This Monstrous Thing (14 page)

“Yes.”

She smirked. “It’s his favorite line. He uses it at the start of every term. Dr. Geisler is . . .” She paused, fingers working at the frayed cuff of her sleeve. “Not a good man. I can’t imagine that after you showed him how to bring people back from the dead he’d have much more need for you. Or your brother, who, if reports are to be believed, isn’t very good either. Though I’m not sure about you yet.”

“What about me?”

“Are you good, or are you clever?”

I didn’t know how to answer that. I’d spent so long living with this monstrous thing I’d done that I didn’t feel either anymore. “Thank you,” I said instead of answering, “for telling me.”

“About my accident?”

“About Geisler. And yes, that too.”

She slid her hands into her sleeves and folded them across her stomach. “I don’t know much about you, but
I know about the Shadow Boys, and I’m assuming you live in a way that makes secrets and lies as necessary as breathing. I think people need to be trusted every now and then with something sacred of someone else’s just to understand that not everyone will turn on you.”

I knew she had said it to be kind, but guilt wriggled inside me for not telling her the truth about Oliver. I stood up and offered her my hand, careful when I pulled her up not to strain her mechanical circuit. “We should go in. I think it’s nearly morning.”

She retrieved her shirt from the floor, then turned her back to me as she dropped her coat and pulled it on. “You go on. I sleep out here.”

“What? He’s got that whole big house and he doesn’t even give you somewhere to sleep?”

“He thinks it’s as much as I deserve.”

“It’s bleeding cold out here.”

She shrugged. “I’ve got a coat.”

“Come inside with me. You can sleep in my room, then sneak out in the morning before we go.”

“What a sound plan, Mr. Finch.”

“So let’s sleep in the sitting room then. I’ll stay with you. If Geisler finds us, say we were talking and fell asleep.”

“What about the automatons?”

“They don’t come in my room—more reason to stay up there. Come on, I’ll be thinking about you all night if you don’t.” She paired a cocked eyebrow with her usual smirk,
and I felt myself go scarlet. “I’ll be worried,” I corrected. “Please. I’ll stay out here if you don’t come in.”

She stared at me for a moment, but I knew before she spoke what her answer would be.

“Fine,” she said, and pulled on her coat.

As we walked back to the house, I reached out and took her hand. Her fingers were cold and chapped—I knew mine were too—but the feeling of her skin warmed me. I hadn’t had anyone to hold on to in a long time, no one close enough to touch, and it felt better than I expected. I held on tight, and she held on right back.

Once inside, we made for the sitting room, but one of the automatons was standing in front of the fire and looked as though it had no intention of moving anytime soon. “Upstairs,” I mouthed at Clémence. She shook her head and gestured to go back the way we’d come, but I dragged her up after me into my bedroom and shut the door behind us.

The fire was dying, and it took another log and some coaxing from the poker until it consented to burn properly again. When I turned from the hearth, Clémence was standing by my bed, trailing her fingers along the covers.

She caught my eye and smiled sheepishly. “Is it shallow to say I miss living well?”

“I don’t think it’s shallow. I think it’s human.” I glanced around the room, which suddenly felt very small, with the
two of us and that massive bed in between. “You can have the bed, if you like.”

“And what about you?”

“I can curl up at the end, I suppose.”

“Not a chance.” She pulled back the covers. “Come get in with me.”

My stomach gave an odd lurch. “I can’t do that.”

“We don’t have to
do
anything,” she said with a sly smile that made me blush to my bones. “We’re just keeping each other warm. Come on, this was your idea.”

And I couldn’t argue with that.

Neither of us had nightclothes, so we just took off our shoes and crawled under the covers. I tried to keep a chaste distance from Clémence, but she wiggled up next to me, her forehead buried in my neck, so close that I could feel her heartbeat like it was inside me, thumping in tandem with mine.

Lying there beside her, thawing from the cold with her body warm against mine, was somehow both the most gentlemanly and most ungentlemanly thing I had ever done. My father would have had a fit if he’d known. Mary Godwin, on the other hand, with all her modern sensibilities, would have applauded. She would have wanted to be that girl, I thought. The girl I slept beside but didn’t sleep with.

We talked for a while as the fire faded back into
cinders. Clémence was delighted to learn that I had picked up my French in Paris, not, as she said, at some fancy Scottish boarding school. I told her that Scotland wasn’t really the land of posh boarding schools. She laughed, and, in spite of everything, I smiled.

