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

Christopher gestured toward the autopsy table. With the tablecloth draped over it, it barely even looked like a place where people took dead bodies apart. “Jack used to sleep there. She said it was better for her back. I mean, she also said she could extract someone else’s spine and give herself a new back if necessary, but it seemed like a lot of work. Better to go straight for proper lumbar support.”

The stranger mouthed the words “Thank you” and moved toward the table. She gave the cloth a quizzical look, shrugged, and lay Jill down with exquisite care, stretching out her legs and folding her hands over her chest in a classically funereal pose.

Jill’s hair seemed to stymie the stranger. She started to tug it straight, then stopped, looking at it like she’d never seen it before. Finally, she stepped back, burying her hands in the folds of her skirt, and gave Christopher a silent, worried look.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know what’s wrong, but I’m still sorry. Is she…” He stopped. If Jill wasn’t breathing, he didn’t want to know about it.

“Holy hell, is that Jill?”

Christopher turned toward the stairs, untensing. Kade would know what to do. Kade always knew what to do. It was one of his best, and most irritating, qualities.

Kade wasn’t alone on the stairs. Sumi was behind him, bouncing onto her toes and straining to see over his shoulder. Frustrated, she planted her hands at the small of Kade’s back and pushed.

“Come on, come on, there’s adventure in the air and you’re too slow!”

“I don’t think that’s adventure so much as it’s static, Sumi; calm down,” said Kade. He took the remainder of the stairs in four long, lanky steps, hopping down the final three in his hurry to get to the silent Wolcott.

He had almost reached her when the stranger stepped between them, glaring down at him. He stopped where he was. Sumi peeked around him at the other girl.

“You’re not tall, but you walk like you are,” she said approvingly. “I’ve always said we needed more mountains around here. We’re not going to hurt Jack. We’re her friends. Or we were, anyway, before I died and she left. You know how that is.”

To Christopher’s surprise, the stranger smiled and made a see-sawing motion with her hand, apparently agreeing with Sumi.

“That’s not Jack,” said Kade. “That’s Jill. Look at her hands.”

“Jack’s still Jack when she’s not wearing gloves,” said Sumi. “She’s still Jack when she’s not wearing her own skin, too. It’s a neat trick. Imagine if I could put on someone else’s skin and have everyone believe it was really them! I’d be so many people every day.”

“Sumi…” Kade pinched the bridge of his nose before addressing the stranger. “I apologize for my friend. She went to a Nonsense world, and it left her a little scrambled.”

“Dying scrambled me more,” said Sumi matter-of-factly. She stepped around Kade, heading for the velvet curtain covering the basement’s rear wall. “There’s an easy way to answer this. We’ll wake her up and ask her who she thinks she is. If I’m right and it’s Jack, you owe me extra dessert.”

“You always get extra dessert,” said Christopher. “I think you have syrup in your veins.”

“If only,” chirped Sumi. She twitched the curtain aside, revealing the jars and vials and beakers full of dangerous chemicals Jack had left behind when she departed.

“What’s Sumi doing?” asked Cora, from beside Christopher’s left elbow.

“What the fu— Don’t do that!” he exclaimed, whipping around to stare at her. “When did you get here?”

Cora shrugged. “Kade and Sumi were arguing about who the girl on the table is. I don’t know her either way, so I figured I’d be quiet.”

“I swear I’m going to bell you,” muttered Christopher. Secretly, he was grateful. Cora being too quiet and sneaking up on him was normal. Sumi being weird was normal. Strangers carrying maybe-dead girls appearing in his room was not normal. The air smelling of ozone was not normal.

A little normalcy was a good thing. Especially when Sumi was turning away from the shelves with a vial of something yellow and viscous in her hand and a manic look in her eye. Even Kade looked nervous.

“What are you going to do, Sumi?”

“Ask and answer,” she said brightly, and started for Jill. Before she reached her target, she stopped, looking at the stranger, and said, “I’m not going to hurt her. Unless she labeled her own things wrong, and if she did that, I think it’s less me hurting her and more her learning some important lessons about lab safety. All right?”

The stranger frowned, making a sharp gesture with one hand.

Unexpectedly, Sumi lit up. “Oh!” she said. “You sign! Well, that makes this easier. I swear on the candy corn fields and the strawberry sea that I wouldn’t ever hurt her on purpose. Accidents happen to the best of us. But I don’t think anything can start happening until she’s awake, and that means you need to let me. Please?”

The stranger sighed, broad shoulders sagging, and stepped aside.

“Thank you,” said Sumi. Her smile was gentler than Christopher had ever known it to be, a momentary tenderness that was quickly undone when she popped the vial of mysterious yellow fluid open and shoved it under the motionless Wolcott twin’s nose.