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BEWARE THE MCGILL Then she hopped out of the wo to spend a secondworld faded into thereturned, and there was the McGill sood!" he said "Very, very good"

"Now tell hts in your ship"

"No"

"You promised"

"I lied"

"Then I won’t teach you what I know"

"Then I’ll throw your friends over the side"

"Get… Ot!!!!"

Allie clenched her fists and let off an angry growl that only ht have held soet that he held all the aces

"We will coht sunrise Then ill go on to step two"

Allie had no choice but to agree She rode the lifeboat in furious silence back to the Sulphur Queen, even more determined than ever to outsmart the McGill

As for the woained control of her body, she took one look at the words scrawled on the wall, and concluded that all the stories about this house were true She immediately contacted her Realtor, and put the house up for sale, determined that she and her husband would move as far away from Amityville as possible

"Beware of fortune cookies that cross into Everlost," Mary Hightorites in her book Caution, This Means You! "They are instruments of evil, and the proper way to deal with theo near Chinese restaurants! Those wicked cookies will rot off the hand of anyone who touches them"

Chapter 19

Evil Chinese Pastry of Death The McGill followed Allies lead, letting her direct hih the first three steps of hu him to see which humans were possessible and which were not, however when he looked at the living, he saw no difference between theht would coh the re steps it would come It had better

The second step was to follow the actions of a living person for twenty-four hours "The point," Allie explained, "is to beco people do" It was a deceptively difficult chore, because the living could travel through the world in ways that the McGill could not Every single tiet into a car, or a train, or, in one strange instance, a helicopter, and be carried away too quickly for the McGill to follow on foot

It took several days until he finally settled on so anywhere; an in the prisoner’s various limited activities, and the McGill returned to the Sulphur Queen triumphant

The third step, however, wasto Allie, he was required to commit an act of selflessness The McGill didn’t think it was possible

"You could release one or two kids froested

But the McGill flatly refused "It wouldn’t be selfless," he told her, "because I’d be doing it to gain so"

No--if selflessness as required then it would be a difficult task indeed This required consulting with the cookies After Allie had gone to her quarters, the McGill once more pushed his hand into the spittoon and withdrew a fortune cookie, crushed it, and pulled out the slip of paper This time it read:

The answer cootten

Annoyed, the McGill threw the cookie cru them to his crew

The McGill wasn’t the only one annoyed by this turn of events Allie silently cursed herself for not being more clever Did she actually think the McGill would be tricked into releasing her friends? True, the challenge of this "third step" bought her time, but if the McGill was truly incapable of selflessness, it would only serve to rier

She now had freedom on the ship-- was happening to her Each time she looked in a mirror, her reflection looked a little off Did one ear look larger than the other? Was this botto it would be until she became no better than the rest of his crew Allie pondered all this as she stood on deck one afternoon, looking toward shore--only she couldn’t find it The sky was clear, but all she could see was ocean It seeed the coastline, but now they were out in the open sea It was unsettling, for although she knew she could no longer be a part of the living world, seeing it gave her some connection to the life she once had By her calculation, they should have been off" the coast of New Jersey--the southern part of the state, where her faht

As she stared out at the horizon, the McGill approached her, lu in that aay of his

"Why are we all the way out here," Allie asked hi your traps?"

"I have no traps in New Jersey," was his only answer