Monstrous Design

by Kat Dunn

  ‘You were born from your mother, weren’t you?’

  ‘I assume so.’

  James shrugged. ‘Then I don’t know what he’s talking about.’

  ‘But is it really science? Ada said it was. Also that it was mine to control. I have been wondering and thinking all these dull days locked up on my own – even if this is something that scientific experimentation awoke in me, the rest is still me, surely? Something I can choose to use for good or bad. I can make myself an angel or the Devil. It’s what Maman called me. Mon ange.’

  As she spoke, she sent a fine filigree of sparks dancing like snowfall across her cloudy skin, like a net of stars cast around her. Like she was only caught on earth for a brief time, before she bucked and broke the net to return to wherever it was she rightly belonged.

  A moment of silence hung between them as James stared at her. Her face was dark, the blooms across her skin falling still. Cloud-cover spread overhead, blocking out the sun. The prickle of stars in her eyes seemed to seep across her temples, her forehead, her cheekbones. She was a human girl, but in that moment she was something more. Something powerful and ancient.

  A slither of fear crawled along his skin.

  Then the clouds passed. The sun broke through.

  James shook it off.

  ‘Come on. The sooner we figure this out, the sooner it’s over.’

  Olympe grumbled, but slid back onto the floor to sit opposite him. The sparks netted over her swooped to gather in a glowing orb at the tip of her index finger. She tried to skip it between her fingers again. Hit, hit, miss – and this time the spark snuffed entirely.

  Olympe swore. ‘One thing I do not understand. If this thing comes naturally, why isn’t it easier for me to control?’

  James laughed. ‘I have no idea why anyone could ever think you’re not human.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Olympe, that is the most human thing I’ve heard. I know who you are. You are clearly one of us.’

  And he meant it. Before now, he hadn’t let himself think of her as anything other than a means to an end. Betraying Edward and Wickham, Camille, the lies and the violence, all of it could be justified. He thought of the confusion and hurt in Edward’s eyes when he’d fled the operating theatre the day before. Perhaps he had been wrong about all of it.

  After a few more attempts, she called a halt and refused to do any more unless James brought her a baked potato from the carts she’d seen outside. He trotted downstairs, jingling the coins in his pockets – then froze on the landing.

  It was dark in the stairwell. In this halfway place, with the pub too far below and everything stairs and doorways, James felt a step outside the world. He was alone and it was oh-so-dark.

  Although not so dark he couldn’t see the figure in the doorway.

  On the landing, a door was open. The doors were never open.

  But now one was, and the darkness within took human shape.

  Then the smell reached him. The smell of old blood.

  Dread plunged through James like a knife.

  He had been found.

  PART THREE

  Empire of Death

  1

  The Duc’s Headquarters

  Ada faced off with the stack of documents that tottered above her head. With delicate precision, she lifted the top folder off. For a tense moment, the stack swayed and she imagined herself crushed to death under the duc’s badly-kept records. Then it steadied and she breathed out.

  Returning to the desk, she looked again at the light under the door into the duc’s private rooms. Occasionally, he paced back and forth, cutting shadows. She had spent a whole day stuffed in this dank backroom of his house in Faubourg Saint Jacques, going through years’ worth of receipts, household accounts, correspondence and research notes, organising them into something resembling logic.

  When she’d presented herself on the duc’s doorstep that morning, she’d expected to find a replica of the abbey laboratory – but the duc’s rooms were far more mundane. No sign of dissected bodies, not even a bloodied scalpel in sight – though Ada knew he had continued to take deliveries of cadavers.

  Instead, it seemed the duc had turned his attention entirely to electricity. The room played host to shelves of Leiden jars, sulphur globes, coils of copper wire, jars of acid and turpentine, folded sheets of rubberised cloth, swags of silk and countless other oddities Ada hadn’t had the chance to investigate.

  She’d stood in his rooms, taking it all in as he quizzed her.

  ‘What exactly is it that you think I do here?’ he had asked, leaning against the edge of his desk.

