Down Among the Sticks and Bones (Wayward Children #2)(20)

“As yours has chosen you, and slighted me, what’s to stop me killing her where she stands?” The Master sounded bored. That didn’t stop the fear from coiling through Jack’s heart, where it lay, heavy and waiting, like a serpent preparing to strike. “She forsook the protection of my house when she rejected me.”

“She’s more useful alive,” said Dr. Bleak. “She’s her sister’s mirror. If something should … happen, to the first, you could draw upon the second to guarantee her survival. And if you killed her, you would break our bargain. Do you really want to risk a fight between us? Do you think this is the time?”

The Master scowled but did not rise. “As you like, Michel,” he said, sounding almost bored. His eyes went to Jack, as calm as if he hadn’t just threatened her. “If you tire of living in squalor, little girl, feel free to return. My doors are always open to one as lovely as you.”

Jack, who had long since tired of being viewed as simply “lovely,” and who had not forgotten the threat, even if the Master had, said nothing. She nodded, and stepped a little closer to Dr. Bleak, and when he rose and walked out of the room, she followed him.

*

BUT THAT IS ENOUGH of Jack for now: this is a story about two children, even if it is sometimes necessary to follow one at the exclusion of the other. That is often the way. Give children the opportunity and they will scatter, forcing choices to be made, forcing the one who seeks them to run down all manner of dark corridors. And so:

Jill ate her breakfast, and when she was done, she ate Jack’s breakfast, glaring all the while at her sister’s empty bed. Stupid Jack. They were finally in a place where someone liked their shared face, their shared reflection, and now Jack was just going to walk away and leave her. She should have known that Jack wouldn’t want to start being a twin now. Not when she’d spent so many years avoiding it.

(It did not occur to Jill that Jack’s avoidance, like her own, had been born purely of parental desire and never of a sincere wanting. Their parents had done everything they could to blur the lines of twinhood, leaving Jack and Jill stuck in the middle. But Jack was gone and Jill was not, and in the moment, that was all that mattered.)

When the last scrap of toast had been used to mop up the last smear of egg, Jill finally got out of bed and walked to the door. Mary was waiting there, and she curtseyed when Jill emerged.

“Miss,” she said. “Was breakfast to your liking?”

Jill, who had never been treated like she mattered before—especially not by an adult—beamed. “It was fine,” she said grandly. “Did you see to my sister?”

“I’m sorry, miss, I believe she’s already gone with Dr. Bleak. He doesn’t often stay away from his laboratory long.”

Jill’s face fell. “Oh,” she said. Until that moment, she hadn’t realized how much she was hoping Jack would have changed her mind; would be waiting, penitent and hungry, on the stairs.

Let Jack throw away the chance to be a princess and live in a castle. Jack already knew what it was to be treated like royalty, to have the pretty dress and the shining tiara and the love of everyone around her. She’d realize her mistake and come crawling back, and would Jill forgive her?

Probably. It would be nice, to share this adventure with her sister.

“The Master is waiting, miss,” said Mary. “Are you ready to see him?”

“Yes,” said Jill, and no said something deep inside her, a still, small voice that understood the danger they were in, even if that danger was shadowy and ill defined. Jill stood up a little straighter, raised her chin the way she’d seen Jack do when she was showing off a new dress to their mother’s friends, and swallowed the fear as deep as it would go. “I want to tell him that I’ll stay.”

“You haven’t a choice now, miss,” said Mary. Her tone was cautioning, almost apologetic. “Once your sister chose to go, you were set to stay.”

Jill frowned, the still, small voice that had been counseling caution instantly silenced in the face of this new affront. “Because she chose, I don’t get to?”

“Yes, miss. I don’t mean to speak out of turn, but you may wish to approach the Master with deference. He doesn’t like being selected second.”

Neither did Jill, and she had been selected second all her life. In that instant, hot, fierce love for the nameless man in the lonely castle washed over her, wiping any remnants of caution away. The Master was second-best for no good reason, just like she was. Well, she would make him understand that it wasn’t true. She’d chosen him before Jack had even known her stupid Dr. Bleak existed. They were going to be happy together until the door home opened, and they were never going to be second-best again. Never.

“I chose him first. Jacqueline skipped breakfast so she could look like the star,” said Jill, all bitterness and cold anger. “I’ll tell him so.”

Mary had seen many foundlings come and go since her own arrival in the Moors. She looked at Jill, and for the first time, she felt as if, perhaps, the Master might be pleased. This one might live long enough to leave, assuming the door home ever opened at all.

“Follow me, miss,” she said, and turned, and walked down the stairs to where the Master waited, still and silent as he always was when he saw no need for motion.

(How the children who tumbled through the occasional doors between the Moors and elsewhere couldn’t see that he was a predator, she didn’t understand. Mary had known him for a predator the second she’d seen him. It had been a familiar danger: the family she had been fleeing from had been equally predatory, even if their predations had been of a more mundane nature. She had been comfortable in his care because she had known him, and when he had revealed himself fully to her, it had come as no surprise. That was rare. Most of the children she walked through these halls were terribly, terribly surprised when their time came, no matter how often they’d been warned. There would never be warning enough.)