The flight of stairs with a landing, and another flight of stairs, which Sumi promptly started up, leaving Nancy no choice but to follow. All those days of stillness had made her muscles strong, accustomed to supporting her weight for hours at a time. Some people thought only motion bred strength. Those people were wrong. The mountain was as powerful as the tide, just…in a different way. Nancy felt like a mountain as she chased Sumi higher and higher into the house, until her heart was thundering in her chest and her breath was catching in her throat, until she feared that she would choke on it. Sumi stopped in front of a plain white door marked only with a small, almost polite sign reading “Keep Out.” Grinning, she said, “If he meant that, he wouldn’t say it. He knows that for anyone who’s spent any time at all in Nonsense that really, he’s issuing an invitation.” “Why do people around here keep using that word like it’s a place?” asked Nancy. She was starting to feel like she’d missed some essential introductory session about the school, one which would have answered all her questions and left her a little less lost. “Because it is, and it isn’t, and it doesn’t matter,” said Sumi, and knocked on the attic door before hollering, “We’re coming in!” and shoving it open to reveal what looked like a cross between a used bookstore and a tailor’s shop. Piles of books covered every available surface. The furniture, such as it was—a bed, a desk, a table—appeared to be made from the piles of books, all save for the bookshelves lining the walls. Those, at least, were made of wood, probably for the sake of stability. Bolts of fabric were piled atop the books. They ranged from cotton and muslin to velvet and the finest of thin, shimmering silks. At the center of it all, atop a pedestal of paperbacks, sat the most beautiful boy Nancy had ever seen. His skin was golden tan, his hair was black, and when he looked up—with evident irritation—from the book he was holding, she saw that his eyes were brown and his features were
her entire life. Iron-rich blood had rarely, if ever, been their goal. Most of them had been looking for smaller waists, clearer complexions, and richer boyfriends, spurred on by a deeply ingrained self-loathing that had been manufactured for them before they were old enough to understand the kind of quicksand they were sinking in. Sumi swallowed. “Jack and Jill went up the hill, to watch a bit of slaughter, Jack fell down and broke her crown, and Jill came tumbling after.” Jack looked long-suffering. “I hate that rhyme.” “And that’s not what happened at all,” said Jill. She turned to beam at Nancy. “We went to a very nice place, where we met very nice people who loved us very much. But there was a little problem with the local constabulary, and we had to come back to this world for a while, for our own safety.” “What have I told you about abusing the word ‘very’?” asked Jack. She sounded tired. “Jack and Jill are more stupid, stupid girls,” said Sumi. She stabbed a slice of melon with her fork, splashing gravy on the table. “They think they’re going back, but they’re not. Those doors are closed now. Can’t go high Logic, high Wicked if you’re not innocent. The Wicked doesn’t want people it can’t spoil.” “I don’t understand anything you people say,” said Nancy. “Logic? Nonsense? Wicked? What do those things even mean?” “They’re directions, or the next best thing,” said Jack. She leaned forward, dragging her index finger through the wet ring left by the base of a glass and using the moisture to draw a cross on the table. “Here in the so-called ‘real world,’ you have north, south, east, and west, right? Those don’t work for most of the portal worlds we’ve been able to catalog. So we use other words. Nonsense, Logic, Wickedness, and Virtue. There are smaller sub-directions, little
“Um,” said Nancy, glancing at Jill’s pastel gown. Jill laughed. “I don’t wear these because I want to remember where I’ve been. I wear them because the Master liked it when I dressed in pale colors. They showed the blood better. Isn’t that why you wear white? Because your Master liked to see you that way?” “I…” Nancy stopped. “He wasn’t my master, he was my Lord, and my teacher, and he loved me. I wear black and white because color is reserved for the Lady of Shadows and her entourage. I’d like to join them someday, if I can prove myself, but until then, I’m supposed to serve as a statue, and statues should blend in. Standing out is for people who’ve earned it.” She touched the pomegranate ribbon in her hair—and one piece of color she had earned—before asking, “You had a…master?” “Yes.” Jill’s was bright enough to replace the blocked-away sun. “He was good to me. Gave me treats and trinkets and told me I was beautiful, even when I wasn’t feeling well. Jack spent all her time locked away with her precious doctor, learning things that weren’t ladylike or appropriate in the least, but I stayed in the high towers with the Master, and he taught me so many beautiful things. So many beautiful, wonderful things.” “I’m sorry you wound up back here,” said Nancy. Jill’s smile died. She flapped a hand like she was trying to wave Nancy’s words away, and said, “This isn’t forever. The Master wanted to be rid of Jack. She didn’t deserve what we had. So he arranged things so a door would open back to our world, and I stumbled and fell through after her. He’ll find a way to open a door back to me. You’ll see.” She stood, spinning her parasol. “Excuse me. I have to go.” Then she turned, not waiting for Nancy to say goodbye, and walked briskly away. “And that, children, is why sometimes we don’t let the Addams twins out into the general
and forth, spend as much time as possible in her real home without breaking her father’s heart. But she forgot that adults don’t thrive in Nonsense, even when they’re raised to it. Every time she came back here, she got a little older. Until one day she went back there, and it nearly broke her. Can you imagine what that must have been like? It would be like opening the door that was supposed to take you home and discovering you couldn’t breathe the air anymore.” “That sounds horrible,” said “I guess it was.” Kade sank down to sit, cross-legged, across from her. “Of course, she’d already spent enough time in Nonsense for it to have changed her. It slowed her aging—that’s probably why she was able to keep going for as long as she did. Jack checked the record books the last time we had an excursion to town, and she found out Eleanor was almost a hundred. I always figured she was in her sixties. I asked her about it, and you know what she told me?” “What?” asked Nancy, fascinated and horrified at the same time. Had the Underworld changed more than just her hair? Was she going to stay the same, immortal and unchanging, while everything around her withered and died? “She said she’s just waiting to get senile, like her mother and father did, because once her mind enough, she’ll be able to tolerate the Nonsense again. She’s going to run this school until she forgets why she isn’t going back, and then, when she does go back, she’ll be able to stay.” He shook his head. “I can’t decide if it’s genius or madness.” “Maybe it’s a little bit of both,” said Nancy. “I’d do anything to go home.” “Most of the students here would,” said Kade bitterly. Nancy hesitated before she said, “Lundy said there was a sister school for people who didn’t want to go back. People who wanted to forget. Why are you enrolled here, instead of there? You might be happier.”