  ‘Why, continue your research, of course. Now Olympe is lost to you, surely you wish to recreate her talents?’

  The duc watched her for a beat, cold blue eyes studying her carefully. ‘No. It would be foolish to try to replicate a miracle. Olympe is unique. I have turned my attentions to electricity itself, and the practical applications it could be put to.’

  ‘How fascinating.’

  ‘I would say I’m sorry to see you left behind by Camille, but that would be a lie. Now I have the luxury of keeping your talents to myself. Though you have my commiserations – I didn’t think she would leave you for the Englishman either.’

  Ada’s cheeks went hot. ‘She didn’t leave me. I left her.’

  ‘Oh! Is that so?’ He sat behind his desk, pulling out a set of keys. ‘But she did leave you here, did she not, and go to England herself? For him.’

  ‘That’s not— I chose to stay.’

  ‘And she chose to leave.’

  ‘She had to—’ Ada caught herself at the last minute. ‘We had different priorities.’

  The duc held her gaze. Ada felt like an animal pinned on the dissecting table, waiting to be sliced open. Then he stood abruptly, pulling a key off the ring. ‘You were right not to trust her; that girl can only see her own ambition. Here, you’ll need this for the document cabinets.’ She caught the key he tossed to her and slipped it into the pocket tied at her waist.

  The urge to defend Camille was strong, but she swallowed it.

  ‘Does this mean I’m hired?’

  A smile spread across the duc’s face. ‘Consider it a trial.’

  It had turned out what the duc lacked most was a secretary. He’d shown her to the room crammed to the rafters with piles and boxes and folders of paper – whatever he’d managed to salvage when he’d been forced to run after the king’s execution and he’d fallen from favour. They’d been rotting in this dingy house since, gathering dust and mould spots. Now, the duc wanted his affairs in order – for what, Ada hadn’t yet worked out.

  She’d shut herself away, sifting through the detritus, filing and indexing a lifetime’s scientific work, searching for any useful information, any hint at what he might have planned. The highlight was when the duc stepped out of his private rooms and handed her his recent notes to write up. These gave a tantalising glimpse of something brewing. The duc was currently investigating the conductive properties of different materials, comparing the dullness of wood or silk to the quickness of metal or water when an electric current was applied.

  The clock chimed five, and Ada stretched, tidied away her quill and ink and gathered up the notes. Before she knocked at the duc’s door, she took a moment to fix her hair, pinning back the stray curl that fell in her eyes, and brushing the dust off her skirts. She’d finally found the right outfit, something that toed a careful line – smart and modern, but not the flimsy white cotton that had come into fashion and would never stand up to a day’s hard work. Nothing too rough or low class either, which ruled out half the hard-wearing things she kept for jobs with the battalion.

  She’d settled on an expensively made, high-waisted dress in a plain beige, but covered it with a muslin pelisse in dove grey to hide the dirt she accumulated throughout the day. She needed to remind the duc of her station as her father’s daughter, her wits and intelligence, as well as her practicality.

  Ad
a tucked the fresh notes inside a leather wallet then, clutching them to her chest, knocked.

  ‘Come.’

  When she entered his study, the duc was at the desk, brooding over a letter in front of him.

  ‘I’ve written up everything until the second set of Leiden jars,’ said Ada, laying the wallet on his desk. ‘I’ve made a note where I wasn’t sure of the quantities listed. You say one thing at the start but logically, it couldn’t be more than— here, I’ve shown my working.’

  ‘I’m impressed,’ he said, turning a page. ‘These are thorough and methodical, and yet so vivid.’ He shut the wallet and passed it back to her. ‘You are an invaluable resource.’

  ‘Thank you.’ He went back to his letter, and Ada hesitated. The letter was half-obscured by his elbow, but she could just about make out the words England and success. She had grown more confident in her decision, but she was also growing impatient. ‘Could I assist you in your next experiment? I’d like to learn more practical skills.’

