6 LIKE LIGHTNING, BRIDGING THE SKY

JACK ADJUSTED HER cravat for the fifth time, considering her reflection. So much of what she saw in the mirror was simply, softly wrong, and virtually none of the people around her—people who, for the most part, thought they knew her, thought they were somehow equipped to understand her situation and the accompanying distress—could see it.

Oh, Alexis could, she was certain: Alexis knew every inch of her, even the ones she couldn’t see, like the small of her back and the nape of her neck. Alexis had spent a satisfying amount of time with a compass and pen, drawing a careful chart of the moles and freckles that Jack’s anatomy had conspired to conceal from her own eyes. With Alexis’s help, Jack was solving the mystery of her physical form an inch at a time.

Freckles and moles. The bane of the fair-skinned, even when they lived in a place as gloriously clouded as the Moors. This body no doubt had a completely different set of constellations scattered on its skin, as distinct as fingerprints, if far more potentially malignant. Jack shuddered at the thought, fingers slipping on the slick fabric of her cravat. Jill would never have thought to be concerned about something as simple as a spot, would never have realized she should worry about moles that grew too fast or changed color or shape. This body could already be dying, could—

“No,” said Jack, loudly and clearly. Cora and Christopher, who were supposedly keeping her company but were really, she knew, standing guard, turned to look at her. She ignored them, focusing on the not-quite-right girl in the mirror. “That is a pointless spiral of fear and ignorance, and I refuse to let it claim me. Try harder.”

Her mind—brilliant, traitorous, prone to devouring itself—did not stop fretting, but at least she was in control again. It was odd, to think of one’s own mind as the enemy. It wasn’t always. The tendency to obsession and irrational dread was matched by focus and attention to detail, both of which served her well in her work. She would have been a genius even without those little peccadillos. When she could keep her compulsions in check, make them work for her, she had the potential to be the greatest scientist the Moors had ever known.

But this body wasn’t right, wasn’t hers. The clothing Kade had so kindly fetched for her from his attic stronghold was only accentuating that reality, even after his careful alterations. Her shirt was too loose in the arms and shoulders, and even across the chest, although that difference was less noticeable: Jill had never believed in physical labor. Her trousers were too tight in the thighs and buttocks—again, a slight difference, as Jill had always been troublingly focused on her weight, but still. Every difference ached. Every difference burned.

Even her face was wrong. Different lines around the mouth and eyes, from different uses of the underlying musculature. People thought of Jack as the dour member of the pair, and perhaps they weren’t wrong, perhaps she didn’t smile as easily as her sister, but when she did smile, she did so with sincerity. She smiled because she meant it, a response that had already begun to translate into specific morphology. Jill smiled because her Master liked his daughter to be sweet and biddable, liked her to smile in his presence as if he was the source of all that was good in the world. Those smiles never reached her eyes. Why should they? It wasn’t like they were real.

“You all right over there, Jack?” called Christopher.

Jack swallowed a sigh. It would have been so much better, so much easier, if she’d been the one to go and speak with Eleanor. But if she had been forced to face her former benefactor, if Eleanor had looked at her with understanding—or worse, with pity—her narrow grasp on her composure might well have snapped. She had made excuses about becoming useless if she spent another second in that lacy abomination Jill thought suitable for an evening of body-snatching, claiming some indignities were simply too much to be borne.

The truth was simpler. She was reaching her limits. She couldn’t stand to face one more person who understood how much she’d lost.

“No,” she said, lowering her hands and turning to face them. “I’m so far from ‘all right’ that I doubt I could see it with a telescope. I never intended to come back here. This world is an affront to the scientific principles by which I live.”

“You mean the scientific principles that let your sister steal your body?” asked Cora.

Jack frowned, focusing on the blue-haired girl. “Have I said or done something to offend you?” she asked. “Did I dissect one of your pets before I left here? That seems unlikely, since you joined the student body after my departure, but stranger things have happened. Time-traveling doors could be a real, if vexing, phenomenon.”

Cora’s ears burned red. “No,” she said. “You just scared me with all that lightning. Someone could have been hurt.”

“She means me,” said Christopher. “I could have been hurt.”

“Ah,” said Jack. “I suppose pointing out that this was my room before it was Christopher’s, and that the density of my belongings remains such that the principles of resonance still identify it as my domain won’t buy me your forgiveness?”

“Since I have no idea what you just said, no,” said Cora. “You can’t go around electrocuting people. It’s not safe.”

