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"I’ like that"

"He didn’t," Pinhead said "I was the one who set hi her face "I’ve answered your questions," Pinhead said "Now I have a question for you I want to know if you really are teaching the McGill to skinjack"

Allie carefully sidestepped the question "Well, it’s what he wants"

"The McGill shouldn’t always get what he wants"

She wasn’t expecting that response from Pinhead "But…don’t you want your master to have that skill?"

"He’s nance in his voice He thought for a aze to Allie It was now a powerful gaze, full of urgency, and maybe a little accusation "I don’t re days, but I do remember that my father--or was it my mother-- worked in a madhouse"

"A mental institution," Allie corrected

"When I was alive, they didn’t have such nice words for theo in The people there were very sick--but some were s have changed," Allie pointed out "They don’t think that kind of thing anymore"

"It doesn’t matter what they think; I knohat I know"

Pinhead’s thoughts drifted away for a ine what it would be like to walk through an old-world asylum She didn’t want to know

"Even when I was alive, I knew the difference between the sick ones and the possessed ones You can see it in their eyes Myas possession, but you know it happens, because you’ve done it yourself"

"I didn’t drive anyone crazy"

"Well," said Pinhead, "all I know is that if I were a living, breathing person, I wouldn’t want so inside of me"

"Why should you care? If he skinjacks soet to be captain"

"I’m not the captain type," he said, and he offered her a slanted rin "Don’t have the head for it"

Allie went back to her cabin and lay down, running what Pinhead had said about the Steel and Steeplechase Piers over and over again in her mind, until an idea came to her: a way to defeat the McGill, or at least a way to distract hih for her and her friends to escape The plan was sierous, but it was the best hope she had

All she needed was a sh the McGill liked no one, he was beginning to suspect that if he ever did like soht be Allie This troubled him, because he knew she would abandon him and escape with her friends if she could The McGill, however, believed in the power of black like carrots before her, she would do what he wanted He kneould never trust her, because, for the McGill, trust had been left behind with the human condition The McGill trusted no one but himself, and even then, he was often suspicious of his own motives He wondered, for instance, if he believed Allie’s twelve-steps-to-possession only because he wanted it so badly Or worse, did he believe her only because he had begun to like her?

Since he couldn’t trust himself, he decided he needed verification of Allie s honesty, and so, once Allie was below deck, he called up an oversize kid known as Piledriver Piledriver’s clai mishap, while costumed as his favorite professional wrestler The McGill often brought hi on shore raids to inspire fear in Greensouls who had not yet realized that pain and joint dislocation were no longer an issue

Today, however, the McGill had a different mission for Piledriver

"Take two crewmen and a lifeboat," the McGill told him, after he explained the nature of the ht, when the rest of the crew is below Don’t tell anyone, and once you find what you’re looking for, meet us at Rockaway Point I’ll hold the Sulphur Queen there until you return"

Piledriver dutifully left, pleased to be given such an important task

The McGill reclined in his throne, picking at the jewels on the arht, they would soon know if Allie was telling the truth

In her book Everything Mary Says Is Wrong, Volume 2, Allie the Outcast has this to say about the nature of eternity: "Mary hts,’ but that doesn’t mean she really understands what it means to be one Maybe there’s a reason e’re here, and maybe there’s not Maybe it’s an accident, and -ass plan that we’re too duht doesn’t fade That’s got toanswers to questions like that is e ought to be doing, instead of getting lost in endless ruts"

Chapter 21

Web of the Psychotic Spider Down in the chirown more and more determined to throw off his shackles So a days he had followed friends and trends, never sticking his neck out to do anything on his own Then, when he first arrived in Everlost, he had followed Allie, because she was the one with oal, and a plan to reach it, however ht be His tied his perspective on things During all that ti but wait for rescue to co orse than that li that he had no power over his own fate -- and yet here he was again, strung up like a side of beef, just waiting for someone else to help hirown to accept this Lief, with his weird post-trauht sorow as passive as a plant, waiting for tihtened him--it made him anxious, and that anxiety spurred hi a way out of here," he announced to any of the other chimed kids who cared to listen

"Ah, shut up," said the high-strung kid "Nobody wants to hear it"

A few others echoed their halfhearted agreement