie-O, and he showed up at around noon. This time he came with a dozen kids to back him up, instead of just four. Nothing was going to scare them away this time. The cigarette was still hanging out of the corner of his mouth, smoldering away, and Allie realized that cigarette was going to be stuck there until the end of time.

“Hey—it’s that girl who tricked you!” said the kid with the purple lips, and the lump in his throat.

Johnnie-O hit him. “She didn’t trick me,” he said, and nobody contradicted him.

He assumed a kind of gunslinger posture, like this was a showdown. He looked more comical than anything else, with his huge hands.

“I thought I sent you down,” he said.

“You thought wrong.”

“So what? Did ya come back so’s I could send you down right this time?”

“I’m back with a proposition.”

Johnnie-O looked at her, his expression stony. At first Allie thought he was doing it for effect. Then she realized he didn’t know what “proposition” meant.

“I want your help,” Allie explained.

Raggedy Andy tossed his weird red hair out of his eyes and laughed. “Why would we wanna help you!”

Johnnie-O smacked him, then crossed his heavy arms and said, “Why would we wanna help you!”

“Because I can get you what you want.”

By now even more kids had arrived. Some were real little, others her age, maybe a bit older. They all had menacing scowls—even the little ones.

“We don’t want nothin’ from you!” Johnnie-O said, and his chorus of bullies grumbled their agreement. This was all posturing, Allie knew. He had to be curious—if he wasn’t, he’d already have pushed her down.

“You attack Greensouls for the crumbs in their pockets, and pre-chewed gum.”

Johnnie-O shrugged. “Yeah, so?”

“What if I told you I knew where you could get real food. Not just pocket crumbs, but whole loaves of bread.”

Johnnie-O kept his arms crossed. “And what if I sewed your lying mouth shut?”

“It’s no lie. I know a place where salamis and chickens hang from the ceiling, a place where you can eat all you want, and wash it down with root beer!”

“Root beer,” echoed one of the little kids.

Johnnie-O threw him a warning glance, and the kid looked at his toes.

“There ain’t no such place. Whadaya think I am, stupid?”

Well yes, Allie wanted to say, but that’s beside the point. Instead she said, “Have you ever heard of ‘The Haunter’?”

If the rest of the kids were any indication, they all knew about the Haunter.

There were whispers, a few kids backed away from her, and the lump in Purple-puss’s throat bobbed up and down like a fishing float. For a second Allie even thought she could see fear in Johnnie-O’s eyes, but he covered it with a wide grin that tilted the tip of his nasty little Marlboro to the sky.

“First you tell me the McGill is your friend, and now the Haunter?” His smile turned into a frown, and the cigarette tipped downward. “I’ve had enough a you—you’re going down!”

“Send her down!” the other kids started yelling. “Down! Down!”

They advanced on her. She knew she only had a split second before mob mentality took over, and then nothing she could say would save her.

“I lied!” she shouted. “I lied about the McGill to stop you from sending me down —but this time I’m telling the truth.” Johnnie-O put up his hand, and the kids hesitated, waiting for his signal.

“The Haunter captured my friends, and I can’t rescue them alone! I need somebody strong,” Allie said, looking right into Johnnie-O’s eyes. “I need somebody smart.”

Allie watched the tip of his cigarette. Would it tip up, or would it tilt down?

It wavered for the longest time, and finally it tilted upward. “You came to the right guy.”