JILL FELL WITHOUT a sound, her hair still smoking from the lightning, a wide-eyed, puzzled expression on her face, like this couldn’t possibly be happening, not here, not to her; she was the heroine of the piece, and she was meant to walk away.
The Master finally ripped himself free of Sumi’s baling hook. Before she could snare him again, he lunged, grabbing Jack by the shoulders, whipping her around to face him. The wound in his throat was already healing.
“What have you done?!” he demanded, shaking her. “You little—”
“Dr. Bleak is dead,” said Jack. “Until I resurrect him—if you’ve left me enough to work with—I am your opposition and your equal. Unhand me, unless you wish the judgment of the Moors to be upon you.”
Her voice was eerily calm for someone who’d just shoved her own sister from the castle wall.
The Master stared at her. Then, slowly, he released her, stepping back. “You killed my daughter,” he said. “I will not forget this.”
“She could have lived a long, long time if you hadn’t insisted on finding a way to turn her into what you wanted her to be,” said Jack. “She loved you so much. She would have done anything to please you.”
“And you killed her.”
“Yes. I’ll live with that for the rest of my life, however long that happens to be. Where is Dr. Bleak’s head, please?” Jack tilted her head, looking at him with polite anticipation. “This is an excellent storm. I’d like to take advantage of it.”
“If you bring him back…”
“If I bring him back, I’ll be vulnerable. I’m aware. Only one monster at a time, and all that. But you see, I love him, and children will do anything for their fathers. His head, please, and we’ll be on our way.”
The Master curled his lip in disgust. “You’ll have your head. I knew you should have belonged to me,” he said, and spun on his heel, and swept away.
“I wish there’d been time to get my gloves,” said Jack, still in that impossibly level, impossibly calm voice. “I can take them once we recover the body, I suppose, but there’s always the chance she’s leaking on the leather. I’ll have to scrub my hands with lye when I get back to the windmill. It’s the only way to be sure.”
“Jack?” Kade took a cautious step forward. “Are you…?”
“There are only a certain number of possible ways to end that question, and the answer to all of them is ‘no,’” said Jack. “No, I’m not okay. No, I’m not going to be okay. No, no, no. Everything is terrible. I’ve killed my sister. Again. I was always the monster at the end of her story, and she died knowing everything she thought about me was true.” She shook her head. “I want to leave this place. Can we go?”
“Yeah,” said Kade gently. “We can go.”
They descended the stairs into the castle in the order that had brought them there: Jack, then Sumi, then Kade and Cora, and last of all Christopher, whose hands were finally still.
When they reached the hall outside Jill’s room, Jack kept walking, bringing them to a wide interior stairway. Jill’s nightgown flared out around Jack’s feet with every step, and her hair was loose and wild, and she looked every inch the vampire’s daughter, an illusion that was reinforced when every servant they passed shied away from her, terror in their eyes.
The sounds of fighting had long since stopped. When they reached the ballroom, they stepped into an abattoir. Bodies were strewn in all directions. Some wore the robes of the Drowned Abbey; some wore the Master’s household livery. Others wore village clothing, and when they fell face-down, it was impossible to tell whose village they had come from. Gideon sat in his chair at the center of the room, his surviving people arrayed behind him. The Master’s surviving servants were backed into the corner.
Jack strode toward him, barefoot in the gore, blood and other terrible, viscous fluids soaking into the lacy hem of her gown. She didn’t seem to notice. Kade flinched. If Jack didn’t notice she was getting dirty …
Oh, this was bad. This was very, very bad.
“Well?” asked Gideon, as Jack drew closer. “Which Wolcott are you? The fun one, or the scientist? Who won?”
“I will slice you open and spread you as evenly as a coat of jam across the shore,” said Jack levelly. “I’m sure the Drowned Gods will forgive me, since I’ve agreed to stay and maintain the balance for their sake.”
“Ah,” said Gideon. “The scientist. We won, too.”
“Bully for you.” Jack turned to face the stairs as the Master came sweeping down, a burlap sack in his hand. “Excellent. We’ll be leaving now.”
