Come Tumbling Down (Wayward Children #5)(42)

“Please don’t,” she said. “Crying is very untidy, and I can’t handle any more mess today.”

“I’m glad you came to us for help,” he said. “We miss you.”

Jack managed a smile. “I miss you too. But I’m happy here. This is where I belong. Alexis and I … we’re going to raise a family. What’s the point of knowing how to pervert science to your own ends if you can’t use it selfishly every once in a while?”

Kade laughed. Then he pulled her into a hug, careful not to touch any of her exposed skin, and whispered, “You’re not a monster.”

“Oh, but I am,” said Jack. “I’m just … a good one.”

Kade let go. He gave her one final look before nodding to Alexis and stepping through the door. It slammed shut behind him, and he found himself standing in the basement with the others. He turned. The door was gone.

“Well,” said Christopher. “That happened.”

“It sure did,” said Kade. “You okay?”

Christopher started to answer. Then he paused, wrinkled his nose, and said, “I left my good jeans back in the mad science windmill.”

Sumi laughed, high and bright and utterly sincere, and things were going to be all right. Not the same as they had been, maybe; nothing is ever the same after an adventure, after someone dies. But all right, and maybe that was just as good, in its own quiet way.

“I’m going to tell Ely-Eleanor that we’re back!” said Sumi, and went galloping up the stairs, still carrying the baling hook.

Kade’s eyes widened. “Sumi, slow down!” he shouted, chasing after her. “You’re going to trip and impale somebody!”

Christopher and Cora exchanged a look.

“This school is weird,” she said.

“You’re covered in rainbows,” he said.

“That’s pretty weird,” she said. “Good thing I go to school here.”

Christopher grinned. “Good thing.”

They followed their friends up the stairs, leaving the basement—and the electrical burns on the concrete floor—behind them.





EPILOGUE


WRITE YOUR NAME IN LIGHTNING; SHAME THE SKY


THE SKY WAS black with clouds and white with flashes of lightning. The bloody face of the Moon stole glimpses of the land below whenever the wind ripped holes in the outline of the storm, keeping watch over it all.

Far below, in a windmill, two girls—both old enough to be women now, if they wanted to be, but clinging with all their might to the shattered shreds of their childhoods, which had been torn away from them too soon—arrayed a body on a slab. He had been a big man, before death made him smaller. His head was attached to his body by clever, secure stitches made of stretched tendon, intended to keep it there long enough for him to heal. His arms and legs were strapped down. Cables ran from every part of his body to a vast lightning rod, which was connected in turn to a generator powerful enough to run a city.

Jack stepped up next to the slab, reaching over to gently, tenderly brush his hair away from his eyes.

“I lied to Jill,” she said. “I told her you weren’t my father. But you are. You’re the man who raised me. You taught me what it means to be a scientist. You taught me what it means to be a person when I could have been a monster so easily. Wake up. For me. Just this once, don’t be stubborn, don’t be contrary, and wake up.”

She kissed his forehead before turning to Alexis.

“It’s time,” she said. “Start the crank.”

Alexis nodded and began turning the vast crank that would open the roof. The two halves of the door slid smoothly open, revealing the cloud-dark sky. Jack flung first one switch, and then another, and another, as the generators engaged, as the air grew thick with ozone and the various machines began to spark and flash.

Lightning lashed down from the heavens, slamming into the lightning rod, filling the windmill with electric light. Jack laughed, high and bright and for one single moment overjoyed, standing in her element and utterly at peace with herself. Alexis smiled, eyes half-closed against the glare.

The lightning faded. Alexis slowly stopped cranking. Jack flipped the switches again, this time pulling them down, cutting off the power.

“Well?” asked Alexis. “Did it work?”

“I don’t know,” said Jack. “Dr. Bleak?”

On the slab, the dead man—not so dead any longer—opened his eyes.