“As yours has chosen you, and slighted me, what’s to stop me killing her where she stands?” The Master sounded bored. That didn’t stop the fear from coiling through Jack’s heart, where it lay, heavy and waiting, like a serpent preparing to strike. “She forsook the protection of my house when she rejected me.”

“She’s more useful alive,” said Dr. Bleak. “She’s her sister’s mirror. If something should … happen, to the first, you could draw upon the second to guarantee her survival. And if you killed her, you would break our bargain. Do you really want to risk a fight between us? Do you think this is the time?”

The Master scowled but did not rise. “As you like, Michel,” he said, sounding almost bored. His eyes went to Jack, as calm as if he hadn’t just threatened her. “If you tire of living in squalor, little girl, feel free to return. My doors are always open to one as lovely as you.”

Jack, who had long since tired of being viewed as simply “lovely,” and who had not forgotten the threat, even if the Master had, said nothing. She nodded, and stepped a little closer to Dr. Bleak, and when he rose and walked out of the room, she followed him.

*   *   *

BUT THAT IS ENOUGH of Jack for now: this is a story about two children, even if it is sometimes necessary to follow one at the exclusion of the other. That is often the way. Give children the opportunity and they will scatter, forcing choices to be made, forcing the one who seeks them to run down all manner of dark corridors. And so:

Jill ate her breakfast, and when she was done, she ate Jack’s breakfast, glaring all the while at her sister’s empty bed. Stupid Jack. They were finally in a place where someone liked their shared face, their shared reflection, and now Jack was just going to walk away and leave her. She should have known that Jack wouldn’t want to start being a twin now. Not when she’d spent so many years avoiding it.

(It did not occur to Jill that Jack’s avoidance, like her own, had been born purely of parental desire and never of a sincere wanting. Their parents had done everything they could to blur the lines of twinhood, leaving Jack and Jill stuck in the middle. But Jack was gone and Jill was not, and in the moment, that was all that mattered.)

When the last scrap of toast had been used to mop up the last smear of egg, Jill finally got out of bed and walked to the door. Mary was waiting there, and she curtseyed when Jill emerged.

“Miss,” she said. “Was breakfast to your liking?”

Jill, who had never been treated like she mattered before—especially not by an adult—beamed. “It was fine,” she said grandly. “Did you see to my sister?”