Come Tumbling Down (Wayward Children)

by Seanan McGuire

  The room on the other side was opulent to the point of becoming ludicrous, a child’s dream of a princess’s life made somehow manifest. The bed was large enough to border on obscene, surrounded by hanging veils of lace and mounded with pillows and comforters. Wardrobes and dressers lined the walls, bulging with silks and satins and covered in heaps of discarded jewels, like pearls and garnets had no value beyond how many could be placed in a single pile. The floor was covered in thick rugs, hiding all trace of stone, and the rugs were covered in turn by pieces of clothing, idly tossed aside.

  Jack stepped into the room alone and walked toward the bed, where a scrap of too-bright fabric poked out from under one of the pillows. She pulled it loose and held it up: a child’s shirt, too small for any of them.

  “She was wearing this when we found our door,” she said, dropping the shirt back onto the bed. “Jill has never been good at letting go of the things she thinks belong to her. The things she thinks she deserves.”

  “This room is sort of…” Cora paused, trying to put her appalled thoughts into words.

  “Excessive,” said Sumi. “Coming from me, that means a lot.”

  “Yes, well. We made our choices when we were too young to understand them, and maybe she needed a little excess.” Unspoken went the fact that if a little excess had been enough for Jill, none of them would have been standing here. She sighed. “We haven’t been close in a very long time. The body I’m wearing knows this bed better than my heart knows my own sister.”

  Lightning flashed outside. The stained glass in the room’s wide window broke it into a glittering rainbow of color, painting it across their skins. All of them felt the hairs on their arms and the backs of their necks as they stood on end. Jack walked to the door on the far wall and opened it, revealing a wider, brighter hallway than the one below.

  “Come,” she said, and walked on.

  The sounds of fighting were audible once they were in the hallway. They reached a split in the hall, and Jack went right, leading them to the base of another, shorter stairway. She reached up, untying her cravat. The scars on her neck stood out starkly, tiny white dots outlining the arch of her veins. She pulled the cravat free, wrapping it around her hand.

  Without a word, she began to climb. The others followed, a step at a time. The air grew colder, and the scent of rain tickled their noses, until they emerged onto the high parapets of the castle. There, standing with her hands resting on the edge of the wall and the wind whipping her gown into a pale froth around her legs, was Jack’s twin.

  Jack stopped just inside the narrow chamber separating the castle from the storm. “Hello, Jill,” she said, voice low and almost apologetic. “You know I don’t like it when you touch my things.”

  “Do you mean your body or your precious teacher?” Jill turned, leaning languidly against the wall as she ran one bare hand down the slope of her side. “I can’t apologize if you don’t tell me which I’m apologizing for.”

  Christopher, who had never wanted to think of Jack like that, flushed and turned away. “Uncool either way, Jill.”

  “Christopher?” Jill sounded unaccountably delighted. “Kade! And—Sumi? Didn’t I kill you already? I know things were a trifle hectic there toward the end, but I usually remember when I kill someone.” Her attention flicked dismissively to Cora. “And you. Who are you?”

  “You did,” said Sumi. She twirled her baling hook, seemingly unconcerned. “I got better.”

  “You went back to school. Why, Jack, I didn’t know you had it in you.” Jill beamed. “See, we can all be happy: you can take your friends and go sit in math class washing your hands until all the skin comes off. I’ll stay here and keep watch over the Moors with my father, forever.”

  “He’s not your father,” said Jack. She tilted her chin upward, exposing the soft, scarred skin of her throat—Jill’s throat, really. Jill was the one who’d willingly submitted to a vampire’s idea of love. “Would a father do this?”

  “He’s better than the one you have,” snapped Jill.

  “I don’t know whether you mean Mr. Wolcott or Dr. Bleak, and I don’t care,” said Jack. “Mr. Wolcott was a fool who should never have had children. His genetic donation is noted and appreciated. Dr. Bleak is not my father, but he loves me, and he cared for me when no one else would, and you had no right to kill him. Where is his head, Jillian?”

  “Oh, full names, now? Are you trying to remind me of the time when everyone thought you were the pretty one, and I was the useless extra?” Jill finally pushed away from the wall, taking a step toward the group. “He took you away. He deserved to suffer.”

