Jack paused. Then, in a soft, shamed voice, she said, “We gave her to him. We could have fought, I suppose—I should have fought; she’s my sister, after all—but we’d just performed a resurrection, and I was wounded, and the Master is a powerful foe. It’s unwise to anger him. Dr. Bleak left the choice to me, left it in my hands whether we returned my sister to her vampiric father figure or closed the doors against him and kept her by our sides. She was crying for him, straining against the straps holding her down, and I … I let her go. She wanted him so badly. He was her happy ending, and I suppose I thought … I thought … I thought if I could have my windmill, and my mentor, and my love, she should have something. She could never be a vampire. The murder she’d been banished for had been undone. Let her have what remained of her own story, and leave us in peace.”

“The murders she did here weren’t undone,” said Christopher.

“Except mine,” said Sumi.

“Still weird,” muttered Cora. “But apparently, I’m the only one who thinks so. Apparently, the rest of you go around raising the dead when you don’t have anything better to do. It’s a miracle we have any graveyards left.”

“Are you done?” asked Kade.

“Maybe,” said Cora.

“Good.” He turned back to Jack. “Please. Continue.”

“There isn’t much left to say,” said Jack. “Jill returned home with her ‘father.’ I remained with Dr. Bleak and Alexis, in a windmill large enough to touch the sky, and I said ‘this is enough, this is everything I’ve ever wanted.’ And I … I was right. I was home, and happy, and for the first time in my life, some of the things that plagued me receded. I went into the garden without my gloves. Not every time, or when it had been raining—mud is still beyond me—but I picked tomatoes and got berry juice on my fingers and I didn’t care, because Alexis was there, Alexis loved me, Alexis didn’t blame me for what my sister had done. I helped Dr. Bleak refine the lightning treatments that kept her with us. I went into the village, to a bookstore that sometimes gets volumes from other worlds, and bought books on sign language, so we could talk when her voice failed her. Dr. Bleak and I began discussing what would happen when my apprenticeship ended. It was…”

She stopped. Finally, she sighed.