“Are you coming to Geneva with us?” I asked her.

“Geisler wants me to. Someone has to carry his luggage.”

“That’s good. I’m glad.”

She twisted her face up to mine. “Why are you glad?”

“Glad I don’t have to deal with Geisler on my own.”

“Oh.” She looked away and pressed her cheek to my shoulder again. She smelled like smoke and iron, that faint breath of metal that pushed Oliver into my mind without warning. I tried to shove him away and focus on what Clémence was saying, and after a while I managed to pry my thoughts away from my brother, and from Geisler, and the mess waiting for me on the other side of the dawn. As they departed, exhaustion filled their place, and I started to drift off. I could tell Clémence was fading too—she kept forgetting to finish her sentences, and we both seemed more frequently unable to find the word we were looking for, let alone string it properly with others.

My eyes were closed, sleep’s fingers curling around me, when Clémence’s voice floated up to me like steam from a teacup. “Can I tell you one more thing? Since we’ve said a lot already.”

“Go on,” I replied, though I already had one foot in dreams and was only picking up every few words.

“When I told you about the first boy I kissed—Marco in the theater troupe in Paris . . .”

She went quiet, and I said, “Yes?” so she knew I hadn’t fallen asleep.

“I lied.” There was a moment of trembling silence, then she laughed, soft as a breath against a windowpane. “I don’t know anyone called Marco, and my father would have murdered me if I had run around with actors. The first person I kissed wasn’t a boy at all.” Her body slid against mine until there wasn’t an inch of us apart, and I could feel her breath, her heartbeat, her crackling paper lungs. “Her name was Valentine.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

W
hen I woke the next morning, the fire was ashes and Clémence’s side of the bed was cold. I sat up, covers falling off me, and tried my best to sort out what had actually happened last night and what I had merely dreamed.

Nothing
,
I realized with a sick lurch. I hadn’t dreamed any of it.

And now I was going to Geneva to fetch Oliver for Geisler’s mad research.

I climbed out of bed and changed into the clothes I had arrived in as I considered my choices, or rather choice, because backing out now was impossible. I had to go to Geneva—Geisler was tearing up bodies in his cellar, so who knew what he would do if I stood in the way of
eating anything. After a few minutes, I heard his work?—but I didn’t have a clue what to do once we arrived. The last few days thinking Geisler would help me take care of Oliver had been glorious. The freest I had felt in years. Letting that go after coming so close made me want to climb straight back into bed and refuse to budge.

I stepped out of my bedroom and into the hallway. At the top of the stairs, a small window overlooked the front path leading to the road. Depace’s wagon was parked at the gate, stacked with twice as many coffins as there had been when I’d ridden in it. Depace was leaning against the wheel chatting with Geisler while Clémence, her gray coat thrown over her blue dress, stood on the driver’s seat tugging on the thick ropes that held the coffins in place. At first I thought they were unloading more bodies for Geisler’s laboratory, but it didn’t make sense for them to be doing it in broad daylight and just before Geisler was to leave for Geneva. That and the fact that Clémence seemed to be securing the coffins, not unloading them. I watched them until my stomach growled and I went in search of breakfast.

There were scones and coffee in the kitchen, and I took some into the sitting room and settled down to eat in front of the fire. The house seemed dead quiet. The constant ticking of the clocks had blended into the silence so I could hardly hear them apart.

I had less of an appetite than I thought, and I mostly picked currants out of the scones instead of actually
eating anything. After a few minutes, I heard the front door creak; then Geisler stuck his head into the sitting room. He smiled when he saw me. I nearly threw up.

“Good, you’re awake,” he said. “I’d like to leave within the hour.”

“I’m ready,” I said, then added, “Are we traveling with Depace?”

Geisler laughed. “No, he was just doing me a favor. We’re traveling in a bit more style than that.”

“More style” turned out to be a compact sleigh painted forest green and powered by steam and clockwork. Geisler informed me that it would be faster than a carriage after the blizzard, and would allow us to go off the road if we needed to. In spite of how gloomy I was feeling, I couldn’t resist bending down to see the engine.

Clémence stepped over me as she did a lap around the sleigh to check that everything was stowed. “You look as though Christmas came early.”

I stood up, scrubbing my hands along my arms for warmth. “It’s amazing. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“The doctor made it. It gets us where we need to be faster than a carriage. The only disadvantage is, it’s useless three of the four seasons.”