  The duc arched an eyebrow. ‘Ah, bored, are we?’

  ‘No, sir. But I like a challenge.’

  ‘A trait that I value.’ He tapped his index finger on the letter. ‘As it happens, I must increase the pace of my own work, and an assistant would go some way to achieving that. But I would caution you against running before you can walk.’

  Nerves fluttered in Ada’s stomach. Her instinct was caution, but it held her back. Made her wait for Camille to reach a decision or tell her what to do. Caution was a weight dragging her down, always to be in second place, always to be overlooked.

  Caution made her weak.

  ‘Weren’t you the one who said I shouldn’t be wasted?’ she said. ‘If you think my notes are good, imagine what help I could be if you let me bring my ideas to your work too.’

  Amusement curled his lip. ‘Is that so?’

  She held her chin high. ‘Yes.’

  For a moment, the duc drummed his fingers on his desk. Then he spoke. ‘I would not want arrogance or presumption to get in the way of recognising talent. Very well.’

  Ada was thrilled. ‘I am happy to be of service.’

  ‘Tomorrow, then.’

  Another question was on her lips. She knew he studied electricity, but what for? The whole purpose of her being there was to find out what he was doing and how they could stop it.

  But she didn’t ask. She let herself be content for now with her first victory.

  Caution might be unhelpful.

  Cunning wasn’t. With each step closer to the duc, she needed to be sharper. Play her cards closer to her chest, earn his trust in careful measures. If she pushed too fast he’d get suspicious and drop her.

  So she nodded. Smiled. Agreed plans for the morning.

  Her father’s coach was waiting. She’d fed him a line about tutoring the daughters of a fictional respectable family in English and composition, and he’d hardly noticed, absorbed as he was in his own little empire.

  In her mind she let a dozen different visions of the next day play out. What she might discover about the duc – and what she might learn from the experiments themselves. Society might not grant her the right to attend university, but that wouldn’t stop her learning whenever and wherever she could.

  She tied her bonnet and climbed into the carriage.

  Guil sat in the far corner, hand wrapped so tightly around the leather strap hanging from the ceiling that his knucklebones showed through his skin.

  ‘Hello, Ada,’ he said. ‘You’ve been keeping secrets.’

  2

  The Rookery

  James squinted, struggling to make out more than the man-shaped figure in the darkness. His first thought was that Al had returned – but this person was taller, held themselves more rigidly. The figure shifted, and James’s eyes flew wide open.

  ‘Why are you hiding in a place like this?’ asked Edward.

  Shock immobilised James.

  His mind filled with memories of Edward tangled beneath the carriage, his ashen body laid out on Wickham’s operating table. It struck him again: they had really done it. Wickham’s theories had worked and Edward, who had slipped over the threshold to the Underworld, had been returned. Coin out from under his tongue, Charon and his ferry receding on a distant shore. It was a miracle.

  He might have betrayed his friend, but thank god he’d been able to save him.

  ‘Edward. You found me.’

  A miracle, and a complication.

  The shadows shifted and Edward stepped into the paltry light, enough for James to see his face, pallid and hollow at his eyes and cheeks. Across his forehead the deep gash that had been sewn closed, skin puckered and mottled. James had thought of the wound as a thumb pressed into clay but now it looked like bruised fruit, rot spreading slowly, as though life had only been reluctantly coaxed back into his body, and with every passing hour it seeped away, decay reclaiming him.

  Hairs raised on the back of James’ neck.

  ‘Why did you run?’

  It was his friend, yes, alive and standing before him, but like an image distorted in water, or a badly made mirror. Something a little warped, something uncanny, like a flame guttering in the wind, stuttering between life and death.

  ‘I – I’m sorry,’ stuttered James. ‘I shouldn’t have. I was – overwhelmed.’ Shock was fading, and now he was all too aware that Olympe was only a floor above them. He’d known this moment would come, but he’d hoped to put it off a while longer. He wasn’t ready to lose Edward’s friendship so soon after thinking he’d lost him for good. ‘I’m so glad you’re alive.’

