“Holy hell, is that Jill?”
Christopher turned toward the stairs, untensing. Kade would know what to do. Kade always knew what to do. It was one of his best, and most irritating, qualities.
Kade wasn’t alone on the stairs. Sumi was behind him, bouncing onto her toes and straining to see over his shoulder. Frustrated, she planted her hands at the small of Kade’s back and pushed.
“Come on, come on, there’s adventure in the air and you’re too slow!”
“I don’t think that’s adventure so much as it’s static, Sumi; calm down,” said Kade. He took the remainder of the stairs in four long, lanky steps, hopping down the final three in his hurry to get to the silent Wolcott.
He had almost reached her when the stranger stepped between them, glaring down at him. He stopped where he was. Sumi peeked around him at the other girl.
“You’re not tall, but you walk like you are,” she said approvingly. “I’ve always said we needed more mountains around here. We’re not going to hurt Jack. We’re her friends. Or we were, anyway, before I died and she left. You know how that is.”
To Christopher’s surprise, the stranger smiled and made a see-sawing motion with her hand, apparently agreeing with Sumi.
“That’s not Jack,” said Kade. “That’s Jill. Look at her hands.”
“Jack’s still Jack when she’s not wearing gloves,” said Sumi. “She’s still Jack when she’s not wearing her own skin, too. It’s a neat trick. Imagine if I could put on someone else’s skin and have everyone believe it was really them! I’d be so many people every day.”
“Sumi…” Kade pinched the bridge of his nose before addressing the stranger. “I apologize for my friend. She went to a Nonsense world, and it left her a little scrambled.”
“Dying scrambled me more,” said Sumi matter-of-factly. She stepped around Kade, heading for the velvet curtain covering the basement’s rear wall. “There’s an easy way to answer this. We’ll wake her up and ask her who she thinks she is. If I’m right and it’s Jack, you owe me extra dessert.”
“You always get extra dessert,” said Christopher. “I think you have syrup in your veins.”
“If only,” chirped Sumi. She twitched the curtain aside, revealing the jars and vials and beakers full of dangerous chemicals Jack had left behind when she departed.
“What’s Sumi doing?” asked Cora, from beside Christopher’s left elbow.
“What the fu— Don’t do that!” he exclaimed, whipping around to stare at her. “When did you get here?”
Cora shrugged. “Kade and Sumi were arguing about who the girl on the table is. I don’t know her either way, so I figured I’d be quiet.”
“I swear I’m going to bell you,” muttered Christopher. Secretly, he was grateful. Cora being too quiet and sneaking up on him was normal. Sumi being weird was normal. Strangers carrying maybe-dead girls appearing in his room was not normal. The air smelling of ozone was not normal.
A little normalcy was a good thing. Especially when Sumi was turning away from the shelves with a vial of something yellow and viscous in her hand and a manic look in her eye. Even Kade looked nervous.
“What are you going to do, Sumi?”
“Ask and answer,” she said brightly, and started for Jill. Before she reached her target, she stopped, looking at the stranger, and said, “I’m not going to hurt her. Unless she labeled her own things wrong, and if she did that, I think it’s less me hurting her and more her learning some important lessons about lab safety. All right?”
The stranger frowned, making a sharp gesture with one hand.
Unexpectedly, Sumi lit up. “Oh!” she said. “You sign! Well, that makes this easier. I swear on the candy corn fields and the strawberry sea that I wouldn’t ever hurt her on purpose. Accidents happen to the best of us. But I don’t think anything can start happening until she’s awake, and that means you need to let me. Please?”
The stranger sighed, broad shoulders sagging, and stepped aside.
“Thank you,” said Sumi. Her smile was gentler than Christopher had ever known it to be, a momentary tenderness that was quickly undone when she popped the vial of mysterious yellow fluid open and shoved it under the motionless Wolcott twin’s nose.
“It’s Jill,” said Christopher.
“No, it’s not,” said Sumi.
The Wolcott’s eyes snapped open and she jerked upright, taking a huge, shuddering breath before starting to cough. She raised her hands toward her mouth and froze, staring at them. Something about her own fingers seemed to horrify her. Her eyes went wider and wider until she started coughing again, harder this time. She didn’t cover her mouth. She didn’t seem able to finish the motion.
“She’s having a panic attack,” said Kade. “Sumi, you need to back off right now.”
“No, I don’t,” said Sumi. “Jack, it’s me. Look, I stopped being dead. Resurrections make you happy, right? Behold the power of science!”
The stranger stepped around Sumi, putting a heavy hand on the Wolcott’s shoulder. The girl huddled against her, coughs slowly stopping, only to be replaced by a sharp keening noise.
“I have no idea what’s going on,” said Cora.
“That makes two of us,” said Kade.
The stranger stroked the twin’s head with her free hand. The smaller girl huddled even closer, pressing her face into the stranger’s apron. It did nothing to dull the razor edge of her keening.
“It’s Jack.” Sumi dropped the vial on the table before scrubbing her palms against her jeans. “I don’t know how it’s Jack, but it’s Jack. I don’t know who her friend is, either, but I know she’s been dead before, so we’re both members of a really lousy club that most people never get to join. I know a not-dead girl wouldn’t be here with Jack unless it was really, really important.”
Kade started to reply, then hesitated. Sumi had been dead when Jack and Jill left for the Moors, but she’d known them well enough to know that neither Wolcott would have voluntarily come back. Like most of Eleanor’s students, they’d dreamt of nothing but returning to their true, beloved home since the day they were enrolled.
“You said she signs,” said Kade. “What does that mean, exactly?”
“Means she talks with her hands,” said Sumi. “I don’t speak the same dialect, but I guess the Moors never developed their own sign language, because what she’s said so far looks like ASL, the way ASL would look if you never left your farm to make sure you weren’t experiencing linguistic drift.”
Sumi’s perpetual sugar buzz and gleeful ridiculousness could make it easy to forget how smart she was. Kade nodded slowly. Then he turned to the stranger. “Can you understand me? If you can, will you please tell Sumi why you’re here?”
Sumi scoffed. “She can hear. She just can’t make sounds. Don’t act like she’s stupid.”
The stranger looked uncertain, maybe because of the Wolcott still clinging to her side. Sumi sighed as she turned to the pair and began moving her hands, fingers flashing and darting with incredible speed. Even silent, Sumi somehow managed to be loud enough to fill the entire room.