She tugged on one of the luggage straps, and I remembered her standing on the wagon full of coffins earlier. “What was Depace doing here?” I asked.

“Collecting something from Geisler.”

“Collecting? What’s Geisler got that he wants?”

She kicked one of the runners, and a lump of wet snow was knocked free. “I don’t know. I just do the lifting.”

“Mademoiselle Le Brey,” I heard Geisler call from the doorway. “Are we ready?”

“Nearly.” Clémence glanced over her shoulder at the house, then sideways at me. “Are you all right? You look a bit weary.”

I hadn’t been
less
all right in a long time. I didn’t know what I meant to do once we reached Geneva. I could still hand Oliver over. That thought whispered inside me in the same sly, horrid voice that had sent me to Ingolstadt in the first place. Geisler might not be a good man, but Oliver was valuable to him—too important to be treated badly. And I had spent so long putting Oliver ahead of what I wanted, trying to make up for what I’d done and only feeling worse. If we returned here with Geisler, I could study at Ingolstadt and Oliver wouldn’t have to be shut up in Château de Sang tearing apart the furniture. It could be better.

But Oliver would still be an experiment, something to be studied and tested and taken apart. I’d be doing work that interested me, but he would be my work. Victor Frankenstein and his monster in earnest.

The other choice was getting to Oliver before Geisler could and then fleeing Geneva. But Ingolstadt would be behind me for good if I did that, and Geisler, and every
dream I’d clung to of studying here someday, or going to university at all. Going back to Geneva was a return to Oliver and a life spent hiding and looking after him and staring him in the face and wondering where he’d gone. I’d be right back where I started—alone, with my wild brother to care for and now a madman on our tail.

So which is it going to be?
I thought. Was I just the same as Geisler and Victor Frankenstein, or could I choose Oliver?

Are you good
, whispered that horrid voice inside me,
or are you clever?

Behind me, Clémence whistled. “Coming, Finch?”

I took a deep breath. I wanted to stand there forever, listening to the house ticking and never moving past this moment or making a decision. But the engine was growling and the sun was on the snow, and I cut my tracks around the sleigh and joined her.

C
lémence took the seat in the back without asking while Geisler climbed into the front. I hesitated, not sure where I was meant to sit, until Geisler called me over to his side. I cast a pleading look at Clémence, but she just raised her eyebrows, and I reluctantly pulled myself up next to him. As we set off in a wide loop around Ingolstadt, I turned back and took a last look at the university spire rising above the rooftops.

Geisler took a different route than I remembered.
We wandered along roads too narrow for a wagon, with splashes of snow spilling from the moaning pine boughs and owls swooping low between the trees. We all wore green-lensed goggles to shield our eyes from the sunlight bouncing off the snow like diamonds, but I still had to squint.

There were circulating-steam foot warmers, and the pelts of several thick-furred animals to wrap up in, but the wind still managed to find every possible route under my coat and I felt cold to my bones. I had brought
Frankenstein
with the intention of finishing it but the thought of exposing my hands, even gloved, to the cold didn’t appeal to me. I was drowsy from sitting up the night before with Clémence, but when I tried to sleep, I remembered a book Oliver had read when we were both in the throes of our polar-exploration phase in Bergen. The book said that when you’re about to freeze to death, you get dead sleepy, and death comes as a sort of drifting off. It didn’t seem likely that I would freeze, but the thought still kept my eyes open.

That and Geisler’s chatter. Now that we were on our way, a scientific expedition in progress, he seemed to feel permitted to interrogate me about Oliver and his resurrection. How long had it taken? What stock weight had I used for the gears? How had I handled the severed arteries?

I dodged the questions as valiantly as I could, uttering “I don’t remember” more than anything else. “I hope you
remember a bit more once we start work,” he snapped at me after what felt like hours of it. “Or else you won’t be much good for holding up your end of the bargain.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” I said. “I’ll remember.”

He grunted, eyes forward on the snowy lane. “Any more ideas about the authorship of your memoir?”

I bristled at the term but kept my face straight. “Not yet, sir. I’ve been thinking.”

We fell into a tense silence after that. I could feel Geisler stewing beside me, but he must have consoled himself with the thought that soon the three of us—he, Oliver, and I—would be together in Ingolstadt and there would be a living experiment for him to examine.

