“You enjoy all this, don’t you?” I pulled myself up, straw raining from my dress. “Having these aberrations wait on you hand and foot.” I knew I was being cruel. He didn’t deserve it, and yet I wanted him to feel the same angry bite of broken glass that I did.
He dug the pitchfork into a pile of straw. “Seems to me I’m the one mucking out the stall.”
I glowered. “You’re right. Mucking out the stalls. Proper work for a servant. That’s what you are, isn’t it? Still doing whatever he commands.” I leaned against the wooden stall gate, entwining my fingers in the steel bars. “Even if it is the devil’s work.”
“That isn’t fair.” He dumped the straw and went back for another load, his shoulders tense. “I hadn’t a choice.”
“You could have stayed with Mother and me.”
“You don’t understand.” The pitchfork scraped the stone floor so hard it squealed. “I was a boy. I’d already taken part in his work. I was already guilty of his same crimes before I even knew what we were doing.” He dumped the load and shoved the pitchfork against the wall. “I didn’t have a choice.”
For a moment, he rested his hand on the pitchfork, breath ragged. Strands of his hair escaped the ponytail and fell over his eyes, making him look wild, untamed. He’d changed so much from that quiet little boy. He’d had to, growing up with monsters as playmates.
He turned to go.
“Wait!”
He paused, a hand on the barn’s half door. I put my hand next to his, keeping the door closed. I remembered the feel of his body. The heat of his skin. Montgomery wasn’t my enemy. He wasn’t to blame.
Father was cruel—I didn’t want to be, too.
“I’m sorry. They aren’t your crimes,” I said. His jaw flexed. He started to push the half door open, but I jerked it closed again. “They aren’t. You were a child. He manipulated you, like he manipulated all of us.” I stepped closer. “We have a choice now. We can stop him.”
Montgomery’s jaw tightened. His voice was a gruff whisper. “Even if we could, what then?”
“We’ll leave. You and I and Edward.” My voice broke, thinking of the scene earlier over the lavender bowl. “And Alice.”
But he shook his head. “I can’t leave them. Without treatment they’ll regress.”
“Maybe they should. They’re animals. What he’s done is unnatural.”
“What I’ve done, you mean. I’m just as guilty.” His words echoed in the barn and set my heart pounding. “They’re not animals anymore. You haven’t seen what they can become. You haven’t met Ajax.”
“Ajax?”
“He was one of them. The doctor did something to his brain, something we haven’t been able to replicate. He became smart. And civil. He was like a brother to me. He’s different—he was different.”
“What happened?”
“Ajax stopped his own treatment. The others crave humanity. But Ajax knew what he was. He wanted to regress.”
“And has he?”
“Not yet. He lives alone. Won’t be a part of their village. Won’t live here. He waits until all traces of his humanity are gone.” He paused. “The doctor doesn’t know. He ordered me to shoot him, but I couldn’t.”
I stared at Montgomery, realizing that he must never have had a true friend since coming to the island. Father was no companion. And Balthazar and the others, well, their company was more like dogs’. Then I remembered the cabin in the woods, the yellow hair on the mattress, and the single flower in the vase on the dusty mantel.
“Jaguar,” I muttered. “He calls himself Jaguar now.”
Montgomery’s shoulders tensed. “How do you know that?”
“I met him in the woods.”
“You what?” There was fear in his eyes.
“He told me you’d sent him to find me. Didn’t you?” A trickle of worry crept at the base of my neck.
“I haven’t spoken to him since returning from London.”
“But he knew about Edward. And he knew about me.”
Montgomery leaned his weight against the door. He put a hand to his brow in thought. “He must be eavesdropping on the compound. It’s the only way.” He grabbed my shoulder. “And he didn’t hurt you? Do you swear? He’s not some docile farm animal, Juliet. He’s dangerous.”
I shook my head, my heart pounding harder. I remembered the feel of Jaguar’s rough tongue on my skin. Fearful sweat began to drip down my face. Had I been in the company of the murderer? I hadn’t trusted him, which was why I’d slipped away. It might have saved my life.
