Come Tumbling Down (Wayward Children #5)(33)

Gideon gaped, momentarily stunned into silence.

And from behind them came a wet, terrible sound.

Sumi was the first to turn. Christopher the second. Jack didn’t turn at all. She didn’t need to see what stood behind them.

But for the others, ah: there was Cora, draped in the sodden rags of her clothing, which seemed to have been ripped and rent by some unspeakable claw, by some demon of the deep. Her skin, where it was exposed by the torn fabric, gleamed like mother-of-pearl in the Abbey’s stark electric light, and her hair hung in wet, heavy curls that tangled around her arms and breasts like eels. Her eyes were black from side to side, and the others couldn’t look at them for more than a few seconds without feeling the terrible urge to look away, sheltering themselves from the secrets swimming there.

Kade was cradled in her arms, shipwrecked refuse of a softer sea.

“The balance must be maintained,” she said, and her voice both was and was not her own. If a storm could have been said to have a voice, if a shipwreck could have spoken, it would have been the voice that dripped like poisoned pearls from Cora’s lips. “The Moors are made of petty conflicts: they thrive on familial blood. But those conflicts can never matter more than the foundations themselves. The Drowned Abbey stands with Jacqueline Wolcott in the matter of her sister’s malfeasance, and will help her to recover that which has been stolen.”

“Thank you,” said Jack, with swift, undisguised relief. “I—”

“We are not finished,” said the things speaking through Cora’s body. At least they sounded amused, and not angry at the interruption. “There will, of course, be payment.”

“Anything,” said Jack.

“No,” said Christopher sharply. “Not anything.” He turned to Cora—the Drowned Gods—whatever she was now, and said, “We get our friends back. Both of them. They’re not yours to keep.”

“Aren’t they?” Not-Cora cocked her head. “They fell, voluntarily or no. The depths are ours. Everything within them belongs to us. The water knew this one, and she knew the water, and she breathed it willingly in.”

“She isn’t of the Moors,” said Jack.

Not-Cora returned her terrible attention to the thin, damaged girl in the black leather gloves. “So?”

“These depths are yours, but she belongs to a different sea, and that sea may have Drowned Gods of its own, and they may take umbrage at you claiming something for your own amusement that they’ve already marked as belonging to them. If the purpose of this exercise is maintaining the balance of the Moors, do you want to risk offending your alternates? I’m sure they couldn’t possibly defeat you here, in the place of your power, but…” Jack offered a delicate shrug. “The people of your protectorate are fragile when compared to you.”

“Greedy little things,” chided Not-Cora. “We never intended to keep this precious pearl; do not think you’ve won something we treasured. Still, the payment will be due.”

“No lives,” said Sumi.

“One life,” said Jack. The others turned to her. She didn’t move, but continued staring levelly at the things in Cora’s skin.

“My sister,” she said. “Jill can’t walk away from this. I would never be safe. Alexis would never be safe. I killed her once, to save people I cared about but didn’t love. To save the people I love, I’d destroy her so completely it would be as if she had never existed.”

“Without her existence, the Moon would never have seen fit to send you a door,” said Not-Cora.

Jack shrugged. “So I would have grown up innocently loveless, and never known what I was missing. I’ll pay you with my sister’s life. Is that enough?”

“Almost,” said Not-Cora. The strangeness in her voice grew stronger, like the tide rolling in. “Almost. You’ll stay, Jack of the Moors, Jack of the lightning. You’ll stay until the Moon releases you from service. Not merely on the Moors, not merely in this world, but in your windmill, chained to your lightning and your learning as Dr. Bleak was before you, and Dr. Ghast before him, and Dr. Frost before her. If your lover leaves you for another protectorate, you will not follow. You will be the cruel light to balance the killing dark, and you will know, every day, that you have no choice. You belong to us now.”

There was a moment of weighted silence before Jack laughed.

“Is that all?” she asked. “Yes. Yes, and yes, and yes again. I’ll pay for your help by doing what I was raised to do, what I want to do, and I won’t be sorry, not one minute, because this is who I am. I’m Jack Wolcott. I am the mad scientist who lurks in the fens and the fields, and I’ll be damned before I’ll let my sister take this world away from me.”

The Drowned Gods smiled with Cora’s lips, bowed Cora’s head, and said, “Gideon. Gather the acolytes. High tide is coming.” Then they opened her mouth and vomited black water across the Abbey floor in a terrible gout. Small fish thrashed there, and other, less comprehensible forms. Cora’s eyes rolled up into her head and she collapsed, face-first, into the mess, dropping Kade in the process. He hit the ground and started coughing, knocking the water out of his own lungs.

“That was interesting,” said Sumi, as Christopher rushed to Cora. She bounced thoughtfully onto her toes before walking over to Gideon. She didn’t say a word, merely stared at him until he squirmed on his rotted velvet cushion.