“That’s a terrifying visual,” said Christopher. He pulled a dress covered in virulently blue and orange stripes out of the wardrobe and made a face. “I thought horror movies were supposed to be all monochrome and serious. This hurts my eyes.”

“It’s perfect,” said Sumi, snatching it out of his hands and peeling off her shirt.

Christopher looked up at the ceiling. “I wish you wouldn’t do that.”

“And I wish you weren’t so weird about nudity, but here we are, and here we go, and you need to find something to wear,” said Sumi. She had pulled the brightly colored dress on and was doing up the laces, expression approving. “This is so good. Think I can keep it when we’re done? If I don’t get too much blood on it?”

“Probably,” said Christopher, poking around in the wardrobe for something in his size. “Do you think Jack’s stable right now? Can we trust her to make good choices?”

“I don’t think she’s any more unstable than she was when she showed up in the basement,” said Sumi. She shot Christopher a look. “Misfit toys forever, remember? She’s one of us. She was there at the beginning. She’ll be there at the end. We help her when we can.”

“Her sister killed you.”

“I got better,” said Sumi airily.

Christopher laughed and pulled a white linen shirt out of the wardrobe. “Right,” he said. “I forgot.”

In the end, he was able to find trousers, a white linen shirt, and suspenders that fit him almost identically to his normal jeans and T-shirt. They felt like clothes, not a costume, something that he tried not to dwell on too much as he followed Sumi back out onto the stairs.

She gripped the rail and leaned out as far as gravity allowed, shouting, “We’re properly dull now! Are you done playing with corpses?”

“Show some respect, you incomprehensible beast,” Jack called back—but there was no rancor in her voice. If anything, she sounded relieved, like she’d been hoping for a distraction.

“No,” said Sumi. “Do you think if I jumped from here, I’d break both my legs?”

“If you do, I’ll build you new ones,” said Jack.

Sumi laughed and went dancing down the stairs, Christopher following after. Jack and Alexis had draped a sheet across Dr. Bleak’s body; if not for the unpleasant void where his head should have been, it would have been almost possible to pretend he was asleep. The void, and the tubes running from the body to the dialysis machine, which was clicking along, making strange grinding sounds that must have been perfectly normal, since neither Jack nor Alexis looked alarmed.