“No,” she said. The calm was gone from her voice, replaced by all her hero’s wildness, which cut through the whimsy she draped around herself like a knife through taffy. “No, and no, and no. You’re better than those words, Ely-Eleanor, you’re better than those thoughts. No one should have to sit and suffer and pretend to be someone they’re not because it’s easier, or because no one wants to help them fix it. Jack isn’t Jill, and Jill isn’t Jack, and if Jack wants her own body back, we’re going to help her get it. You don’t have to give us your permission. We can just go.”

“They won’t be going alone,” said Kade. He looked at Eleanor, who he loved so dearly, and saw the echoes of his mother in her face, tucked into the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and around her mouth. His mother loved him. He’d never been able to convince himself otherwise, even when it would have been so much easier to believe she didn’t. But she couldn’t—wouldn’t—understand why he needed her to accept him as her son, when she’d loved him so completely as her daughter. “I’ll be with them. So will Christopher and Cora, I reckon. Friends don’t let friends go into danger alone.”

“Oh, my sweet boy,” sighed Eleanor. “I should have reminded you of the rules when Rini fell out of the sky. No quests. It’s so easy to become addicted to them, and so hard to break the habit once it takes hold. What if you get hurt? What if the door back won’t open for you?”

“Then we learn to live in the Moors,” he said. “Christopher will fit right in. Everyone there probably thinks skeletons are charming. Alexis mentioned the Drowned Gods earlier, so I suppose Cora will have an ocean to get acquainted with, and as for me, I won’t be any further from what feels like home than I am right now. We’ll be fine.”

“As long as there’s butter, sugar, and flour, I know Confection will find me one day,” said Sumi serenely. “I have to go home and get married in order for Rini to be born, remember? So it doesn’t matter where I am. The door will find me.”

“I don’t think that’s quite how it—” Kade began.

“Hey! Don’t you go getting logical rules on my illogical life plans,” said Sumi, cutting him off. “We’re going. We’re going to help Jack, and we’re going to get the windmill back, whatever that means, so she and Alexis can do happily ever after forever and for always, not just until the vampires next door get bored.”