The Master snarled, showing her his teeth, but didn’t argue; merely flung the sack containing Dr. Bleak’s head into the blood and fluids on the floor. Jack gathered it without a word of complaint, holding it, dripping, to her chest. She turned back to Gideon.
“I won’t forget you helped me,” she said. “Give me from this full moon to the next to get my house in order, and then send me anyone you have who requires medical care. I’ll rob a few graves if I have to, but I’ll fix them for you, free of charge. Just this once.”
“Just this once,” agreed Gideon, with the ghost of a smile.
Jack inclined her head and walked away without another word.
“Should we follow her?” asked Cora.
“She is the only one who knows how to make us a door home, and I don’t want to live here,” said Christopher. “My girlfriend is a literal skeleton, and this is too creepy for me.”
They followed as Jack left the ballroom, pulled down a sconce, and walked through the hidden door that opened in the opposing wall. They followed her down the stairs, back to the place where they had entered the castle.
Pony and Bones waited outside. Pony was chewing on something that looked like a chunk of raw meat. None of them looked any closer. Instead, Jack dropped the bag containing Dr. Bleak’s head on the seat before she turned and walked further around the base of the castle, Sumi and Christopher behind her, while Kade and Cora remained with the wagon.
When they found Jill, she wasn’t moving. She had landed in a graceless sprawl, and it was clear, when Jack and Christopher gathered her up and lifted her, that several things inside her body had broken so profoundly that they could never be repaired, not even here, where science could do virtually anything. Sumi folded Jill’s hands across her chest, and the three of them carried her back to the wagon like pallbearers at the world’s least-attended funeral. They lay her down in the hay, and Jack climbed silently into the driver’s seat, leaving the others to arrange themselves.
This time, Kade rode up front, while the others—who were less squeamish, or maybe just more accustomed to this world and its horrors—rode in the back. He glanced at Jack as she drove. She didn’t glance back. Her eyes were fixed on the fields ahead, and the bag containing Dr. Bleak’s head rested in her lap like a swaddled child, something to be cared for and protected.
When the windmill came into view ahead, Kade swallowed. “Jack—” he began.
“Don’t.” Her voice was still utterly, eerily calm. “Please.”
He didn’t.
Jack drove on.
When they were close enough to the windmill to see details—the slope of the fence, the narrow, shuttered slits of the windows—the back door opened, spilling buttery yellow brightness into the darkness. Alexis appeared, silhouetted in the lamplight. Jack managed to contain herself long enough to pull the horses up to the stable. Then she jumped down and ran to the other woman, the burlap sack held in one hand. She flung herself into Alexis’s arms, and neither of them said anything, and neither of them had anything to say.
Kade looked awkwardly away. “Any of you know anything about horses?”
“No, but I know skeletons,” said Christopher. “Let’s get to work.”
By the time they finished unhitching the horses—Pony nipped, while Bones was docile as could be—and returning them to their stalls, Alexis was alone in the doorway. The four of them approached her cautiously.
She raised her hands and signed something. Sumi nodded.
“Jack went upstairs to change her clothes,” she said. “She’ll be right down, and then they’ll send us home. Alexis says thank you, by the way. She wasn’t sure we’d be back. She knew Jack couldn’t do it on her own.”
Alexis signed something else.
“She’s sorry we had to see that,” Sumi said. “She’s sorrier Jack had to do it. She hoped…” Sumi stopped, and glared at Alexis. “That’s not nice.”
“What did she say?” asked Cora.
“She hoped one of us would kill Jill, so Jack wouldn’t have to.” Sumi crossed her arms and pouted, her petulance only slightly spoiled by the fact that she was still holding the baling hook.
“I offered,” said Kade.
Cora looked at her hands, still covered in mother-of-pearl, and said nothing.
Alexis stepped to the side, an apologetic look on her face. Jack was descending the stairs, a fresh pair of glasses on her face, buttoning the cuffs of her shirt.
“I suppose you’d like me to send you home,” she said.
“That’d be nice,” said Kade.
“I don’t suppose I can convince any of you to stay behind.” Jack smiled, quickly enough that it could almost have been missed. “We have plenty of room here in the windmill. I could teach you the finer points of grave robbing.”