“He didn’t hurt me,” I stuttered. “But he killed a rabbit.”
Montgomery’s hand gripped mine protectively. He squeezed so hard it hurt. “Killed a rabbit? Are you sure?”
“I saw him arguing with another man about it.” I swallowed, wanting to find some logical explanation. “They can’t be perfect always, can they? They must break commandments sometimes.”
“Not that one. Not to kill. We didn’t think they knew how to kill.” An idea seemed to strike him. The blood drained from his face. I remembered the stinking corpse in the back of the wagon. All the other accidents. He pulled a pistol off the gun rack in the back of the barn. Checking the chamber, he started for the half door, but I held it closed.
“What’s going on?” I demanded.
“You were right. That woman in the wagon wasn’t an accident. There’ve been more bodies. Many. All with three slashes across the chest. We thought it must be an escaped animal. A bobcat got loose once.… It didn’t occur to us that one of them might be responsible.” He grabbed my shoulders. The butt of the pistol lay between his hand and my clothes, a harsh reminder of what was out there. “Whatever you do, don’t go back into the jungle.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
THE NEXT MORNING, IN the salon, I peered between the long shutter slats at the courtyard outside. Father and Montgomery argued furiously, tramping up dirt, sweat staining their shirts. They’d been arguing like this for hours. It must have been serious for Montgomery to be so defensive. The pistol butt gleamed in his waistband. I made out only two words: Rabbit. Ajax.
I didn’t need to hear more.
Edward sat in a chair reading, his attention on the musty pages rather than the argument in the courtyard. I sank into the green sofa opposite him.
“There’s a murderous beast on the island. How can you just sit and read?”
He flipped a page. Then another. “I can’t. It’s impossible to concentrate.”
“You could have fooled me.” I raised an eyebrow, but my sarcasm was lost on him. I leaned forward to read the title. The Tempest. “I’ve read that one. Shall I tell you the ending and save you the bother?”
He closed the book on his finger to mark the place he’d stopped. “I’m not reading it for pleasure.” He cocked his head toward the courtyard. “I’m trying to find something that might help us escape. The book’s about castaways on an island. They get off eventually.”
I rolled my eyes. “With the aid of magic.”
He dipped his head, going back to the book. “We’ll have to be a little more creative.”
A door slammed outside and I peered through the shutters. Father and Montgomery were gone. Only the chickens pecked in the courtyard. The familiar trickle of worry returned.
“The doctor came in here earlier furious over something,” Edward said, his voice lower.
“It’s about that dead rabbit I found. They think one of the islanders killed it. The one who calls himself Jaguar. And so that must make him the murderer.”
“But you think he didn’t kill the rabbit?”
I frowned. “No, I’m sure he did. I saw him waving the bloody head around. It’s just … never mind.” A dull pain throbbed at the base of my skull. I rubbed the stiff muscles there. My hands still felt the weight of the ax I’d brought down over the rabbit’s neck in the operating theater. I couldn’t exactly condemn Jaguar for separating a rabbit from its head when I’d done the same.
“Have you at least found anything useful?” I said, nodding at the book.
Edward set the book on a pile of warped leather volumes. “Not unless you have a magic wand. We need a vessel. That’s easy enough—the launch at the dock. We can steal enough food from the garden and the kitchen. There are a few waterskins—not ideal, but enough to survive, I think. The only problem is—”
His words died as Alice entered the room. Her eyes grew wide. She knew she was interrupting something. She quickly flitted around, picking up a dirty towel on a peg by the door, the napkins from breakfast, the rag Puck had used to clean up the spilled tea last night. Her long blond hair floated behind her like that of some ephemeral being. She slipped from the room as silently as she had entered, leaving behind the faint scent of lavender.
“The only problem,” Edward whispered, once she was gone, “is navigation.”
“Montgomery knows the way,” I said. “You said he told you there’s a shipping lane not far.”