  “Where is his head?”

  “Where you’ll never find it!” Jill balled her hands. “I’m going to be a vampire! I’m going to be happy! You’ve always taken everything from me! You don’t get to take this, too!”

  “Christopher,” said Jack, “this is the sort of confrontation that always plays out better with a bit of musical accompaniment. If you’d be so kind?”

  Christopher blinked. “But my flute—”

  “Please,” she hissed, through gritted teeth.

  Christopher hesitated before he raised his flute to his mouth and began to play.

  It didn’t look like a functional instrument to the casual viewer. The “holes” were merely slight indentations in the surface of the bone; the chamber, while hollow, was neither regular nor polished. It was a Halloween decoration, a toy, and no matter how hard Christopher blew, it never made a sound.

  Far below them, around the foundations of the castle, the bones of those who’d fallen from the windows trying to escape began to stir, pulling themselves together and rising on legs that lacked flesh or tendon, yet functioned all the same.

  In nooks and crannies and sheltered spots throughout the castle proper, the Master’s victims began to wake and rise, clattering through the building, heading for the parapets. Some were caught in the fighting that had broken into the ballroom from the entry hall, and they fell to pieces under swords and the furious thrusts of the servants, dying for a second time. Their unintentional sacrifices bought the attackers a few precious seconds, and they turned them to good use, cutting down the Master’s faithful like so much poisoned wheat.

  Christopher played and the skeletons marched, as Jack walked toward her sister beneath the shattered, stormy sky.

  “I never tried to take anything from you, Jill,” said Jack. “We were children. We didn’t ask for any of this; we never did anything to deserve it. I left you here to protect you. The Master would have chosen me, and you would never have been safe.”

  “Because I needed your castoffs? Your charity?”

  “Because you wanted to be taken care of!” Jack’s words became a howl, half-drowned in the crash of lightning. She whipped her glasses off, squinting at her sister. “You wanted someone to pet you, and pamper you, and—and let you be fragile for a while! And I didn’t! I was done being fragile. I wanted to have an adventure, I wanted to learn things and do things and not just be someone’s precious trinket! Neither of us had any choices, Jill, we never got to be sure of anything! So I left you, because if I didn’t choose to go, we were going to keep not choosing anything. I’m sorry. I failed to be your sister. I didn’t realize you needed me. But that doesn’t make it right for you to take whatever you want and act like no one else matters. People matter. I matter.”

  “Not for long, little spare,” growled a voice.

  Jack didn’t turn. Kade and Sumi did. There, behind them in the entryway, loomed a tall, black-haired man in a red-lined velvet cloak. His shirt and teeth were almost blinding in their brightness. He smiled, showing the wicked points of those same teeth, and he lunged for Kade, hissing.

  Sumi’s baling hook caught him in the throat before he could reach the boy. “Naughty vampire,” she said, hauling backward, piercing his trachea. “It’s not nice to bite people you don’t know. It sends the wrong message.”

  Kade yelped and scrambled backwa
rd, away from the Master’s grasping hands. He stumbled over a chunk of broken masonry. Stooping, he grabbed it and slung it as hard as he could at the Master’s face, hitting him squarely in the mouth. The Master howled. Sumi hauled on her baling hook again, keeping him from recovering his balance, while Kade grabbed more pieces of masonry and flung them, one after the other, like he thought he could win a prize if he hit the bullseye enough times. Cora rolled the largest chunks of stone she could find toward him, positioning them perfectly for his hand.

  “This is fun,” Sumi chirped. “I could do this all day.”

  “Father!” shrieked Jill, and ran toward the struggling vampire.

  Jack stomped on the edge of her nightgown, jerking her to a sudden stop. Jill hissed and whirled around, reaching for her sister as the thunder rolled. Jack’s body was stronger and faster, and Jill nearly had her hands around her sister’s throat when Christopher’s skeletons came boiling over the walls and swarmed the pair, grabbing only for Jill, dragging her back without dragging her away.

