Page 13 of Come Tumbling Down

“As soon as we get back to the others, we’re out of here,” she said agreeably. “I’ve never traveled by lightning before. This is going to be fun!”

She skipped out of the room. Alexis and Kade exchanged a look.

“Not the word I would have chosen,” said Kade. “Let’s go.”

Kade turned the office light off behind him, closing the door with a gentle click. It seemed like the least he could do.

6 LIKE LIGHTNING, BRIDGING THE SKY

JACK ADJUSTED HER cravat for the fifth time, considering her reflection. So much of what she saw in the mirror was simply, softly wrong, and virtually none of the people around her—people who, for the most part, thought they knew her, thought they were somehow equipped to understand her situation and the accompanying distress—could see it.

Oh, Alexis could, she was certain: Alexis knew every inch of her, even the ones she couldn’t see, like the small of her back and the nape of her neck. Alexis had spent a satisfying amount of time with a compass and pen, drawing a careful chart of the moles and freckles that Jack’s anatomy had conspired to conceal from her own eyes. With Alexis’s help, Jack was solving the mystery of her physical form an inch at a time.

Freckles and moles. The bane of the fair-skinned, even when they lived in a place as gloriously clouded as the Moors. This body no doubt had a completely different set of constellations scattered on its skin, as distinct as fingerprints, if far more potentially malignant. Jack shuddered at the thought, fingers slipping on the slick fabric of her cravat. Jill would never have thought to be concerned about something as simple as a spot, would never have realized she should worry about moles that grew too fast or changed color or shape. This body could already be dying, could—

“No,” said Jack, loudly and clearly. Cora and Christopher, who were supposedly keeping her company but were really, she knew, standing guard, turned to look at her. She ignored them, focusing on the not-quite-right girl in the mirror. “That is a pointless spiral of fear and ignorance, and I refuse to let it claim me. Try harder.”

Her mind—brilliant, traitorous, prone to devouring itself—did not stop fretting, but at least she was in control again. It was odd, to think of one’s own mind as the enemy. It wasn’t always. The tendency to obsession and irrational dread was matched by focus and attention to detail, both of which served her well in her work. She would have been a genius even without those little peccadillos. When she could keep her compulsions in check, make them work for her, she had the potential to be the greatest scientist the Moors had ever known.

But this body wasn’t right, wasn’t hers. The clothing Kade had so kindly fetched for her from his attic stronghold was only accentuating that reality, even after his careful alterations. Her shirt was too loose in the arms and shoulders, and even across the chest, although that difference was less noticeable: Jill had never believed in physical labor. Her trousers were too tight in the thighs and buttocks—again, a slight difference, as Jill had always been troublingly focused on her weight, but still. Every difference ached. Every difference burned.

Even her face was wrong. Different lines around the mouth and eyes, from different uses of the underlying musculature. People thought of Jack as the dour member of the pair, and perhaps they weren’t wrong, perhaps she didn’t smile as easily as her sister, but when she did smile, she did so with sincerity. She smiled because she meant it, a response that had already begun to translate into specific morphology. Jill smiled because her Master liked his daughter to be sweet and biddable, liked her to smile in his presence as if he was the source of all that was good in the world. Those smiles never reached her eyes. Why should they? It wasn’t like they were real.

“You all right over there, Jack?” called Christopher.

Jack swallowed a sigh. It would have been so much better, so much easier, if she’d been the one to go and speak with Eleanor. But if she had been forced to face her former benefactor, if Eleanor had looked at her with understanding—or worse, with pity—her narrow grasp on her composure might well have snapped. She had made excuses about becoming useless if she spent another second in that lacy abomination Jill thought suitable for an evening of body-snatching, claiming some indignities were simply too much to be borne.

The truth was simpler. She was reaching her limits. She couldn’t stand to face one more person who understood how much she’d lost.

“No,” she said, lowering her hands and turning to face them. “I’m so far from ‘all right’ that I doubt I could see it with a telescope. I never intended to come back here. This world is an affront to the scientific principles by which I live.”

“You mean the scientific principles that let your sister steal your body?” asked Cora.

Jack frowned, focusing on the blue-haired girl. “Have I said or done something to offend you?” she asked. “Did I dissect one of your pets before I left here? That seems unlikely, since you joined the student body after my departure, but stranger things have happened. Time-traveling doors could be a real, if vexing, phenomenon.”

Cora’s ears burned red. “No,” she said. “You just scared me with all that lightning. Someone could have been hurt.”

“She means me,” said Christopher. “I could have been hurt.”

“Ah,” said Jack. “I suppose pointing out that this was my room before it was Christopher’s, and that the density of my belongings remains such that the principles of resonance still identify it as my domain won’t buy me your forgiveness?”

“Since I have no idea what you just said, no,” said Cora. “You can’t go around electrocuting people. It’s not safe.”

“No one was hurt,” said Christopher.

“I believe she’s objecting to the possible, not the actual, which is something I can understand,” said Jack. “I spend a great deal of my time contending with the possible, and sometimes must reject ideas I was deeply infatuated with because they have the potential to do more harm than I care for. I’m sorry I frightened you. It wasn’t my intention. I won’t say I would have done anything any differently, because I barely had time to calibrate the lightning rod before the fact that I was touching it with bare fingers—bare fingers that technically belonged to someone else—overwhelmed me, and I passed out from the shock. Our escape was a narrow thing. I would have been my sister’s first meal in her new life had I remained where I was long enough to be taken, and so I can’t apologize for fleeing. Only for the consequences it carried.”

Cora paused, looking at Jack. She still didn’t quite understand why identical twins trading bodies was so upsetting. That didn’t change the fact that Jack was upset. Kade trusted her. Christopher trusted her. And Alexis trusted her, enough to stroke her hair and kiss her temples, even though Jack was currently in the body of the girl who had killed her.

“It’s okay,” she said. “I know you didn’t mean it.”

Jack inclined her head in acknowledgment. “Appreciated. Your hair—are you a Drowned Girl, like Nadya? Did you visit … I’m sorry, I can’t pronounce it. The world with the Russian name and the fondness for turtles.”

“Belyyreka, the Drowned World,” said Cora. “No. I didn’t go there. I went to the Trenches. I’m a mermaid.”

“You’re extremely bipedal, for a mermaid,” said Jack.

“And Sumi is really talkative for a dead girl, but that doesn’t shut her up,” said Cora. “I’m a mermaid. I went into the water and I saw what I was always supposed to be, and I’m not giving that up because some stupid door decided I wasn’t sure enough.”