In Mercy, Rain by Seanan McGuire
Jack was 12 when she and her sister Jill went down an improbable staircase through an improbable door into a world where surely no one would dream of going. The Moors were not like the places in fairytales and books where one could learn to fly or become a princess. Jack was 12 when she all but sacrificed her sister to the vampire lord and chose to join the mad scientist, Dr. Bleak.
Dr. Bleak would've chosen Jill to be his apprentice knowing that Jack would've survived becoming a vampire and that everything probably would've turned out okay, but later, as Jack grew stronger and allowed him to help more people, he wouldn't’ve changed anything. Maybe one day he would finally be able to pass the windmill on to his apprentice and retire.
Dr. Bleak thinks back to his former master, Dr. Ghast, and to the necromancer that took both her and his only love, Peter, away from him. Together with his master, they defeated the necromancer, but Dr. Ghast left him afterward and walked away from the windmill never to be seen again. Dr. Bleak wondered if, when the time comes for him to leave the windmill, if Dr. Ghast will have kept a workbench for him somewhere.
When Jack is 15, she hears screaming across the Moors and alerts Dr. Bleak to visitors who are approaching the windmill. The Chopper family soon arrives, pulling a wagon behind them carrying the body of their daughter Alexis, begging Dr. Bleak to bring her back to life. Dr. Bleak examines her body and finds nothing wrong with her, except for a streak of white in her already pale hair. This seems like it would be a fairly simple resurrection except for the fact that he needs a storm and there isn't one. Mr. Chopper will take care of that though.
Dr. Bleak and Jack get Alexis hooked up to their machines and have dinner, waiting for a storm to hit. It seems Mr. Chopper has done whatever he needed to do to convince someone to call a storm for lightning soon flashes overhead, and Dr. Bleak and Jack are able to successfully resurrect Alexis. She reveals that she kissed a boy, Peter, and then died and Dr. Bleak knows that Peter is his Peter, who was killed by the necromancer and became a phantom, and that a kiss from a phantom lover means certain death.
Alexis is confused when she resurrects, calling Jack a mirror and a reflection of Jill because Jill, as the daughter of the vampire lord, can't have her own reflection and so Jack will die when Jill becomes a vampire. She says she was afraid to approach Jack because of that. Jack is immediately enamored with Alexis who is the most beautiful person she has ever seen, but knows that Alexis could never feel even halfway the same about her, so she excuses herself. Dr. Bleak, still thinking of Peter, only tells Alexis not to waste her resurrection on a phantom lover.
Alexis climbs the stairs of the windmill to find Jack and apologize for implying she is less of a person than her sister and also for not meeting her sooner because of it. Jack, not really bothered by the apology either way, tells Alexis her parents will have paid a great price to the Drowned Gods to buy a storm for her resurrection and to not waste it by dallying with a phantom lover. Alexis tells Jack she cannot tell her who she can dally with unless she wants to herself. Well well well.
Much blushing ensues and the girls compliment each other's beauty, though Jack believes that her sister is beautiful and therefore she cannot be, but Alexis sets that straight, and so Jack offers to take Alexis on a walk. The girls laugh together and Dr. Bleak and the Choppers hear them and know that they've all done the right thing and paid the necessary price. The girls learn more about each other from this day forward, for this is where their story begins, but it is also where this short story ends.
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