Jack, who already felt like she needed a bath from just that short contact with her sister, suppressed a shudder. “Awful,” she agreed, and grabbed her basket, and let Jill lead her out into the night.

The door slammed shut behind them. Ms. Chopper dropped the tray of potatoes in her hurry to fling her arms around her daughter, and the three of them huddled together, shaking and crying, and suddenly all too aware of the dark outside.

*   *   *

JILL STEPPED LIGHTLY, like she was dancing her way across the muddy cobblestones in the village square. She never stopped talking, words spilling over each other like eager puppies as she recounted everything that had happened to her in the months since she’d last seen her sister. Jack realized, with a dull, distant sort of guilt, that Jill was lonely: she might have servants in that great pile of a castle, and she might have the love, or at least the fondness, of her Master, but she didn’t have friends.

(That was probably a good thing. Jack could remember Dr. Bleak returning from trips to the village shortly after she’d gone to live with him, a dire expression on his face and his big black medical bag in his hands. There had been deaths among the village children. That was all he’d been willing to tell her, when she pressed. It hadn’t been until years later, when Alexis started coming around, that she’d learned that all the children who’d died had been seen playing with Jill around the fountain. The Master was a jealous man. He didn’t want her to have anything in her life except for him, and he was happy to do whatever he deemed necessary to make sure that he remained the center of her world. Friends were a nuisance to be dealt with. Friends were expendable.)

Jack was accustomed to doing her shopping alone, or in the company of Dr. Bleak. It was surprising how often people forgot that Jill was her sister, or felt no need to guard their tongues in her presence. She was used to jokes and gossip, and even the occasional sly barb about the Master’s policies.

As she walked through the shops on Jill’s arm, the real surprise was the silence. People who knew her as Dr. Bleak’s apprentice went quiet when she approached side by side with the Master’s daughter, and some of them looked at her face like she was a riddle that had just been unexpectedly solved. Jack had to fight not to grimace. It would take her months, maybe years, to rebuild the ground she was losing with every person who saw her in Jill’s company. Suddenly, she was the enemy again. It was not a comfortable prospect.