“I don’t think this world touches on Confection,” said Sumi.
“Even if this world touches on Mariposa, it’s a pass for me,” said Christopher. “This place is not right.”
“No,” said Kade.
“I want to,” said Cora.
They all turned to look at her.
“The Drowned Gods keep whispering to me, and this isn’t the Trenches, but they could give me back the sea,” she said. “Gideon is … he stays dry too much. They’d give me the sea, and then they’d give me his place, and I’d be so important, I’d be so beloved, and I can’t, I can’t, this isn’t … this isn’t my home, this isn’t…”
“Cora.” Kade took her hands, pulling her attention onto him. She raised her head, blinking rapidly, eyes swirling with impossible colors. Kade forced himself to smile. “Hey. We’re pretty fond of you back home, you know. We love you. But if this is … maybe this isn’t the home you had, but maybe it could be a new home. Maybe you could have the ocean back, and be happy. It’s all right if you want to stay. We’ll tell my aunt. She’ll understand.”
Cora stared at him, cheeks slowly reddening as she squirmed under the weight of his regard. Then, with an effort that looked physically painful, she shook her head.
“No,” she said. “If the Trenches want me back, they’ll come for me. I don’t want someone else’s sea. I want my own. I want to go home.”
“All right.” Kade looked over his shoulder to Jack. “Fire it up, do whatever you need to do. Send us back.”
She nodded, regret flashing in her eyes. “Very well, then. I suppose we won’t see each other again. Thank you for your assistance. Please tell Miss West that I … that I appreciated my time with her.”
Kade nodded. “We will.”
They stood back as Jack and Alexis assembled the components of the door. From this side, it was a structure of wire and steel, sketching a doorway where none belonged. Jack flipped a switch. Lightning filled the room, and when it cleared, a door was standing there, solid oak.
Christopher licked his lips. “If you can make doors…”
“Only between the Moors and the world of my birth,” said Jack. “If you’d like to remain and go through an apprenticeship, you might be able to make yourself a doorway home. But I doubt it. Science has limits, even here. Go back to school. Live until you find your door, or until you don’t. Be happy. Be sure.”
“I’ll try,” said Christopher, and opened the door, and stepped through.
Cora was the next through. Sumi paused long enough to blow Jack a kiss and then danced after the former mermaid, her steps light, her baling hook hanging lazily at her side.
Kade hesitated. “Jack…”
“Please don’t,” she said. “Crying is very untidy, and I can’t handle any more mess today.”
“I’m glad you came to us for help,” he said. “We miss you.”
Jack managed a smile. “I miss you too. But I’m happy here. This is where I belong. Alexis and I … we’re going to raise a family. What’s the point of knowing how to pervert science to your own ends if you can’t use it selfishly every once in a while?”
Kade laughed. Then he pulled her into a hug, careful not to touch any of her exposed skin, and whispered, “You’re not a monster.”
“Oh, but I am,” said Jack. “I’m just … a good one.”
Kade let go. He gave her one final look before nodding to Alexis and stepping through the door. It slammed shut behind him, and he found himself standing in the basement with the others. He turned. The door was gone.
“Well,” said Christopher. “That happened.”
“It sure did,” said Kade. “You okay?”
Christopher started to answer. Then he paused, wrinkled his nose, and said, “I left my good jeans back in the mad science windmill.”
Sumi laughed, high and bright and utterly sincere, and things were going to be all right. Not the same as they had been, maybe; nothing is ever the same after an adventure, after someone dies. But all right, and maybe that was just as good, in its own quiet way.
“I’m going to tell Ely-Eleanor that we’re back!” said Sumi, and went galloping up the stairs, still carrying the baling hook.
Kade’s eyes widened. “Sumi, slow down!” he shouted, chasing after her. “You’re going to trip and impale somebody!”
Christopher and Cora exchanged a look.
“This school is weird,” she said.
“You’re covered in rainbows,” he said.
“That’s pretty weird,” she said. “Good thing I go to school here.”
Christopher grinned. “Good thing.”
They followed their friends up the stairs, leaving the basement—and the electrical burns on the concrete floor—behind them.