Every Heart a Doorway (12 page)

“Don’t worry, you’re safe with me,” said Kade. “Whoever the killer is, they’re only striking when people are alone. We’ll stick together, and we’ll be fine.”

But you’re what I’m nervous about,
thought Nancy. She forced a wan smile. “If you really think so,” she said. “Jill isn’t here. We should get back to the attic before Jack and Christopher start to worry about us.”

They walked side by side back the way that they had come, Nancy’s fingers resting on Kade’s arm and her eyes scanning the grassy expanse of the lawn, looking for some clue as to what had happened. There had to be
something
that would bring all this together, that would force it to make sense. They couldn’t just be at the mercy of an unseen killer, who slaughtered them for no apparent reason.

“Hands,” she murmured.

“What’s that?” asked Kade.

“I was just thinking about Sumi’s hands,” she said. “She was really good with her hands, you know? Like they were the most important thing about her. Maybe someone is trying to take away the things we treasure the most. I don’t know why, though, or how they’d know.”

“It makes sense,” said Kade. They had reached the porch steps. As they started up, he said, “Most of the students lost the things that were most precious to them when their doors closed. Maybe someone’s so heartbroken that they’re trying to make sure nobody gets to be happy. If they have to be miserable, so does everyone else.”

“But you’re not miserable when you’re dead,” said Nancy.

“I sure do hope not,” said Kade, and reached for the doorknob.

The door opened before he touched it.

7

COCOA

LUNDY STOOD IN
the doorway, eyeing the pair suspiciously. “Where were you?”

“Morning to you, too, ma’am,” said Kade. “We got Loriel sorted, just like Miss Eleanor asked us to, and then we went to find Jill. Jack and Christopher are looking inside; we went to look outside. Since she’s not out here, do you mind if we come back in?”

“She shouldn’t be alone,” said Lundy, stepping to the side and holding the door wider to let them pass. “Why didn’t you take her with you?”

“Getting blood out of her dress would have been really hard,” said Nancy, without thinking about it. Lundy turned a startled, offended look on her, and she winced. “Um, sorry. It’s true, though. You can’t get blood out of taffeta, no matter how much you scrub.”

“What fascinating life lessons you have to share,” said Lundy. “Both of you need to get back inside. It’s not safe out here.” Her eyes stayed on Nancy, cold and judgmental.

Nancy shivered, trying not to let her unhappiness show. Her hand still bore down involuntarily on Kade’s arm, tightening. “All right,” she said. “We’ll see you at lunch.”

They walked past Lundy, past the gleaming chandelier with its dusting of frozen tears, and up the stairway to the attic. Only when they were standing outside the door did Nancy allow her fingers to unclench and the shaking that had been threatening to overwhelm her to take over. She sank to the floor, pressing her back to the wall and pulling her knees up against her chest.

Be still,
she thought.
Be still, be still, be still
. But the shaking continued as her traitorous body betrayed her, trembling like a leaf in a hard wind.

“Nancy?” Kade sounded alarmed. He knelt next to her, putting his hand on her shoulder. “Nancy, what’s wrong? Are you all right?”

“She thinks I did it.” Her voice came out thin and reedy, but audible. She drew in a deep breath, forced her head away from her knees, and looked at Kade as she said, “Lundy thinks I did it. She thinks I’m the one who killed Sumi and Loriel. I come from a world full of ghosts. I’m closer to Jack and Jill than I am to anyone else here, and they’ve been here forever without killing anybody. But I show up, and people start dropping dead. Suspecting the new girl only makes sense. When the new girl doesn’t mind helping with the bodies, it becomes almost too easy. She thinks I did it, because anything else would be complicated and hard.”

“Lundy thinks in stories,” said Kade, rubbing Nancy’s back soothingly. “She spent too long in the Goblin Market before she made her bargain. She has stories in her blood. You’re right about being the most logical suspect—new girl, no strong ties, came from an Underworld. You’re probably right about Lundy suspecting you. But you’re wrong if you think that Eleanor will let her hurt you. Eleanor knows you didn’t do it, just like I do. Now come on. I have a hot plate and a teapot in the attic. I can make you something hot to drink, soothe your nerves.”

