Down Among the Sticks and Bones (Wayward Children #2)(31)

Jack started to stand. Alexis grabbed her wrist, pulling her back down.

“It’s not worth it,” she said, voice low. “Please, it’s not worth it.”

Jill laughed. “See? Everyone here knows their place except for you. Is it because you’re jealous? Because you could have had what I have, and you didn’t move fast enough? Or is it because you miss me?”

“I never knew my sister well enough to miss her, and with the way you behave, I’m not sure I’d want you for my sister,” said Jack. “As for having what you have … you have a dress that shows every speck of dust that lands on it. You have hands so pale that they can never look clean. I don’t want what you have. What you have is terrible. Leave me alone.”

“Is that any way to talk to your family? Blood of your blood?”

Jack sneered. “Last time I checked, you were planning to get rid of your blood as soon as the Master was willing to take it. Or did you change your mind? Are you going to stick around and try living for a little while? I recommend it. Maybe get some more sun. You’re clearly vitamin D–deficient.”

“Jack, please,” whispered Alexis.

Jill was still smiling. Jack went cold.

The Sign of the Hind and Hare was the only inn the village had. That didn’t make it indispensable. If something should happen to it—if it burned to the ground in the middle of the night, say, or if its owners were found with all the blood drained from their bodies—well, that would just be too bad. Another inn would open before the next full moon, equipped with a new family, eager to serve without breaking the rules.

Like everyone who lived under the grace of the Master, the Choppers obeyed his rules. They did as they were told. They went where they were bid. And they didn’t fight, ever, not with him, and not with the girl he’d chosen as his heir.

Jack swallowed. Jack smoothed her vest with the heels of her gloved hands and stood, leaving her plate behind. Alexis let go of her arm. The moment of absence, when the pressure of Alexis’s hand was first removed, was somehow worse than the surrender.

“I’m … so sorry, Jillian,” said Jack, in a careful, measured voice. “I was hungry. You know how cranky I get when I’m hungry.”

Jill giggled. “You’re the worst when you haven’t eaten. So did you come to visit me, really?”

“Yes. Absolutely.” Jack didn’t need to turn to know that Alexis was trembling, or that her parents were fighting not to rush to her. They hadn’t been expecting her to bring danger to their door. They should have been. They should have known. She should have known. She’d been a fool, and now they were paying the price. “Dr. Bleak expects me back by midnight, but I have shopping to do in the square before then. Would you like to come with me? I think I have enough coin that I could buy you something nice. Candied ginger, or a ribbon for your hair.”

Jill’s gaze sharpened. “If you’d really come to see me, you’d know whether you had enough coin to get me a present.”

“Dr. Bleak controls the money. I’m just his apprentice.” Jack spread her hands, trying to look contrite without seeming overly eager. Jill seemed to believe her—or maybe Jill just didn’t care, as long as she got her own way in the end. We’re strangers now, she thought, and mourned. “I’m learning a lot, but that doesn’t mean he trusts me with more than he has to.”

“The Master trusts me with everything,” said Jill, and skipped—skipped!—across the room to slide her arm through Jack’s. “I suppose we can shop before you buy me a present. If Dr. Bleak cast you out, you’d have to live in the barn with the pigs, and you’d be filthy all the time. That would be awful, wouldn’t it?”

Jack, who already felt like she needed a bath from just that short contact with her sister, suppressed a shudder. “Awful,” she agreed, and grabbed her basket, and let Jill lead her out into the night.

The door slammed shut behind them. Ms. Chopper dropped the tray of potatoes in her hurry to fling her arms around her daughter, and the three of them huddled together, shaking and crying, and suddenly all too aware of the dark outside.

*

JILL STEPPED LIGHTLY, like she was dancing her way across the muddy cobblestones in the village square. She never stopped talking, words spilling over each other like eager puppies as she recounted everything that had happened to her in the months since she’d last seen her sister. Jack realized, with a dull, distant sort of guilt, that Jill was lonely: she might have servants in that great pile of a castle, and she might have the love, or at least the fondness, of her Master, but she didn’t have friends.

(That was probably a good thing. Jack could remember Dr. Bleak returning from trips to the village shortly after she’d gone to live with him, a dire expression on his face and his big black medical bag in his hands. There had been deaths among the village children. That was all he’d been willing to tell her, when she pressed. It hadn’t been until years later, when Alexis started coming around, that she’d learned that all the children who’d died had been seen playing with Jill around the fountain. The Master was a jealous man. He didn’t want her to have anything in her life except for him, and he was happy to do whatever he deemed necessary to make sure that he remained the center of her world. Friends were a nuisance to be dealt with. Friends were expendable.)