A shadow passed over Edward’s face and I knew, in that look, that he didn’t want to take Montgomery with us. “You were awfully quick to forgive him after what you saw in the laboratory,” he said.
“He didn’t have a choice,” I said defensively. “He was just a boy when he came here. You’d have done the same thing in his place.”
“No. I wouldn’t have. I’d never choose to hurt anyone.” His voice didn’t hold a trace of doubt. He tilted his head, his face suddenly tender. Goose bumps rippled over my arms at the memory of the night behind the waterfall. “We’ll leave this island. You and I. Go wherever you want. You’ll forget about him.…” He swallowed, unable to finish.
I sat straighter. The whalebone corset dug into my ribs, stifling my breath. What could I say? The night behind the waterfall with Edward had been disconcertingly intense, yet there’d been a distance between us since coming back. Nothing I could put my finger on, exactly. More like our connection existed out there, in the wild. It dulled among the books and fine china and lace curtains.
I pulled a worn throw pillow into my lap. I couldn’t tell him what he wanted to hear. Montgomery meant too much to me, despite everything. “We’re taking Montgomery and everyone else who has a human heart beating in their chest,” I said, and left it at that.
He didn’t press. “And your father?”
“He can stay here and rot with the rest of the animals.”
EDWARD AND I WHISPERED about escape whenever we could steal a moment alone. As the days passed, those times became scarcer. More islanders went missing. Edward was needed with the search party while I was left alone to think about the murders.
About Jaguar.
One afternoon after the men returned and we’d finished eating a sullen midday meal, I found Mother’s crystal earring among the trinkets in the salon and held it to the light of the window, where it sent a spray of dancing rainbows over the walls. That was my mother—color and light and delicate as glass. She would have been repulsed by Father’s creations. Not drawn to them.
Balthazar passed on the portico outside, stealing my attention. Puck followed him, and then the rest of the servants, one by one, in their blue canvas shirts and pants. I pressed my face to the window. They gathered under a thatched sunscreen outside the bunkhouse. I put the earring back and pushed open the salon doors.
The islanders formed a loose line, chattering and shuffling their twisted feet. They looked at me curiously as I squeezed to the front between two hoglike men whose bristly hair made me cringe.
Montgomery stood on the other side of a worktable that held his medical bag and a half dozen cloudy glass bottles. He’d smoothed back his hair and put on a fresh shirt. He might have looked like a gentleman if it hadn’t been for the open button at his chest and the casual way he stood, as though he’d spent more of his life climbing trees and racing wild horses than walking.
“Come forward,” he said to one of the hog-men. The creature shuffled to the table, holding out his fat arm like a piece of meat. Montgomery filled a syringe with the cloudy liquid and tapped the man’s vein before inserting the needle. The man must have been twice my size, but he cringed like a little girl.
“You’re all done,” Montgomery said, drawing out the needle. “Next.”
I wandered to the other side of the table, watching over Montgomery’s shoulder. Another islander slipped to the front of the line. The python-woman from the village. She grinned at me, flashing the tips of thin fangs. Montgomery gave her an injection and checked her name off a roster. She waved as she left. Four fingers.
I picked up one of the vials, studying the cloudy liquid. “What are you giving them?” I asked.
“Something to restore the tissue’s balance.” He waved a gangly-limbed man forward. “Come,” he ordered. The man shuffled to the table and extended his arm, covering his eyes while Montgomery found a vein.
The next, a man with a folded nose like a goat, approached with his sleeve already carefully rolled up.
I watched Montgomery administer the treatments. The islanders all walked away proudly rubbing their arms, like a child after his first trip to the physician. My hand drifted to the skin on the inside of my own elbow. I drew my thumb in a circle around the red mark from this morning’s injection, studying the vial in my other hand. The slight tint, the cloudiness of the compound—it looked remarkably similar to the treatment Father had designed for me. I sneaked a glance at the sheep-woman next to me, at her too-human eyes and the casual way she scratched an insect bite on her neck. I wondered how similar their treatment’s chemical makeup was to my own injections.