“No one was hurt,” said Christopher.

“I believe she’s objecting to the possible, not the actual, which is something I can understand,” said Jack. “I spend a great deal of my time contending with the possible, and sometimes must reject ideas I was deeply infatuated with because they have the potential to do more harm than I care for. I’m sorry I frightened you. It wasn’t my intention. I won’t say I would have done anything any differently, because I barely had time to calibrate the lightning rod before the fact that I was touching it with bare fingers—bare fingers that technically belonged to someone else—overwhelmed me, and I passed out from the shock. Our escape was a narrow thing. I would have been my sister’s first meal in her new life had I remained where I was long enough to be taken, and so I can’t apologize for fleeing. Only for the consequences it carried.”

Cora paused, looking at Jack. She still didn’t quite understand why identical twins trading bodies was so upsetting. That didn’t change the fact that Jack was upset. Kade trusted her. Christopher trusted her. And Alexis trusted her, enough to stroke her hair and kiss her temples, even though Jack was currently in the body of the girl who had killed her.

“It’s okay,” she said. “I know you didn’t mean it.”

Jack inclined her head in acknowledgment. “Appreciated. Your hair—are you a Drowned Girl, like Nadya? Did you visit … I’m sorry, I can’t pronounce it. The world with the Russian name and the fondness for turtles.”

“Belyyreka, the Drowned World,” said Cora. “No. I didn’t go there. I went to the Trenches. I’m a mermaid.”

“You’re extremely bipedal, for a mermaid,” said Jack.

“And Sumi is really talkative for a dead girl, but that doesn’t shut her up,” said Cora. “I’m a mermaid. I went into the water and I saw what I was always supposed to be, and I’m not giving that up because some stupid door decided I wasn’t sure enough.”

“Ah, surety,” said Jack. “Have you noticed that the doors come for us when we’re young enough to believe we know everything, and toss us out again as soon as we’re old enough to have doubts? I can’t decide whether it’s an infinite kindness or an incredible cruelty.” She looked at her hands, tugging the gloves more securely into place. “Perhaps it’s both. Many things exist in a state of patient paradox, waiting for some change of circumstance to tilt them one way or the other.”

“This is probably weird to say, given the circumstances, but I missed you,” said Christopher.

Jack flashed him a quick, oddly shy smile. “Well, things must have been quite dull in my absence. I doubt any of these gutless churls would know how to de-flesh a body.”

“No, that’s not a common skill among the rest of the current students,” agreed Christopher. He glanced at the door before asking, “So … Alexis, huh?”

Jack’s eyes narrowed. “Do you have an objection to my choice of partners?”

“Not at all! I mean, my true love is literally a skeleton, so I figure I don’t get to judge. People love who they love. I just never thought you were into…” He paused, waving his hands as he tried to finish his thought.

“Fat girls?” asked Cora, a dangerous note in her voice.

Christopher snorted. “Please. Anyone with skin seems fat to me, including myself. Once you have working musculature, you’re not my type.”

“Disturbing but accurate,” murmured Jack.

“I’m honestly more thrown by the ‘person with a physical body’ part,” continued Christopher. “I guess I sort of assumed that one day you’d reproduce by budding, or by digging up a bunch of dead things and stapling them together.”

“Alexis has been dead twice, and while she might be able to get pregnant via conventional means, neither science nor necromancy recommends she attempt to do so,” said Jack. “I, on the other hand, am capable of reproduction when inhabiting my proper body, but find the idea abhorrent. It’s a messy, dangerous process, and I want nothing to do with it. Should Alexis decide she wants to be a mother, I’ll construct her the child or children of her dreams, and I won’t use anything as primitive as a stapler.”

“Why does that sound romantic when you say it?” asked Cora.

Christopher laughed. “Fair enough, biology bows before you. I got it. She seems nice.”

“She’s more than I, in all my weakness, could possibly deserve,” said Jack. “She’s the moon that lights my way and the stars that steer my course, and I spent every day I was enrolled in this school sharing a room with the sister who killed her, who’d never been able to understand what it was for me to be in love. When I arrived home and saw Alexis standing by Dr. Bleak’s side, I felt…”

She stopped for a moment, throat working. Finally, in a soft voice, she said, “I felt like I’d been forgiven. I felt like I’d been rewarded for my willingness to stand against my sister, who I loved once—who I love still—with the restoration of the thing I cared for most in this or any other world. She’s everything to me, and the Moors are her home, and I’ll save them, for her. I won’t pretend there’s no selfishness here. I want my body back. Remaining in this one will surely drive me mad. But I’d accept that madness if not for the fact that Alexis would never forgive me for leaving her family behind.”

