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.

“What are you saying?” asked Kade.

“Girl talk,” said Sumi. “Pure nonsense. None of your business.” She kept signing.

Finally, slowly, the stranger took her hand away from the Wolcott’s hair. The Wolcott whimpered and burrowed closer, pressing her face deeper into the stranger’s apron. The stranger started signing, more slowly than Sumi—which wasn’t saying much. Some hummingbirds were slower than Sumi.

Sumi wasn’t moving now. She was watching, eyes sharp, expression sharper, occasionally interjecting a rapidly signed reply. Finally, she nodded. “It’s nice to meet you, Alexis,” she said, and looked to Kade. An unforgiving coldness had settled over her in the last few moments, a coldness befitting a girl who’d saved a world, and died, and risen again, all before she had the chance to turn eighteen.

Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children was an island of misfit toys, a place to put the unfinished stories and the broken wanderers who could butcher a deer and string a bow but no longer remembered what to do with indoor plumbing. It was also, more importantly, a holding pen for heroes. Whatever they might have become when they’d been cast out of their chosen homes, they’d been heroes once, each in their own ways. And they did not forget.

“Her name is Alexis,” said Sumi, voice artificially calm. “She’s here because she hopes we can help Jack; because she doesn’t think anyone else can.”

“So that is Jack, then,” said Kade.

“Yes, and no,” said Sumi. “This is Jack, but she’s in Jill’s body. Jill stole hers and ran away with it.”

There was a pause as everyone took this in. Finally, faintly, Cora said, “Oh. Is that all?”

3 WINDOWS OF THE SOUL

KADE YANKED THE wardrobe open and started digging through its contents, scattering clothes in all directions. Sumi perched atop a nearby stack of books, watching him. He grabbed a waistcoat, discarded it, and reached for a vest, muttering about whipstitches and adjustable clips. Sumi cocked her head.

“Why is it so important for you to find something that fits her, when she’s still wailing and crying and snotting all over everything?” she asked. “You call me the nonsensical one, but right now it feels like you’re putting the frosting before the fire.”

“Clothes matter,” he said, draping the vest over his arm and reaching for a pile of neatly folded blouses. “Clothes are part of how you learn to feel like yourself, and not someone who just happens to look like you. Don’t you remember what it was like when someone else decided what you were going to wear?”