Montgomery watched me from the corner of his eye while he gave the next injection.
“What’s in it?” I asked.
“Mostly rabbit blood with hormones added.”
“How often do they need it?”
“Three times a week for the villagers. Once a day for Balthazar and the more advanced ones. Ajax used to need it twice daily.” He finished with Cymbeline, who squeezed his eyes shut during the entire injection.
“There now. That’s very good,” Montgomery said.
Cymbeline gave him a smile and took off like a wildcat. Montgomery cleaned the needle and repacked his medical bag, then reached for the vial in my hand, but I held it back.
He shook his head. “I know what you’re thinking. And it’s nonsense.”
“What am I thinking?” I asked, clutching the vial. It was a pale yellow color, like the pancreatic extracts I took, but thicker. He snatched it out of my hand.
“You’re wondering if your treatment is similar.”
“Is it?”
My bluntness caught him off guard. He clicked his bag shut. “No. It’s nothing at all the same.”
“No one’s ever heard of my treatment. The chemists look at me like I’m mad.”
“Your father designed it specifically for you. He tried to produce it for the public, but the medical board shut him down.” He picked up the bag and leaned closer. A strand of hair worked its way loose and fell into his eyes. Nothing about him could be tamed for long.
“Your mind is racing,” he said softly, his voice caressing my worries. “You’re looking for problems where there are none. I’ve known you from the time you could barely walk. I’d know if there was something … unnatural.” His gaze shifted to something behind me in the courtyard. His jaw tensed.
Father strode toward us from the main building. I knew that anger on his face. But it was Montgomery he was after, not me. Still furious that Montgomery had lied about Ajax being alive.
My hand twisted into a fist. I leaned in to Montgomery and whispered before Father could hear. “Come to my room tonight. I need you to see something.” I slipped around the worktable just as my father stormed up with all the cold rage of a coiled snake.
NIGHT HAD SETTLED WHEN Montgomery finally came to my room. The air hung with the promise of rain. He’d spent all afternoon beyond the compound walls, digging graves for the deceased. Shadows str
etched over his face, handsome still after such grim work.
He stopped in the doorway. His blue eyes glowed in the soft light, lashing my heart like a string. But warning was written in them, too.
“Why am I here, Juliet?” he asked. We both knew there would be trouble if he was caught alone in my room, especially while Father was in a rage.
“Just come in for a moment,” I said. My nervous hands drifted to my blouse’s mother-of-pearl buttons.
His lips were sunburned. He glanced around to make sure no one watched from the courtyard. But there were always eyes, somewhere.
He shook his head, reluctant to cross Father. I grabbed a fistful of his shirt, hard buttons and crisp linen, and pulled him gently inside. His eyes still held warning, but there was something else there now. Desire. Seeing it stilled the breath in my lungs. I closed the door behind him.
The oil lamp cast a warm glow over the whitewashed walls. In the semidarkness, his presence blazed even more.
“You’ve been digging graves,” I said.
A spot of sandy dirt clung to his right ear, missed in his bath. “Eight dead so far. That we know of.”
“Did Jaguar really kill them?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. A year ago I’d have said you were crazy. But things are different now.” He stepped closer. His hair was still damp from the bath. Lye soap mixed with the smell of coming rain. “Don’t worry. You’re safe here.”
He thought I wanted reassurance that whatever killed them wouldn’t kill me. But no one could make that promise. “That’s not why I asked you here. I need you to look at something.”
He brushed his hair behind one ear, just missing the patch of sand. An urge overcame me to wipe it off with my thumb. But my hand would have shaken, knowing what I was about to ask him to do. I tangled my hands in the folds of my skirt instead.
“What is it?” he asked.
I took his hand and led him into the corner, where we couldn’t be seen from the window. His tired feet dragged, but his eyes were alert.
“I want to know why my medication is so similar to theirs.”
The Madman's Daughter (Madman's Daughter - Trilogy) Page 19