Then she thrust her free hand into the air, the broken arms of her glasses jutting from between her fingers, a makeshift lightning rod at the center of a storm. The lightning lashed down, a slash of bleeding white against the darkness, pouring itself into the metal, filling it from end to end with burning heat. The force of the blast scattered the skeletons, sending their individual bones flying in all directions. Jill howled. Jack screamed. And somewhere in the middle of that terrible, unbearable sound, the tones traded places. Jack started to lower her hand. Jill grabbed her elbow, forcing it back toward the sky.

No. That wasn’t what happened. Jill, now dressed in Jack’s clothing, now wearing her own body, tried to lower her hand, and Jack, now dressed in Jill’s lacy gown, finally back in her own skin, forced her to keep it up, until the lightning died, until the two of them stood, shaken and smoking and alone.

Jill shrieked and dropped the molten remains of Jack’s glasses, cradling her wounded hand to her chest. The metal had burned through the leather of Jack’s glove. “It isn’t fair,” she whimpered. “You get everything and it isn’t fair and I’ll beat you, I swear I’ll beat you, I swear I’ll win next time, I swear—”

“You’ll never give up,” said Jack softly. She pulled her hand out of the loop formed by her own cravat and started pushing her sister inexorably toward the wall, using her own superior strength—the strength born from a lifetime of hard labor—to overcome Jill’s vague attempts to struggle. “You’ll keep coming, and coming, and coming, and hurting the people I love.”

“Yes,” spat Jill. “Until I win.”

“The Moors turned us both into monsters,” said Jack. The resignation in her tone was a roll of thunder, heavy and unforgiving. “But it did a better job with me.”

Then she shoved Jill over the edge.

PART  IV

A BETTER MONSTER

15 A HEART OF WIRE AND GLASS

JILL FELL WITHOUT a sound, her hair still smoking from the lightning, a wide-eyed, puzzled expression on her face, like this couldn’t possibly be happening, not here, not to her; she was the heroine of the piece, and she was meant to walk away.

The Master finally ripped himself free of Sumi’s baling hook. Before she could snare him again, he lunged, grabbing Jack by the shoulders, whipping her around to face him. The wound in his throat was already healing.

“What have you done?!” he demanded, shaking her. “You little—”

“Dr. Bleak is dead,” said Jack. “Until I resurrect him—if you’ve left me enough to work with—I am your opposition and your equal. Unhand me, unless you wish the judgment of the Moors to be upon you.”

Her voice was eerily calm for someone who’d just shoved her own sister from the castle wall.