Page 26 of Every Heart a Doorway

“You’re not going without me,” said Jack. “She’s my sister.”

“Can you keep up?”

Jack’s smile was thin and strained. “Try to stop me.”

Kade glanced to Eleanor, expression questioning. She closed her eyes.

“Jack can keep up, but I can’t,” she said. “Don’t go if you’re not sure that you’ll come back to me.”

They went.

The four students ran through the house, fleet and angry. Jack was surprisingly steady on her feet, given the amount of blood she had lost. Nancy brought up the rear. Stillness and speed were diametrically opposed. But she did the best she could, and they all reached the attic door at roughly the same time. Kade slammed the door open.

Jill was standing in an ocean of books with a knife in her hand. The table she had swept clear was now occupied by Seraphina—the most beautiful girl in the world—and an assortment of jars, each with its own, terrible burden. Jill raised her head as the door opened, and sighed. “Go away,” she said peevishly. “This is delicate work. I don’t have time for you.”

Kade was the first to step into the room, his hands held out in front of him. “You don’t want to do this.”

“I think I do,” Jill countered. “You don’t know me. None of you know me. Not even her.” She jerked her chin at Jack. “I’m going home. I’m going back to my Master. I figured out the way, and no one can stop me. If you try, they’ll have all died in vain, and I’ll just do it again. I’m going to build my skeleton key.”

Seraphina whimpered behind the gag that covered her mouth, eyes rolling wildly as she looked for a way out. She wasn’t finding one.

“The door home is locked for a reason,” said Jack. “You can’t get around that.”

“But I can, dear sister, I can,” said Jill. “Everyone here has something special about them, something that called the doors. I’m building the perfect girl. The girl who has everything. The smartest, prettiest, fastest, strongest girl. Every door will open for her. Every world will want her. And when I get to the Moors, I’ll kill her, and I’ll be allowed to stay forever. I just want to go home. Surely you can appreciate that.”

“We all do,” said Christopher. “This isn’t the way.”

“There isn’t any other,” said Jill.

“The dead aren’t tools,” said Nancy, stepping past Kade with her hands held loosely at her sides. “Please. You’re hurting them. You’re stealing the things that make them important because you want a skeleton key, but they can’t move on to their afterlives until you give those things back.” She didn’t know that her words were true, but they felt so right that she didn’t question them. “Why is your happy-ever-after the only one that matters?”

“Because I’m the one who’s willing to take it,” snapped Jill. “Back off, or she dies, and I tell everyone it was you. Who are they going to believe? The ingénue, or the girl who talks to ghosts? Even your supporters are weird. I’ll come out smelling like a rose, just you watch.”

Jill’s eyes were fixed on Nancy. She didn’t see Jack move away from the others, making her slow way around the edge of the attic. Christopher and Kade were silent.

“You know this is wrong, Jill,” said Nancy. “You know the dead are angry with you.”

Jack continued to move, slow and easy and quiet as a prayer. She picked up a pair of scissors.

“I don’t care about the dead,” said Jill. “I care about going home. I care about my Master. I care about myself, and the rest of you can hang, as far as I’m—” She stopped in the middle of her sentence, making a small choking sound. She looked down as blood began to spread through the front of her lacy peignoir. Then, gracelessly, she collapsed, revealing the scissors sticking out of her back.

Jack looked down at her fallen sister for a moment. Her eyes were dry when she raised her head and looked at the others. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I should have understood faster. I should have seen it. I didn’t. I apologize.”

“You killed your sister.” Nancy sounded puzzled. “Did you have to…?”

“Murder trials are so messy, aren’t they? And death isn’t forever if you know what you’re doing. Jill was the one Dr. Bleak locked the door against, not me. I’ve always been welcome at home, if I was willing to leave her behind … or change her. Her Master won’t want her now. Once you’ve died and been resurrected, you can’t be a vampire.” Jack bent to pull the scissors from Jill’s back. They came up dripping red. She grimaced as the blood oozed onto her fingers. “If you’ll forgive me, we must be going. So much to do, and resurrections always work better when they’re performed quickly. I can bring her back. She’ll still be my sister.”

She slashed the bloody scissors through the air. They cut lines in the nothingness, until a rectangle hung open next to her, showing a dark, wind-racked field. In the distance, a castle, with a village at its base. Jack’s face softened, becoming suffused with unspeakable longing.

“Home,” she breathed. She bent, sliding her arms under Jill—grunting slightly as the motion reopened the slash in her left shoulder—and lifting her sister’s body in a bridal carry. She stepped through the door. She didn’t look back.

The last any of them saw of the sisters was Jack, suddenly distant and so small on that vast, empty plain, walking through the darkness toward the castle lights. Then the rectangle faded, leaving them alone in the attic once again.

Seraphina whimpered behind her gag. Time resumed.

Time had a way of doing that.

AND THEY ALL LIVED