"Skeleton people generally aren't," said Jack, setting her cocoa aside. "If they were, I would expect them to die instantly, due to their lack of functional respiration or circulatory systems. The lack of tendons alone-"
"You must be a lot of fun at parties," said Christopher.
Jack smirked. "It depends on the kind of party. If there are shovels involved, I'm the life, death, and resurrection of the place."
"I can't go home," said Nancy. She looked down at her cocoa. "My parents … they're like Christopher's, I guess. They love me. But they didn't understand me before I went away, and now, I might as well be from another planet. They keep trying to get me to wear colors and eat every day, and go on dates with boys like nothing ever happened. Like everything is just the way it used to be. But I didn't want to go on dates with boys before I went to the Underworld, and I don't want to do it now. I won't. I can't."
Kade looked a little hurt. "No one is going to make you do anything you don't want to do," he said, and his tone was stiff and wounded.
Nancy shook her head. "That's not what I mean. I don't want to go on dates with girls, either. I don't want to go on dates with anyone. People are pretty, sure, and I like to look at pretty things, but I don't want to go on a date with a painting."
"Oh," said Kade, understanding replacing stiffness. He smiled a little. Nancy, glancing up from her cocoa, smiled back. "Well, looks like we've all got good reason to keep this school open. We've had two deaths. Sumi and Loriel. What did they have in common?"
"Nothing," said Christopher. "Sumi went to a Mirror, Loriel went to a Fairyland. High Nonsense and high Logic. They didn't hang out together, they didn't have friends in common, they didn't do any of the same things for fun. Sumi liked origami and making friendship bracelets, Loriel did puzzles and paint-by-numbers. They only overlapped in class and during meals, and I'm pretty sure they would have stopped doing that if they'd been able to. They weren't enemies. They were just … disinterested."
"Nancy said something before about Sumi's hands being the most important things about her," said Kade.
Jack sat up straighter. "Why, Nancy, how callous and odd of you."
Nancy reddened. "I'm sorry. I just … I just thought … "
"Oh, that wasn't a complaint. It's just that usually, if someone around here is going to be callous and odd, it's me." Jack frowned thoughtfully. "You may be onto something there. Each of us has some attribute that attracted the attention of our door in the first place, some inherent point of sympathy that made it possible for us to be happy on the other side. It's an assumption, I know, built on seeing only the survivors-maybe most of those who go through the doors never return, and so what we see is only ever the best-case scenario. Either way, we'd need to have something to get us through the story alive. And for many people, that intangible something seems to have been concentrated in a certain part of the body."
"Like Loriel's eyes," said Kade.
Jack nodded. "Yes, or Nancy's incredibly robust musculature-don't look at me like that, you need very strong muscles to stand without collapsing for the sort of times you've described-or Angela's legs, or Seraphina's beauty. The girl's a rancid bucket of leeches on the inside, but she has a face that could move angels to murder. I've seen pictures from before she went traveling. She was always pretty. She was no Helen of Troy, until she traveled."
"How have you seen pictures from before she went traveling?" asked Kade.
"I have the Internet, and her Facebook password is the name of her cat, which she has a picture of above her bed." Jack snorted. "I am a genius of infinite potential and highly limited patience. People shouldn't try me so."
"I'll keep that in mind the next time I'm trying to keep a secret," said Kade. "What are you saying?"
"I'm saying that back when I worked for Dr. Bleak, sometimes he wanted me to gather things for him," said Jack. "Only the best would do, which was absolutely right and fair: he was a genius, too, a greater genius than I can ever dream of being. So he'd say ‘I need six bats,' and I would spend days with a net out on the moor, catching the very best, biggest bats, and bring him the finest specimens for his work. Or he might say ‘I need a golden carp without a single silver scale,' and I'd spend a week by the river, netting fish after fish, until I had something perfect. Those were the easy jobs. Other times he'd say ‘I need a perfect dog, but you're never going to find a perfect dog, so go out and find the parts I need.' Head and haunches, tail and toes, I'd have to gather them wherever they were found, and bring them back to him."
"Okay, first, that's gross," said Christopher. "Second, that's inhumane. Third, what are you saying? That some mad scientist is trying to build a perfect girl out of the best parts of us?"
"I'm the only mad scientist at this school, and I'm not killing people," said Jack. "Apart from that? Yes. I'm saying that sometimes, murder isn't about the bodies, or the dead. Those are the things that are left behind. Sometimes, murder is about what's missing."
There was a knock at the attic door. Everyone jumped, even Jack. Cocoa slopped over the side of Nancy's cup. Jack sat up straight, putting her cup down and tensing, like a snake getting ready to strike. Kade cleared his throat.
"Who is it?" he called.
"Jill." The doorknob turned. The door swung open. Jill stepped inside. She looked curiously around before announcing, "I looked for you, and when I didn't find you, I decided to come here, since it was the highest point in the house and the closest to the sun, which made it the least likely place for you to be. Now there you are, and here I am. Why did you run off and leave me alone for so long?"
"I was disposing of the body, as I had been asked." Jack slid off her perch, straightening her vest with a quick tug, and said, "Speaking of the body, the acid should be finished with Loriel's soft tissues by this point. Christopher, did you want to come help me with her bones?"
"Sure," said Christopher, sounding bemused. He stood, setting his cocoa aside, and followed Jack out of the attic.
Jill didn't say anything as her sister walked away and left her. She just turned a bright, guileless smile on Kade, and asked, "Is there any more of that cocoa?"
8
HER SKELETON, IN RAINBOWS CLAD
JACK DESCENDED THE STAIRS as if they had personally challenged her, taking them two and three at a time, until Christopher had to jog to keep pace. Throughout her flight, she never seemed to be working: she remained perfectly serene, cold-eyed and thin-lipped, not breathing hard or struggling in the slightest. She didn't speak. Christopher was worried, but also grateful. He wasn't sure he would have been able to answer her without gasping.
"Do we need to clean the bones before you call them?" she asked, as they walked the last length of hallway between the last stretch of stairs and the basement. There were no students there. They hadn't seen any students since leaving the attic. The campus would have seemed deserted, if not for the whispers still drifting from behind closed doors. "Acid is pretty, but it's not a good thing to dress a dancer."
"No," said Christopher, taking the bone flute from his pocket and wrapping his fingers around it, as much for reassurance as for anything else. "She'll rise up clean and lovely. Back in the Country of the Bones, we would free new citizens by-" He stopped midsentence, like he'd just realized he was about to say something horrible.
Jack looked back at him as she opened the basement door. "All right, now I'm genuinely curious. You have to tell me. Don't worry about upsetting me, I once removed a man's lungs from his chest while he was still alive, awake, and trying to talk."
"Why would you do something like that?"
"Why wouldn't I?" Jack shrugged and started down the stairs.
Christopher stared after her for a moment before he started moving again. When he caught up, he said defiantly, "We freed new citizens by cutting through their flesh. Big, deep cuts, all the way down to the bone. That way the skeletons within could rise up without having to struggle and risk fracturing themselves. Bones heal slow, even outside the body."
"The fact that the bones healed at all is the strange thing to me," said Jack. Her voice was quiet. "The rules were so different there. For all of us."
"Yeah," agreed Christopher, looking at the reddish liquid filling the tub. A few chunks floated on the surface. He didn't want to think about them too hard.
"You shouldn't tell anyone what you just told me. The petty-minded fools here think surgery and butchery are the same thing. Look at the way they look at me. Right now, you're still one of them, but don't make the mistake of thinking that can't change." Jack walked across the room to the wardrobe. "Everything changes."