  In the noise and chaos, it was understandable that the small, simple sound of Jack’s glasses snapping in two went overlooked. She grabbed Jill’s hand, tangling it in her carefully positioned cravat, until they were solidly tied together.

  “I did love you,” she whispered. “Please believe that much, if you can.”

  Then she thrust her free hand into the air, the broken arms of her glasses jutting from between her fingers, a makeshift lightning rod at the center of a storm. The lightning lashed down, a slash of bleeding white against the darkness, pouring itself into the metal, filling it from end to end with burning heat. The force of the blast scattered the skeletons, sending their individual bones flying in all directions. Jill howled. Jack screamed. And somewhere in the middle of that terrible, unbearable sound, the tones traded places. Jack started to lower her hand. Jill grabbed her elbow, forcing it back toward the sky.

  No. That wasn’t what happened. Jill, now dressed in Jack’s clothing, now wearing her own body, tried to lower her hand, and Jack, now dressed in Jill’s lacy gown, finally back in her own skin, forced her to keep it up, until the lightning died, until the two of them stood, shaken and smoking and alone.

  Jill shrieked and dropped the molten remains of Jack’s glasses, cradling her wounded hand to her chest. The metal had burned through the leather of Jack’s glove. “It isn’t fair,” she whimpered. “You get everything and it isn’t fair and I’ll beat you, I swear I’ll beat you, I swear I’ll win next time, I swear—”

  “You’ll never give up,” said Jack softly. She pulled her hand out of the loop formed by her own cravat and started pushing her sister inexorably toward the wall, using her own superior strength—the strength born from a lifetime of hard labor—to overcome Jill’s vague attempts to struggle. “You’ll keep coming, and coming, and coming, and hurting the people I love.”

  “Yes,” spat Jill. “Until I win.”

  “The Moors turned us both into monsters,” said Jack. The resignation in her tone was a roll of thunder, heavy and unforgiving. “But it did a better job with me.”

  Then she shoved Jill over the edge.

  PART IV

  A BETTER MONSTER

  15 A HEART OF WIRE AND GLASS

  JILL FELL WITHOUT a sound, her hair still smoking from the lightning, a wide-eyed, puzzled expression on her face, like this couldn’t possibly be happening, not here, not to her; she was the heroine of the piece, and she was meant to walk away.

  The Master finally ripped himself free of Sumi’s baling hook. Before she could snare him again, he lunged, grabbing Jack by the shoulders, whipping her around to face him. The wound in his throat was already healing.

  “What have you done?!” he demanded, shaking her. “You little—”

  “Dr. Bleak is dead,” said Jack. “Until I resurrect him—if you’ve left me enough to work with—I am your opposition and your equal. Unhand me, unless you wish the judgment of the Moors to be upon you.”

  Her voice was eerily calm for someone who’d just shoved her own sister from the castle wall.

  The Master stared at her. Then, slowly, he released her, stepping back. “You killed my daughter,” he said. “I will not forget this.”

  “She could have lived a long, long time if you hadn’t insisted on finding a way to turn her into what you wanted her to be,” said Jack. “She loved you so much. She would have done anything to please you.”

  “And you killed her.”

  “Yes. I’ll live with that for the rest of my life, however long that happens to be. Where is Dr. Bleak’s head, please?” Jack tilted her head, looking at him with polite anticipation. “This is an excellent storm. I’d like to take advantage of it.”

  “If you bring him back…”

  “If I bring him back, I’ll be vulnerable. I’m aware. Only one monster at a time, and all that. But you see, I love him, and children will do anything for their fathers. His head, please, and we’ll be on our way.”

  The Master curled his lip in disgust. “You’ll have your head. I knew you should have belonged to me,” he said, and spun on his heel, and swept away.

  “I wish there’d been time to get my gloves,” said Jack, still in that impossibly level, impossibly calm voice. “I can take them once we recover the body, I suppose, but there’s always the chance she’s leaking on the leather. I’ll have to scrub my hands with lye when I get back to the windmill. It’s the only way to be sure.”

  “Jack?” Kade took a cautious step forward. “Are you…?”