“Actually, I already made cocoa,” said Jack, opening the door and poking her head out. “Did you find my sister?”

“No, didn’t you?” Kade looked over his shoulder and frowned. “I figured if we didn’t find her, you would. Did you check the dining hall?”

“Yes,
and
the library,
and
the classroom we’re supposed to be in this time of day, just in case she’d been so absorbed in thinking about her hair that she hadn’t paid attention to what we were told to do,” said Jack. Her frustration seemed only skin-deep, a cover for her all-too-real concern. “She wasn’t in any of the places we looked. I was hoping you’d find her.”

“Sorry.” Kade stood, offering Nancy his hand. “We looked, we didn’t find, we got a scolding from Lundy, and Nancy—”

“Had a little cry when she realized Lundy suspected her,” finished Nancy, taking Kade’s hand and pulling herself to her feet. “I’m better now. As long as Eleanor doesn’t suspect me, I probably won’t be expelled. Let’s just stick together so that none of us gets hurt, and we’ll ride this thing out as a group.”

“Huh,” said Jack, looking wistful. “I haven’t been part of a group since we left our old school. Now come on. Like I said, I made hot chocolate, and Christopher will drink it all if we leave him alone too long.”

“I heard that!” called Christopher. Jack snorted and withdrew into the attic.

Kade shot Nancy a worried look, which she answered with a smile and a reassuring squeeze of his hand before she let go and stepped into the attic ahead of him. As promised, the air smelled like hot chocolate. Christopher was sitting on one of the heaps of books, a mustache of whipped cream on his lip and a mug cupped in his hands. Jack was at the hot plate, fixing three more mugs. Kade raised an eyebrow.

“Where did you find the whipped cream?” he asked.

“You had milk, I had science,” said Jack. “It’s amazing how much of culinary achievement can be summarized by that sentence. Cheese making, for example. The perfect intersection of milk, science, and foolish disregard for the laws of nature.”

“How did the laws of nature come into this?” asked Nancy, walking over to claim one of the mugs. The smell was alluring. She took a sip, and her eyes widened. “This tastes like…”

“Pomegranate, I know,” said Jack. “Yours was made with pomegranate molasses. Christopher’s has a pinch of cinnamon, and Kade’s contains clotted cream fudge, which I stole from Miss Eleanor’s private supply. She’ll never notice. She has the stuff shipped over from England by the pound, and her next delivery is due in three days.”

“What’s in yours?” asked Nancy.

Jack smiled, holding her mug up in a silent toast. “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 hot plate. 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. They all sort of think where I went was weird, so I can’t talk to them about it much. They start insulting the Skeleton Girl and then I have to punch them in their stupid mouths until they stop. Not the best way to make friends.”

“No, I suppose not,” said Jack. She looked down at her cocoa. “I had similar issues when I attempted to make friends with my fellow students. I gave up trying before Jill did. All they ever wanted to do was talk about how strange the Moors must have been, and how inferior to their own cotton-candy wonderlands. Honestly, I don’t blame them for thinking I could be a killer. I blame them for thinking I would have waited this long.”

“And bonding just got creepy again,” said Christopher cheerfully, before taking a gulp of his hot chocolate. “Luckily for you, I’ll forgive anything for cocoa this good.”

“Like I said, cooking is a form of science, and I am a scientist,” said Jack.

“We do need to figure out what’s going on,” said Kade. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m not so well-equipped to go back to my old life. My parents still think they’re somehow magically going to get back the little girl they lost. They haven’t let me come home for five years. No, maybe that’s unfair—or too fair. They won’t let
me
come home. If I want to put on a skirt and tell them to call me ‘Katie,’ they’ll welcome me with open arms. Pretty sure that if the school closes down, I’m homeless.”

“My folks would let me come back,” said Christopher. “They think this is all some complicated breakdown triggered by the things that happened after I ‘ran away.’ Mom genuinely believes the Skeleton Girl is some girl I fell for who died of anorexia. Like, she asks me on the regular whether I can remember her ‘real name’ yet, so they can track down her parents and tell them what happened to her. It’s really sad, because they care so damn much, and they’re so completely wrong about everything, you know? The Skeleton Girl is real, and she isn’t dead, and she was never alive the way that people are here.”

“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.”