disappeared beneath the surface, until the liquid was completely opaque, obscuring her from view. Jack turned away. “It’ll take about an hour to reduce her to a skeletal state,” she said. “I’ll neutralize the acid and drain it off when she’s done. Christopher, do you think you can handle her from there?” “She’ll for me.” Christopher touched the bone in his pocket. Nancy realized there were small indentations in the surface. Not holes, not quite, and yet it still managed to suggest a flute. The tunes he played on that instrument wouldn’t be audible to the living. That didn’t mean they wouldn’t be real. “All skeletons dance for me. It’s my honor to play for them.” “All right, clearly the two of you,” Jack gestured to Nancy as she stripped off her gloves, “were meant to be together. If you can’t find your doors, you should get married and breed the next generation of creepy world-traveling children.” Christopher’s cheeks turned red. Nancy’s didn’t. It was a pleasant change. “Maybe we should figure out why people are dying before we start trying to set up a breeding program,” said Kade mildly. “Besides, I met Nancy first. I get asking-out dibs.” “Sometimes I suspect you learned all your hallmarks of masculinity from a Neanderthal,” said Jack. She removed her apron, hanging it on a nearby hook. “Everyone please take off the gear you borrowed. That stuff is expensive, and I only get to place three orders a year.” “Do I get a say in this?” Nancy, shooting an amused look over at Kade. She didn’t mind flirting. Flirting was safe, flirting was fun; flirting was a way of interacting with her peers without anyone realizing that there was anything strange about her. She could have flirted forever. It was just the things that came after flirting that she had no interest in. “Maybe later,” said Jack. “Right now, we need to get out of here. The acid will do some offgassing as it breaks down her tissues, and I don’t want to fill my lungs with Loriel. Besides, I
England by the pound, and her next delivery is due in three days.” “What’s in asked Nancy. Jack smiled, holding her mug up in a silent “Three drops of warm saline solution and a pinch of wolfsbane. Not enough to be dangerous to me—I’m human, despite what Angela might say to the contrary—but enough to make it taste like tears, and like the way the wind smells when it sweeps along the moor at midnight. If I knew the taste of the sound of screaming, I’d add that as well, and never drink anything again, as long as I chanced to live.” Christopher swallowed a mouthful of cocoa, shook his head, and said, “You know, sometimes I almost forget how creepy you are, and then you go and say something like that.” “It’s best if you remember my nature at all times,” said Jack, and offered Kade his mug. “Thank you,” he said, taking it from her and wrapping his long fingers around it. “Say nothing of it,” said Jack. Somehow, coming from her, it wasn’t politeness: it was a plea. Let this momentary kindness be forgotten, it said. Don’t let it linger, lest it be seen as weakness. Outwardly, all she did was twitch one corner of her mouth in a transitory smile. Then she turned, hands cupping her own mug, and moved to find a seat on the piles of books. “Isn’t this cozy?” Kade returned to what seemed to be his customary perch, leaving Nancy standing awkward and alone next to the hotplate. She looked around before heading for one of the few actual pieces of furniture, an old-fashioned, velvet-covered chair that was being encroached upon by the books, but hadn’t been swallowed yet. She sank down into its embrace, tucking her feet underneath her, hands still cupped around her mug. “I like it,” said Christopher, after it became apparent that no one else was going to say anything. He shrugged before he added, “The guys—uh, the other guys, I mean, not you, Kade—put up with me because there’re so few of us here, but they all went to sparkly worlds.
the one who wanted to be just. Like. Him.” “Jack…?” said Kade, warily. who remembered the moonlight glittering off a speck of blood like jam, said nothing. “She would have made a beautiful monster, if she’d been a little smarter,” said Jack quietly. “She certainly had the appetite for it. Eventually, I suppose she would have learnt subtlety. But she didn’t learn fast enough, and they found out what she was doing, and they took up their torches and they marched, and Dr. Bleak knew she’d never be forgiven. He drugged her. He opened the door, and went to throw her through. I couldn’t let her go alone. She’s my sister. I just didn’t know how hard it would be.” “Sweetheart, what are you saying?” asked Eleanor. Nancy, who remembered the way Jill had smiled when she talked about her Master, and how far she’d been willing to go to please him, said nothing. “It’s my sister.” Jack looked at Kade rather than Eleanor, like it was easier for her to say this to a peer. “She killed them all. She’s trying to build herself a key. We have to stop her.” She slid off the butcher block, only wincing a little when the impact of her feet hitting the floor traveled up through her bad arm. “Seraphina is still alive.” “That’s why Loriel pointed next to you, but not at you,” said Christopher. Jack nodded. “I didn’t kill her. She knew it. Jill did.” “I saw her outside,” said Nancy. “She was walking like there was no hurry. Where would she go?” “She stabbed me in the basement, but she’ll be heading for the attic,” said Jack. She grimaced. “The skylights…it’s easier when there’s a storm. I tried to stop her. I tried.”