Come Tumbling Down (Wayward Children #5)(4)

“So don’t you think—”

“I don’t know, okay? I’ve never had a door appear in the middle of my bedroom before! And it’s all lightning and old oak, and that sounds like Jack and Jill, but they left before you got here and they’re not coming back, so I don’t know whose door this could possibly be. It doesn’t make sense. I need a second to think. Let me think!”

Cora blinked before she said, in a stiff tone, “I’m just trying to make sure we stay safe.”

Christopher took a deep breath. “I’m sor—”

That was as far as he got before the rusted doorknob began shaking, like something was fighting it. Christopher and Cora exchanged a glance. Then, in unison, they took a single long step back, away from whatever was about to come through. Neither of them ran.

The doorknob twisted.

The door shuddered in its frame, which seemed to shift and sigh, like it was letting go of some unspoken expectation.

The door swung inward.

The girl standing on the other side looked to be in her late teens, broad-shouldered and heavy, dressed in an old-fashioned homespun dress. There was a stained apron tied around her waist. A twisted scar crawled up one side of her neck and crossed her cheek in a flat white line, vanishing behind the honeyed waves of her hair. She probably thought of that hair as her best feature: it was thick and glossy and beautiful in a way her pallid skin wasn’t.



Lightning crashed behind her, both illuminating her and throwing the bundle in her arms into sudden, terrible relief.

It was another girl, slighter, smaller, long and lithe of limb. She was as pale as her companion, although not as gray around the edges, and she hung in the first girl’s arms like a body prepared for burial. She wore a gown of white, frothing lace, and her pale hair dangled, long and unbound, like the flag of some dead nation.

Christopher gasped. For a moment, he couldn’t breathe. He grasped for something to hold him upright and found Cora, who stood solidly under his clutching fingers and didn’t make a sound.

“Jack?” he asked. “Jill?”

The stranger, her arms laden with the unnamed Wolcott twin, didn’t say a word as she stepped across the threshold. The door slammed shut behind her. There was another blue-white flash as it vanished, leaving the four teens alone at the bottom of the school, standing in the afterimage, unsure of what was meant to happen next.





2?THEY ALWAYS COME BACK HOME


CHRISTOPHER SUCKED IN a sharp breath, almost choking when the ozone-laden air hit the back of his throat. Coughing, he focused on the girl carrying the unconscious—dead? No, unconscious, surely nothing in the Moors would dare harm a Wolcott—twin.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know who you are. Is that Jack or Jill? Is she hurt?”

It had to be Jill. Her hair was sleek and glossy and looked like it had been brushed a thousand times a day for the last ten years. Jack’s hair had never been that well-cared-for. More importantly, the girl’s wrists were thin and delicate. The muscle of Jack’s arms and shoulders had always been the most obvious distinction between her and her sister. She’d worn long-sleeved shirts with buttoned cuffs, but it had always been clear that one of them did physical labor and one of them … didn’t.

Probably-Jill somehow managed to look moonwashed even in the electric glare of the basement light. She was wearing a lacy, diaphanous nightgown. It was elaborate enough that Christopher was pretty sure he was supposed to call it something pretentious, like a “peignoir,” and it was cut to show an uncomfortable amount of her too-pale skin. Despite all that, the collar was high enough to brush her jaw and so thick with lace rosettes that he couldn’t tell how much scar tissue it concealed. Perfect for a vampire’s adopted daughter.

The stranger opened her mouth, working it soundlessly for several seconds before closing it and shaking her head.

“I’ll get help,” said Cora, turning and running up the stairs before Christopher could ask her not to.

Honestly, he wasn’t even able to quite formulate the reasons why he would’ve objected. Maybe it was the ozone in the air, the charged feeling of something getting ready to break down or break through or break to pieces around them. He was a student at a school for kids who’d traveled between worlds, crossing thresholds that should have been uncrossable; for something to feel strange to him, it had to be pretty extreme.

The Wolcott—Jill, it had to be Jill—in the stranger’s arms remained pale and motionless. Christopher frowned.

“Do you want to put her down?” he asked. “My name’s Christopher. I was a friend of Jack’s before she went back to the Moors. I mean, not really. Jack doesn’t have friends, she has minions who haven’t figured out their place in the grand scheme of things. But she liked me okay, and Jill tolerated me, and this used to be their room. You could put her on my bed if you wanted to.”

The stranger shook her head again, looking frustrated. Her mouth moved.

“I’m sorry. I can’t—if you’re making any sort of sound, I can’t hear it.”

The stranger took a deep breath and mouthed something, lips moving slowly and deliberately. Christopher blinked.

“Too soft?” he asked. “Is that what you’re saying, the bed is too soft?”

The stranger nodded.