Christopher whistled, long and low. “Invite me to the wedding, okay?”

Jack smiled. “I doubt you’ll be able to handle the commute, but I’ll light a candle to the Moon for you all the same.”

The door at the top of the stairs banged open and Sumi came skipping down, pausing when she saw Jack. Then she lit up, bouncing onto her toes and grinning as widely as her face allowed. “There you are!” she declared, loud enough that people could probably hear her three rooms away. “I wondered, but you put your petals back in place, and you’re the right rose after all! We’re going to have an adventure, did you know?”

“Miss West agreed, then?” Jack looked past Sumi to where Kade and Alexis were descending the stairs. “You’ll accompany us to the Moors?”

“We will,” said Kade. “You’re sure you can get us back here, right? This isn’t a one-way trip?”

“Dr. Bleak will gladly reward you for assisting us, if he’s able,” said Jack. Her face twisted, sorrow and resignation warring for ownership of her expression. “And if all is as I fear it may be, I’ll stand in his stead as new scientist to the Moors, heir to all the Moon’s commands. Either way, the lightning will see you home.”

“Jack…” Kade hesitated. “That sounds like a pretty permanent position.”

“The first marriage any scientist makes is to their art,” said Jack. “The second, if they’re fortunate, is to someone somewhat softer. I’ve found both the loves of my life, and I’m not so arrogant—although I am, let us be clear, quite arrogant—as to think I could do better. I’m going home. I’m taking up the place I have trained for since I was a child, if that’s what has to happen. Or perhaps I’m getting lucky, and Dr. Bleak will rise and hold his title for a little longer.”

The look in her eyes made it clear that she didn’t expect any further luck to be coming her way. She turned to Christopher and Cora.

“You’re quite welcome to accompany us: Christopher, at least, has skills that would serve him well in the Moors, and I’m sure you”—she nodded to Cora—“have useful things to offer, although I don’t know you well enough to guess at what they might be. The choice is yours. I should warn you that there are shadows in the sea where I come from. They might be more interested in you than you’ll entirely care for.”

“What, having managed to nab Kade and Sumi, you’re happy to leave the rest of us behind?” asked Christopher.

“Having managed to ‘nab’ the Goblin Prince in Waiting and the war heroine, you mean? Yes, I’m quite content. But we’re wasting time. Will you come, or no?”

“We’ll come,” said Cora, before Christopher could speak. She knew what his answer was going to be, could see it in the way he held his flute. He was hungry for adventure. He wanted to glut himself on it, to digest it slowly through the days ahead. Whether his door came for him again or not, he could at least remember there was magic in the world.

She didn’t think she could bear it if he left her behind.

Jack nodded, relief flickering across her face like lightning licking at the sky. “I swear I’ll do my best to get you home. Alexis?” She turned to the larger girl. “Will you do the honors?”

Alexis reached into the pocket of her apron and pulled out a key. Or at least, Cora thought it was a key; it didn’t seem like it could be anything else, given the way it fit into the curve of Alexis’s fingers. She’d just never seen a key crafted from living lightning before. It bucked and struggled against Alexis’s grasp, trying to break free and ground itself.

Alexis stepped forward and slid the key into the empty air, closing her eyes. Jack put her hands over Alexis’s, stepping closer, so the two girls were pressed together, holding each another steady, holding each other up.

“We’re sure,” said Jack, and together, they turned the key.

The room flashed white with lightning. It poured from the light fixture, cascading over Jack and Alexis before slamming, again and again, into the already-blackened floor. Alexis’s unbound hair stood on end. Jack’s hair, confined by a tidy braid, was more restrained, but Cora realized she could hear something under the pounding of the lightning.

Laughter.

Jack was laughing, high and bright and utterly delighted. It was the laughter of a child waking on Christmas morning to find a pony tethered to the bannister; it was the laughter of a monster rising from the primordial ooze to devour the world. Cora wasn’t sure which of those two thoughts frightened her more, and it was almost a relief that the lightning already had the hairs on her arms and the back of her neck standing on end, so she didn’t have to blame it on the laughter.

Thunder rolled through the room, loud enough to vibrate the shelves, and the lightning stopped. The key remained, now protruding from the brass keyhole of an old oak door. Jack grasped the handle.

“All right,” she said. “Let’s go home.”