Eleanor looked away. "Get to class," she said. Her voice was soft, and suddenly old.
She stood there, head bowed, as the students rose and filed out. Some were still crying. She would seek out the Nonsense children soon, tap them on their shoulders and lead them to her door. Some would be able to go through, she was sure. There were always a few for whom her world was close enough. Still not home, not the checkerboard sky or mirrored sea that they were dreaming of, but … close enough. Close enough for them to be happy, for them to start to live again. And who knew? Doors opened everywhere. Maybe one day, the children of this world who had gone to that world to save themselves would see a door that didn't fit right with the walls around it, something with a doorknob made of a moon, or a knocker that winked. Maybe they could still go home.
A hand touched her shoulder. She turned to find Kade behind her, a worried expression on his face. She glanced toward the seats, and there was Nancy, retreated once more into stillness. It didn't matter. There were too many secrets here to be shy about revealing them. Eleanor turned to Kade once more and buried her face against his chest, weeping.
"It's all right, Aunt Ely, it's all right," said Kade, stroking her back with one hand. "We're going to figure this out."
"My students are dying, Kade," she said. "They're dying, and I can get so few of them out of harm's way. I can't save you. When you found your door, I thought-"
"I know," he said. "It's too bad for all of us that I have a Logical heart." He kept stroking her back. "It'll be okay. You'll see. We'll figure this out, we'll find a way, and we'll keep the doors open, no matter what."
Eleanor sighed, pulling away. "You're a good boy, Kade. Your parents don't know what they're missing."
His smile in response was sad. "That's the trouble, Auntie. They know exactly what they're missing, and since she's never going to be found again, they don't know what to do with me."
"Silly child," said Eleanor. "Now get to class."
"Getting," he said, and walked toward the door. Nancy shook off her statue stillness and followed him.
She waited until they were halfway down the hall before she said, "Eleanor is your … ?"
"Great-great-great-aunt," said Kade. "She never married or had children. Her sister, on the other hand, had six. Since my great-great-great-grandma had a husband to take care of her, Eleanor inherited the entire estate. I'm the first of her nieces or nephews to find a door of my own. She was so happy thinking that I'd traveled into Nonsense that it took me almost a month to admit she was typing me wrong, and I'd been in a world of pure Logic. She loves me anyway. Someday, all this"-he gestured to the walls around them-"will be mine, and the school will stay open for another few decades. Assuming we don't close in the next week."
"I'm sure we won't," said Nancy. "We'll figure this out."
"Before the authorities get involved?"
Nancy didn't have an answer to that.
* * *
CLASSES WERE PERFUNCTORY and distracted, taught by instructors who could sense that the campus was uneasy, even if they didn't-except for Lundy-know why. Dinner was equally rushed, the beef overcooked and dry, the fruit sliced so haphazardly that bits of peel and rind stuck to the outside when it was served. Students went off in threes and fours, arranging impromptu sleepovers with their friends. Nancy didn't bat an eye when Kade and Christopher showed up at her room clutching sleeping bags and flipped a coin for the use of Sumi's bed. Kade won and settled on the mattress, while Christopher rolled his bedding out on the floor. All three of them closed their eyes and pretended to sleep-a pretense that, for Nancy, became reality sometime after midnight.
She dreamt of ghosts, and silent halls where the dead walked, untroubled.
Christopher dreamt of dancing skeletons that gleamed like opals, and the unchanging, ever-welcoming smile of the Skeleton Girl.
Kade dreamt a world in all the colors of the rainbow, a prism of a country, shattering itself into a thousand shards of light. He dreamt himself home and welcomed as he was, not as they had wanted him to be, and of the three, he was the one who cried into his pillow and woke, cheeks wet, to the sound of screaming.
It was a far-off sound, coming from somewhere outside the window; Nancy and Christopher were still asleep, which only made sense. They had come from worlds where screams were more common, and less dangerous, than they were here. Kade sat up, wiping the sleep from his eyes, and waited for the screams to come again. They did not. He hesitated.
