EverWorld (Book 3 of the Down World Series)

Chapter Forty-Six

I trembled before the Conductor. Though I had seen him several times at this point, his otherworldly face and almost transparent skin still shook me to the core.

He had been a real man once, I couldn't help but remember. In the 1940s, when the train portal was created, I had seen him. Wearing normal clothes, his skin a more human color. What had happened to him that day, when Alexei and I had wrestled with the uranium canister and a drop had spilled on the tracks? Had it infected him somehow? Lured him into this never place, this forever train?

Was he a prisoner here too?

Or was he its creator?

"I don't have a coin," I stammered, hearing the emotion creep its way into my voice. My mother inched closer to me, and I could sense her instinct to move in front of me—to protect me. But I squared my shoulders to let her know that I wasn't budging. I had faced the Conductor before, and she hadn't. It was up to me to deal with this.

His hollow eyes drifted down to my empty hand.

"I'm sorry," I continued. "I'll get you one, though, if you'll take us home. If you could just—"

But before I could finish the sentence, he was already shaking his head. His withered lips curled into a "tsk tsk tsk," just like they had when he'd caught me in the wrong dimension last year, indulging in a reality where Kieren and I were together. It was his warning to me: You don't belong here.

Now the disappointed face he made was saying something else: You can't fool me.

"Please," I continued. "You have to bring us home."

But he turned and started walking away. I grabbed the door as he abandoned it, and I followed him into the next car. He was halfway through it when I shouted at his back: "I'll give you this ring!"

He stopped, but didn't turn.

I slipped the ring off my finger and held it up for him. "It's worth thousands of coins. You can keep it. Please just bring us home."

He paused for only a moment, his bony shoulders collapsing under the weight of his thoughts, and then he continued walking away from me. I stood frozen as I watched him enter the next car, his figure growing smaller and smaller through the little window in the door, until it finally disappeared like he was made of mist.

Behind me, Mom turned and headed back to the engine car. I followed her and watched her fall to the mattress on the floor, utterly defeated. Then she looked up at me, her bloodshot eyes almost pleading for a solution, as though I were the parent and she the child. A wave of resentment seized my chest, but I shook it off.

It wasn't her fault. She was just as lost as everyone else.

And Alexei had betrayed her too.

"Why did he take you?" I asked, my voice coming out scratchy and tired.

She looked confused. "What do you mean?"

"I mean Alexei, Mom. Why did he put you on this train? You've been his partner this whole time—"

"That's not...it wasn't like that."

"Why betray you now?"

She buried her head in her hands for a moment. "He was building something. At the gardens. Something big. He wouldn't tell me what. I think I asked too many questions."

I nodded, realizing that Mom had always been a pawn in his game. He was probably always planning on getting rid of her at some point. I sat down next to her, working out my thoughts silently. But then they burst out of me as I realized something. "When I entered this portal, I took over my other self."