Down Among the Sticks and Bones (Wayward Children #2)(33)

“Nothing,” said the stallholder. She still wasn’t looking at Jack.

“But—”

“I said, nothing.” The stallholder moved to start smoothing the remaining ribbons, trying to restore order to the chaos Jill had made. “She never pays anyway. The Master will send someone with gold, will overpay for the next dress he orders in her name. She didn’t threaten me this time. She didn’t show me her teeth or ask if I wanted to look at the skin under her choker. You made her better, not worse.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Leave.” The stallholder finally looked up, finally focused on Jack. When she spoke again, her voice was so soft that it was barely audible. “Everyone knows that children who talk to the Master’s daughter disappear, because he can’t stand to share her. But not you. Because even though you’re not his child, you’re still her sister, and she gets jealous of the people who talk to you. Get away from me before she decides you’re my friend.”

Jack took a step backward. The stallholder went back to sorting through her ribbons, expression grim. She did not speak again, and so Jack turned and walked through the silent village. The sun was down. The huge red moon hung ominously close to the horizon, like it might descend and begin crushing everything in its path.

The door of the inn was closed. A single candle burned in the window. Jack looked at it and kept on walking, out of the village, through the gates, and onto the wild and lonely moor.

*

THE LIGHT IN THE windmill window made it seem more like a lighthouse, something perfect and pure, calling the lost souls home. Jack started to walk a little faster when she realized that she was almost home. That wasn’t enough. She broke into a run, and would have slammed straight into the door if Dr. Bleak hadn’t opened it a split second before she could. She ran into the hard flesh of his midsection instead, the rough leather of his apron grinding against her cheek.

She dropped the basket, scattering supplies and her small remaining store of coins at her feet.

“Jack, what’s wrong?” asked Dr. Bleak, and his voice was a rope thrown to a drowning girl, his voice was the solid foundation of her world, and she clung to him, pressing her face against his chest, for once not caring about the dirt, and cried and cried, under the eye of the unforgiving moon.





PART IV

JILL AND JACK WILL NOT COME BACK





10

AND FROM HER GRAVE, A RED, RED ROSE …

TIME PASSED. JACK STAYED away from the village, electing to do extra chores at home rather than accompanying Dr. Bleak to town on shopping trips. She began to make plans for the future, for the time when she would have her own garden, her own windmill, and be able to provide for a household of her own.

Alexis continued to visit, cautiously at first, and then more and more brazenly as nothing terrible happened to her family.

Jill walked the battlements, and counted down the days until their eighteenth birthday. She was nestled snug in her bed, dreaming of rivers of beautiful red, when sunlight flooded the room and slapped her out of sleep. She sat bolt upright, shocked and bewildered, and blinked against the terrible brightness.

“Miss,” said Mary, voice polite, deferential. She had been using that tone with Jill for two years, since the day Jill had thrown a fit and demanded she be spoken to with respect, lest Mary find herself thrown over the battlements. “The Master requested I wake you.”

“Why?” demanded Jill. She dug at her eyes with the heels of her hands, rubbing until the sting of the sunlight faded. When she lowered her hands, blinking rapidly, she realized that Mary was holding a large vase filled with red, red roses. Jill’s eyes widened. She reached out her hands, making small wanting motions.

“Give them to me,” said Jill.

“Yes, miss.” Mary did not hand the vase to Jill. Rather, she walked a few steps along the length of the bed and set them on the table next to the headboard, where Jill could breathe in their fragrance and admire their beauty without pricking herself on the thorns. If she were responsible for the Master’s precious girl bleeding when he was not in the room, her head would be the one hitting the floor.

“From the Master?” demanded Jill.

“Yes, miss.”

“They’re beautiful.” Jill’s expression went soft, her eyes growing wet with grateful tears. “Do you see how beautiful they are? He loves me so much. He’s so good to me.”

“Yes, miss,” said Mary, who was well acquainted with the shape of a vampire’s love. She thought sometimes that Jill had utterly forgotten that she had been a foundling too, long ago; that Jill was not the first girl to wear a pale dress and a choker around her throat.

“Did he tell you why?” Jill turned a hopeful face toward Mary. “Is he coming to see me today? I know it’s only been two days, but—”

“Do you really not know, miss?” Of course she didn’t. Vampires cared about time only as it impacted other people, and Jill, while still human, was already thinking like a vampire. Mary forced herself to smile. “Today is the fifth anniversary of your arrival in the Moors.”

Jill’s eyes widened. “I’m seventeen?”

“Yes, miss.” Time in the Moors was not precisely like time in the world Jack and Jill had originally come from: it followed a different set of natural rules and did not map precisely to any other calendar. But a year was a year. Even if their precise birthday was impossible to mark, the date of their arrival was clear.