  Edward looked at his hands. Turned them over. It might have been the light, but his fingertips looked grey, rims of black around his nail beds. ‘I’m told the blow was severe, but I feel no pain. I don’t feel anything.’ His once-eloquent friend worked through each word like a challenge. He had come back, but there were gaps, ruptures – of course there were – no one could go through that and be unchanged. ‘If this is all the life I could salvage, I owe it to Wickham.’ Edward looked at James, a dark light in his eyes. ‘Do you understand? I owe him everything now.’

  James began to speak, though he was unsure what he could possibly say – only to be interrupted by Olympe running down the stairs.

  ‘James! I have changed my mind; I don’t want a baked potato, I’d rather a pie, and some gingerbread – and I saw a woman selling cherries from a great basket on her head, get some of those and— Oh!’

  Reaching the landing she caught sight of Edward and stumbled, letting off a shimmer of sparks in shock.

  Edward’s eyes widened. ‘You found her.’ His voice was raspy and low. ‘You lied. I asked you outright and you lied.’

  James held a hand up in appeal or defence, he didn’t know which. ‘Edward—’

  ‘You mean to take our work for your own. Traitor.’

  Instinctively, James closed his other hand around Olympe’s wrist. The triumphant vision of presenting her and her powers to his father as his own discovery was rapidly vanishing.

  Could he bargain with Edward? No. What had been his words? He owed Wickham everything now. The choice he’d made was clear.

  It all happened in a jumbled second.

  James yanked Olympe towards the stairs and yelled, ‘Run.’ Edward lurched after them, catching Olympe’s waist, and the three of them crashed together. The space was too small – the steps suddenly underfoot – and then they were toppling down in a chaos of arms and knees and splintering bannisters.

  Olympe, in her panic, set off another burst of sparks, giving James a bad jolt as he landed with the wind knocked out of him. Edward staggered up just as Olympe sprang into a crouch, face a thunderstorm in full force, a crackling blue net of electricity strung over her hands.

  Edward held his ground, staring at Olympe’s hands in hungry fascination. ‘So it’s true. This is far beyond what Wickham achieved with me.’

  Olympe frowned, the net fracturing and reforming. ‘What do yo
u mean, achieved with you?’

  Edward didn’t answer, only reached closer till their hands met. Sparks cascaded over his arm. James waited for him to pull back in pain – but nothing happened.

  I feel nothing now.

  The swirl of movement across Olympe’s face increased. ‘Why doesn’t that hurt you?’

  Edward looked in fascination at where their hands joined. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Are you human?’

  His brows furrowed. ‘I had thought so.’

  James wrapped his hand around a curtain they had torn down, and in an awkward movement flung it over Edward. It was stupid and would only buy them a moment or two as he disentangled himself, but it could be enough – it had to be enough – to buy them time.

  James and Olympe pelted out into the noise and chaos of the Rookery.

  James was gathering enemies faster than he could deal with them.

  3

  6 Bedford Square

  Lord Harford strode through the front door, tailcoat flapping, a blast of rain and storm wind following him in. A muggy summer storm had finally broken with a crack of thunder so loud Hennie had dropped her dish of tea.

  Now, sheet rain lashed the windows and the household was stuck inside. A fretful mood had fallen over them since Edward’s accident. Phil discordantly plodded through the same prelude on the pianoforte and Hennie refused to do anything but stare out of windows and dab at her eyes with a handkerchief, while Lady Harford had thrown herself into wedding preparations.

  Lord Harford had left before breakfast on parliamentary business; now he had returned, handing his top hat and umbrella to a waiting servant. Behind him, a footman followed with his dispatch box.

  Camille had positioned herself in the morning room with a piece of embroidery on her lap and a view through to the front door. She caught Al’s eye and nodded imperceptibly. He stood up from where he had been sprawled on a sofa with the newspaper and stretched languorously.