Come Tumbling Down (Wayward Children #5)(12)

“My sister has dreadful taste in clothing,” she murmured. “It’s a form of bravado and a sort of bragging at the same time. ‘Look at me, I’m so precious to the vampire lord, and he’s so very, very rich, that I can swan about a world filled with mudholes and monsters and not worry about staining my pretty pastel dresses or being supper for something made entirely of terrible teeth.’ It’s appalling.”

“Focus,” said Kade.

Jack sniffed. “I’d like to see you crammed into a body that isn’t yours, and see how focused you feel.”

Kade raised an eyebrow.

“That isn’t what I meant and you know it,” snapped Jack. She took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. That was unkind of me. I … No, it wasn’t happily ever after, however much it felt like it at the time. It was merely a pause before the storm. The Master heard of our return, you see, and we’d been gone for long enough that the village had forgotten my sister’s transgressions. It doesn’t pay to have a long memory in the Moors. There’s always another monster sniffing at the gates, and dwelling on the ones that have already gone elsewhere can distract from the one at your door. Jill drew the first breath of her second life at midnight. The Master was on our doorstep before the storm could fade, demanding his daughter’s return.”

Jack paused. Then, in a soft, shamed voice, she said, “We gave her to him. We could have fought, I suppose—I should have fought; she’s my sister, after all—but we’d just performed a resurrection, and I was wounded, and the Master is a powerful foe. It’s unwise to anger him. Dr. Bleak left the choice to me, left it in my hands whether we returned my sister to her vampiric father figure or closed the doors against him and kept her by our sides. She was crying for him, straining against the straps holding her down, and I … I let her go. She wanted him so badly. He was her happy ending, and I suppose I thought … I thought … I thought if I could have my windmill, and my mentor, and my love, she should have something. She could never be a vampire. The murder she’d been banished for had been undone. Let her have what remained of her own story, and leave us in peace.”

“The murders she did here weren’t undone,” said Christopher.

“Except mine,” said Sumi.

“Still weird,” muttered Cora. “But apparently, I’m the only one who thinks so. Apparently, the rest of you go around raising the dead when you don’t have anything better to do. It’s a miracle we have any graveyards left.”

“Are you done?” asked Kade.

“Maybe,” said Cora.

“Good.” He turned back to Jack. “Please. Continue.”

“There isn’t much left to say,” said Jack. “Jill returned home with her ‘father.’ I remained with Dr. Bleak and Alexis, in a windmill large enough to touch the sky, and I said ‘this is enough, this is everything I’ve ever wanted.’ And I … I was right. I was home, and happy, and for the first time in my life, some of the things that plagued me receded. I went into the garden without my gloves. Not every time, or when it had been raining—mud is still beyond me—but I picked tomatoes and got berry juice on my fingers and I didn’t care, because Alexis was there, Alexis loved me, Alexis didn’t blame me for what my sister had done. I helped Dr. Bleak refine the lightning treatments that kept her with us. I went into the village, to a bookstore that sometimes gets volumes from other worlds, and bought books on sign language, so we could talk when her voice failed her. Dr. Bleak and I began discussing what would happen when my apprenticeship ended. It was…”

She stopped. Finally, she sighed.

“We were children when we found our doors, all of us. Maybe they don’t prey on adults, or maybe adults don’t come back, but I’ve never met anyone who was considered fully grown by their original society before they found their first door. We were children when the worlds we’d chosen threw us back to the world where we’d been born, and we were children when we came here. Lost, frightened children clinging to the only rope we had, the only lifeline that would keep us from tumbling into the abyss of self-doubt and despair. In that windmill, with Dr. Bleak and Alexis, with the Moon watching over me, I started to feel like I could be an adult. Like I could be happy growing up and settling down, like I knew where I belonged. Perhaps I didn’t watch Jill as closely as I could have. Perhaps there were signs I missed, signs that something dangerous and cruel was gathering at the edges of my little world. I was happy. That was my crime.”

“If it was a crime, we all shared it,” said Alexis. “None of us saw this coming. None of us had a clue.”

“I am a genius, and should have known when the wolves were at my door, but thank you,” said Jack. “You are, and will always be, more than I deserve.”

“Stop flattering me and finish asking these nice people for help,” said Alexis.

“Even so,” said Jack. She looked at Kade. “Last night, as the sun was setting, the Master’s forces attacked our windmill. They seized me. And they offered Dr. Bleak a choice. Perform a very specific procedure on my sister and myself, or see me ripped to pieces, and each piece thrown to a different corner of our world, to guarantee no resurrection would be possible. I was screaming, begging him to let me die, when they began threatening Alexis. I understood what they’d do to me, you see, and I was afraid—but not so afraid that I could countenance letting them harm my heart. Second resurrections always come with consequences. Third … if you’re fortunate, or unfortunate, they can be done. They’re never worth it.”