Come Tumbling Down (Wayward Children #5)(23)
Sumi cocked her head, considering him. “You’re awfully hung up on the mundane things,” she said. “Is this because you traveled through Logic, or are you afraid?”
“Aren’t you?” asked Christopher.
“No.” Sumi’s smile was bright as the absent sun. “I don’t die here. I make it back to Confection. One day I die there, and my body goes into the ground for the gummy worms to eat. But even if I did die here, I wouldn’t be afraid. This is new. I’ve never fought a vampire before, or tried to steal someone’s body back. New things are the best kind of magic there is. I can’t waste time being afraid when there’s newness to roll around in, like a dog in a puddle of syrup.”
“That’s a terrifying visual,” said Christopher. He pulled a dress covered in virulently blue and orange stripes out of the wardrobe and made a face. “I thought horror movies were supposed to be all monochrome and serious. This hurts my eyes.”
“It’s perfect,” said Sumi, snatching it out of his hands and peeling off her shirt.
Christopher looked up at the ceiling. “I wish you wouldn’t do that.”
“And I wish you weren’t so weird about nudity, but here we are, and here we go, and you need to find something to wear,” said Sumi. She had pulled the brightly colored dress on and was doing up the laces, expression approving. “This is so good. Think I can keep it when we’re done? If I don’t get too much blood on it?”
“Probably,” said Christopher, poking around in the wardrobe for something in his size. “Do you think Jack’s stable right now? Can we trust her to make good choices?”
“I don’t think she’s any more unstable than she was when she showed up in the basement,” said Sumi. She shot Christopher a look. “Misfit toys forever, remember? She’s one of us. She was there at the beginning. She’ll be there at the end. We help her when we can.”
“Her sister killed you.”
“I got better,” said Sumi airily.
Christopher laughed and pulled a white linen shirt out of the wardrobe. “Right,” he said. “I forgot.”
In the end, he was able to find trousers, a white linen shirt, and suspenders that fit him almost identically to his normal jeans and T-shirt. They felt like clothes, not a costume, something that he tried not to dwell on too much as he followed Sumi back out onto the stairs.
She gripped the rail and leaned out as far as gravity allowed, shouting, “We’re properly dull now! Are you done playing with corpses?”
“Show some respect, you incomprehensible beast,” Jack called back—but there was no rancor in her voice. If anything, she sounded relieved, like she’d been hoping for a distraction.
“No,” said Sumi. “Do you think if I jumped from here, I’d break both my legs?”
“If you do, I’ll build you new ones,” said Jack.
Sumi laughed and went dancing down the stairs, Christopher following after. Jack and Alexis had draped a sheet across Dr. Bleak’s body; if not for the unpleasant void where his head should have been, it would have been almost possible to pretend he was asleep. The void, and the tubes running from the body to the dialysis machine, which was clicking along, making strange grinding sounds that must have been perfectly normal, since neither Jack nor Alexis looked alarmed.
The tubes were filled with thick red fluid the consistency of raspberry jam, and much as Christopher wanted to tell himself that it wasn’t blood, it was blood. His capacity for self-delusion had never been terribly high. If it had been, he might have been better at lying to his parents, and his life might have turned out very differently.
Jack had also taken the time to change her shirt, wipe the blood from her face, and put on a fresh pair of gloves. There was still a faintly disheveled air to her. It made Christopher nervous. Jack wasn’t supposed to be disheveled. Jack was supposed to be arrogant, immaculate, and utterly self-assured. She was falling apart more quickly than the rest of them realized—maybe more quickly than she realized. She was doing her best, though. That had to count for something.
It would, if they stood by her and made sure she got her happy ending. Whatever shape it took. “What do we do, Jack?” asked Christopher. “This is your world. Tell us what to do, and we’ll do it.”
“We can’t march on the village at night; that would be suicide, and without Dr. Bleak to harness the lightning, none of us would come back from that, which means no one would be able to fetch Cora and Kade back from the Drowned Gods,” said Jack. “I think Miss West would be quite cross if I got that many of her students killed.”
“If you got any of her students killed,” said Christopher. “Say it with me: Miss West would be pissed if you got any of her students killed.”
Jack waved a hand dismissively. “Death is a temporary setback. We can go to the village at dawn. The Master’s housekeeper, Mary, remembers me from when Jill and I first found our door. I believe she’ll let us into the castle if I ask nicely, and if I promise that she won’t be held responsible for the Master’s actions, should our side win. For now, tonight, I have another destination in mind. We need backup, and we need to recover our friends before something dire happens to them.”
“Define ‘dire,’” said Christopher.