Should he wake them, take them with him when he went to investigate? Nancy was already under suspicion by most of her peers, and Christopher would be too, if he kept getting involved. Kade could go alone. Most of the students liked him, since he was the one who kept the wardrobe in order, and they would forgive him for finding another body. But then he'd be alone, and if either Nancy or Christopher woke before he got back, they would worry. He didn't want to worry them.
Kade knelt and shook Christopher by the shoulder. The other boy groaned before opening his eyes and squinting up at Kade. "What is it?" he asked, voice heavy with sleep.
"Somebody just screamed out near the trees," said Kade. "We need to go see why."
Christopher sat up, seeming instantly awake. "Are we taking Nancy?"
"Yes," said Nancy, sliding out of her bed. Screams hadn't been enough to wake her, but speech had: in the Halls of the Dead, no one spoke unless they wanted to be listened to. "I don't want to stay here alone."
Neither of the boys argued. All of them shared the same fear of being left alone in this suddenly haunted house, where the ghosts were nothing they could understand.
They walked quietly, but they didn't creep, all of them secretly hoping someone would wake, come out of their room, and join the small processional. Instead, the doors stayed shut, and the trio found themselves walking alone toward the shadowy grove where Nancy and Jill had sought shelter from the unforgiving sun. There was no sunlight now: only the moon, looking down from between the patches in the clouds.
Then they stepped into the trees, and the moonlight became too much to bear, for the moonlight was enough to show Lundy, lying small and silent on the ground, her eyes open and staring into the leaves. She still had her eyes and her hands, and seemed to have everything else. Her clothes were unbloodied, her limbs intact.
"Lundy," said Kade, and moved to kneel beside her, reaching for a pulse. The motion caused her head to roll to the side, revealing what had been taken.
Kade scrabbled away, shambling to his feet, before running to the other side of the clearing and vomiting noisily into the bushes. Nancy and Christopher, who were less disturbed by gore, looked at the empty bowl of Lundy's skull and stepped a little closer together, shivering despite the warmth of the night.
"Why would someone take her brain?" asked Nancy.
"I was about to ask you the same question," snarled Angela.
Nancy and Christopher turned. Angela was standing at the edge of the grove, a flashlight in her hand and several shadow-draped students behind her. Shining the light directly in Nancy's eyes, she demanded, "Where is Seraphina?"
"Who's Seraphina?" asked Nancy, raising a hand to shade her eyes. She heard footsteps a moment before Kade's hand settled on her shoulder. She took a half step back, letting him shelter her. "We came out here because we heard screaming."
"You came out here to hide the body," snapped Angela. "Where is she?"
"Seraphina is the prettiest girl in school, Nancy-you've seen her. She traveled to a Nonsense world, high Wicked, high Rhyme," said Kade. "Pretty as a sunrise, mean as a snake. She ain't here, Angela." His Oklahoma accent was suddenly strong, dominating his words. "Go back to your room. I have to go wake Miss Eleanor. Odds are good she's let Seraphina through her door."
"If she hasn't, you better give her back," said Angela. "If you hurt her, I will kill you."
"We don't have her," said Christopher. "We were asleep up until five minutes ago."
"Who's that with you?" asked Kade. "Have you just been roaming the campus looking for someone to accuse? You're out here as much as we are. This could be your handiwork."
"We went to good, respectable worlds," said Angela. "Moonbeams and rainbows and unicorn tears, not … not skeletons and dead people and deciding to be boys when we're really girls!"
Sudden silence fell over the grove. Even Angela's supporters seemed stunned by her words. Angela paled.
"I didn't mean that," she said.
"Oh, but I believe you did," said Eleanor. She stepped around Angela and the others, walking slowly to where Lundy was sprawled in the dirt. She was leaning on a cane. That was new, as were some of the lines in her cheeks. She seemed to be aging by the day. "Ah, my poor Lundy. I suppose this may have been a kinder death than the one you were looking forward to, but I still wish you hadn't gone."