“Everyone who comes here becomes a monster: you, me, your sister, everyone,” said Mary, voice low and fast and urgent. “The doors only open for the monsters in waiting. But you made the right choice when you left this castle, because you would have been the worst monster of them all if you had grown up in a vampire’s care.”

“I know,” said Jack, and twisted her wrist free, and walked on.

The others followed her, first Sumi, then Kade and Cora. Christopher brought up the rear, bone flute in his hand and shadows in his eyes. Too many of the children at school had called his door, his world, monstrous, but he’d never really known what that meant: not until this place, with its shadows and its secrets and its terrible, watching moon. Once he was through the door, Mary stepped outside and closed it behind her, and there was relief and sorrow in that motion, like she was doing something that couldn’t be taken back.

Jack kept walking.

The corridor seemed to have been hewn from the very stone of the castle’s foundations. The walls were slick with unspeakable fungus and foul liquids; the corners were packed with cobwebs, and while he couldn’t be sure—didn’t want to be sure—Kade thought he saw a spider the size of a rat scurrying behind the glittering film. Torches dotted the passageway, one roughly every ten feet or so, and the smell of fragrant smoke covered the other, less pleasant odors.

Kade walked a little faster, catching up to Sumi and nudging her, ever so gently, aside. She fell back to walk beside Cora. He matched his steps to Jack’s, and waited.

“This is the only way,” she said.

“Killing someone’s not that easy,” he said.

She laughed, low and bitter. “I already killed her once, remember?”

“With the intention of bringing her back. You’re not going to do that this time, are you?”

“No.” Jack shook her head. “It’s not safe to have her stalking the battlements and planning another way to get my body. She has to die. I’ll salvage what I can. I’ll spread her organs throughout the Moors, give them to people whose lives will be bettered by her sacrifice, and maybe sometimes I’ll see those people and think ‘that man has my sister’s heart, that woman has my sister’s eyes, I didn’t kill her completely; she still did something good, she’s still here.’ But Jill herself? The girl I shared a womb with, the girl who was meant to matter to me more than anything else? She dies tonight. In my body or her own, she dies.”

Kade was quiet for a few moments before he said, “I could do it.”