On the fourth night of our journey, we crossed into Switzerland on an unmarked vineyard road and stopped at an inn a few miles from Geneva’s walls. Traveling had left me with a deep, full-body fatigue, but I dreaded sleep. I’d had nothing but nightmares since we left Ingolstadt, and they grew worse each night. Clémence didn’t seem inclined to go up to bed either, so after Geisler retired, we ordered warm wine and
chouquettes
and sat in the common room long after most people were gone.

Three drinks in, I found myself warm and airy and talking about Oliver. I’m not sure how we arrived there—maybe it was the wine—but suddenly I was telling her stories from when we were boys, things I hadn’t thought about in years, let alone told anyone. Clémence listened,
hands around her mug, and it was a while before I realized she wasn’t really saying anything, just letting me talk myself hoarse.

“Oliver always got up to stupid things just to be daring, like nicking sweets and sneaking us into places we shouldn’t be. He had to touch everything we were told not to touch. Climb whatever said ‘keep off.’ That sort of thing. It got more serious when we got older. I bailed him out of jail twice. And he was so bleeding impulsive. Once, when we lived in Brussels, Oliver and I went to school, but everyone was mean because they knew what our family did. One boy threw rocks at me in the yard, so Oliver pushed him down a stairway and he broke his collarbone.”

“God’s wounds,” Clémence said. I couldn’t decide if she sounded horrified or impressed.

I tore a
chouquette
in half
but didn’t eat it. “The headmaster asked us what had happened, and Oliver said we’d been acting out the Bible, and he’d been playing God.”

Clémence laughed. “I’m not sure if that’s gallant of him to look out for you, or stupid.”

“Both, I suppose. He was reckless. It’s a miracle he survived as long as he did.” I stopped and took a quick drink, but that deep, permanent ache that came with talking about Oliver had already surfaced strong as ever. At some point, wasn’t this meant to stop hurting so badly?

“Are you all right?” Clémence asked.

“Yeah, it’s just . . .” I scrubbed my hands through my hair. “You know how when you’re a child, you think you’re never going to die? You’ve survived everything so far, so you don’t realize that’s going to stop. I never felt that way. I was always so aware that I wasn’t indestructible—I suppose that’s a side effect of living in the world we did. But it never occurred to me that Oliver might die. He was half of my whole life, and no matter what happened or where we went, no matter how shitty things got, there was always the two of us. I always had him.” The candlelight reflected in the surface of my wine rippled as I worked my fingers around the mug. “And then, the week before we left Paris, Oliver cut his knuckles boxing when a man threw a bottle into the ring. It got infected, and all the travel and the sleeping on cold floors and not having enough to eat really knocked him over. When we got to Lyon, he could hardly stand, he was so ill.”

I remembered it suddenly, clear as water—how pale and shaky he’d been, the slick fever sheen in his eyes, how I’d had to hold him on his feet as we stood in line to get our papers stamped because they wouldn’t let us on the boat if they knew he was sick.

When we were finally on board, Father pulled me aside. He looked very serious. “We’ll be in Geneva in a few hours—Geisler will have a place for us to stay once we get there. But you need to keep Oliver awake until then. He’ll want to sleep, but you can’t let him.”

“You should tell him,” I said, but Father shook his head.

“He won’t listen to me.”

“I don’t think—”

“He’ll listen to you, Alasdair. He always listens to you.” He clapped me once on the shoulder like it was all ordinary, but his fingers went tight just for a moment, and I felt their print in my skin even after he let go. “Keep him warm and keep him awake.”

Oliver was already below deck, curled up against our trunks with a blanket across his knees. When I sat down beside him, he pressed his forehead against my shoulder. His skin was burning. Then, like he’d overheard my conversation with Father, he said, “I’m so tired, Ally.”

My heartbeat jumped, and I said quickly, “Well, stay awake.” He moaned and I added, “Recite something for me.”

“I can’t think of anything.”

“Rubbish. Tell me something from
Paradise Lost
.”

I felt him take a long, slow breath.
“Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay / To mould me Man, did I solicit thee / From darkness to promote me?”
he murmured, then fell silent. When I looked over, his eyes were closed.

“That’s good,” I said loudly. “Is that Shakespeare?”

He opened his eyes. “That’s Milton, you ninny.”

I knew that, because he was in his phase where he never shut up about Milton, but it seemed the only sure way to rouse him. He was so sick and pale at that point
and I couldn’t remember a time I’d seen him that way.