  “There are only a certain number of possible ways to end that question, and the answer to all of them is ‘no,’” said Jack. “No, I’m not okay. No, I’m not going to be okay. No, no, no. Everything is terrible. I’ve killed my sister. Again. I was always the monster at the end of her story, and she died knowing everything she thought about me was true.” She shook her head. “I want to leave this place. Can we go?”

  “Yeah,” said Kade gently. “We can go.”

  They descended the stairs into the castle in the order that had brought them there: Jack, then Sumi, then Kade and Cora, and last of all Christopher, whose hands were finally still.

  When they reached the hall outside Jill’s room, Jack kept walking, bringing them to a wide interior stairway. Jill’s nightgown flared out around Jack’s feet with every step, and her hair was loose and wild, and she looked every inch the vampire’s daughter, an illusion that was reinforced when every servant they passed shied away from her, terror in their eyes.

  The sounds of fighting had long since stopped. When they reached the ballroom, they stepped into an abattoir. Bodies were strewn in all directions. Some wore the robes of the Drowned Abbey; some wore the Master’s household livery. Others wore village clothing, and when they fell face-down, it was impossible to tell whose village they had come from. Gideon sat in his chair at the center of the room, his surviving people arrayed behind him. The Master’s surviving servants were backed into the corner.

  Jack strode toward him, barefoot in the gore, blood and other terrible, viscous fluids soaking into the lacy hem of her gown. She didn’t seem to notice. Kade flinched. If Jack didn’t notice she was getting dirty …

  Oh, this was bad. This was very, very bad.

  “Well?” asked Gideon, as Jack drew closer. “Which Wolcott are you? The fun one, or the scientist? Who won?”

  “I will slice you open and spread you as evenly as a coat of jam across the shore,” said Jack levelly. “I’m sure the Drowned Gods will forgive me, since I’ve agreed to stay and maintain the balance for their sake.”

  “Ah,” said Gideon. “The scientist. We won, too.”

  “Bully for you.” Jack turned to face the stairs as the Master came sweeping down, a burlap sack in his hand. “Excellent. We’ll be leaving now.”

  The Master snarled, showing her his teeth, but didn’t argue; merely flung the sack containing Dr. Bleak’s head into the blood and fluids on the floor. Jack gathered it witho
ut a word of complaint, holding it, dripping, to her chest. She turned back to Gideon.

  “I won’t forget you helped me,” she said. “Give me from this full moon to the next to get my house in order, and then send me anyone you have who requires medical care. I’ll rob a few graves if I have to, but I’ll fix them for you, free of charge. Just this once.”

  “Just this once,” agreed Gideon, with the ghost of a smile.

  Jack inclined her head and walked away without another word.

  “Should we follow her?” asked Cora.

  “She is the only one who knows how to make us a door home, and I don’t want to live here,” said Christopher. “My girlfriend is a literal skeleton, and this is too creepy for me.”

  They followed as Jack left the ballroom, pulled down a sconce, and walked through the hidden door that opened in the opposing wall. They followed her down the stairs, back to the place where they had entered the castle.

  Pony and Bones waited outside. Pony was chewing on something that looked like a chunk of raw meat. None of them looked any closer. Instead, Jack dropped the bag containing Dr. Bleak’s head on the seat before she turned and walked further around the base of the castle, Sumi and Christopher behind her, while Kade and Cora remained with the wagon.

  When they found Jill, she wasn’t moving. She had landed in a graceless sprawl, and it was clear, when Jack and Christopher gathered her up and lifted her, that several things inside her body had broken so profoundly that they could never be repaired, not even here, where science could do virtually anything. Sumi folded Jill’s hands across her chest, and the three of them carried her back to the wagon like pallbearers at the world’s least-attended funeral. They lay her down in the hay, and Jack climbed silently into the driver’s seat, leaving the others to arrange themselves.

  This time, Kade rode up front, while the others—who were less squeamish, or maybe just more accustomed to this world and its horrors—rode in the back. He glanced at Jack as she drove. She didn’t glance back. Her eyes were fixed on the fields ahead, and the bag containing Dr. Bleak’s head rested in her lap like a swaddled child, something to be cared for and protected.