That was on Alexis. Alexis, who had walked with her in the village, introducing her to people who had only been passing faces before, telling her about their lives until she could no longer fail to recognize them as people. Alexis, who had cried with her and laughed with her and felt sorry for her sister, trapped and alone in the castle. It had been Alexis who put Jill back into a human context, and it had been seeing her sister terrified and abandoned that made Jack realize she still loved her.

Without Alexis, she might have forgotten how to love. Jill would still have killed—some villager or other, someone too slow to get out of her way—but Jack would not have saved her.

The worst of it was knowing that without Alexis, whoever played her role would have been properly avenged.

“I mean they’ll kill her if they find her here, and they may kill you as well; you’d offer them a rare second chance to commit the same murder.” He slapped his device onto the door, embedding its pointed “feet” in the wood, and began twisting dials. “The Master had to repudiate her to keep them from marching on the castle—even vampires fear fire—but he won’t forgive them for killing his daughter. He’ll burn the village to the ground. It’s happened before. You did well in bringing her here. The only way to save them is to save her.”

“Sir, what does that have to do with—”

“The doors are the greatest scientific mystery our world has to offer,” said Dr. Bleak. He grabbed a jar of captive lightning and smashed it against the doorframe. Sparks filled the air. The device whirred into sudden life, dials spinning wildly. “Did you truly think I wouldn’t find a way to harness them?”

Jack’s eyes went wide. “We could have gone back anytime?” she demanded, in a voice that was barely more than a squeak.

“You could have gone back,” he agreed. “But you would not have been going home.”

Jack looked down at her silent, bloody sister, and sighed. “No,” she said. “We wouldn’t have been.”

“Stay away at least a year, Jack. You have to. A year is all it takes for a mob to dissipate here; grudges are counter to survival.” They could hear the shouting outside now. The flames would come next. “Blood will open the door, yours or hers, as long as it’s on your hands. Leave her behind, or kill her and bring back her body, but she can’t come here as she is. Do you understand? Do not bring your sister back here alive.”

Jack’s eyes widened further, until the muscles around them ached. “You’re really sending me away? But I haven’t done anything wrong!”