“William has been hard at work on the second floor this morning,” Simon replied, looking away and drumming his fingers once again on his desk. “We have been overburdened there lately.”
“Oh.” I took another sip of tea, wishing that I had not brought William up. An inexplicable tension, an invisible wall, rose up between Simon and me. Then I felt myself blush, remembering how Simon had walked into the laboratory during my impassioned moment with William.
After a few more moments of silent awkwardness, Simon chuckled. “We have been seeing an old friend here lately.”
I looked sharply at him, perplexed.
“Inspector Abberline.”
“What? I knew he had a meeting with William … ” I stopped myself awkwardly, lowered my voice. “Is he still trying to find … ?”
It seemed almost foolish to call the Whitechapel murderer by his more well-known name, Jack the Ripper, when Simon and I both knew his true identity.
“No,” Simon replied. “I think everyone believes the Ripper to be either dead or gone—after all, there have been no more murders since the autumn.”
He set down his teacup. “This latest case is slightly more mundane. Apparently there has been a rash of grave robbings.”
I widened my eyes a little, remembering my dream about Highgate Cemetery. About Mariah. But that had nothing to do with grave robbing.
“We try to make sure that all the corpses we receive for study here are attained from reputable suppliers, but, as you know, it is nearly impossible to be absolutely certain. Most, even the stolen ones, are from paupers’ graves—with very little security or attentive family survivors. Two weeks ago, however, one of the bodies we received was the sixteen-year-old son of a Member of Parliament.”
“Uh-oh,” I heard myself murmur.
“Precisely.” Simon chuckled. “I would never have known, but one of our medical students recognized the boy. Apart from the horror of having to return the body, which we had already begun to dissect, to the still-grieving family … ”
I sucked in my breath.
“Yes, it was awful for the boy’s family and a disgrace for the hospital. Abberline has used the incident to interrogate our business practices here.”
“Well, he probably still thinks that the Ripper works here,” I said.
Simon merely smiled. “He might try to corner you.”
“I think I can manage him,” I said quickly, not wanting to remember my past interactions with Abberline, particularly that terrible evening at Scotland Yard when he had tried to blackmail me.
I poured another cup of tea. Swallowed. “Simon … ”
He leaned forward, concerned. “Have you seen him? Max?”
“No. I haven’t.” I paused. I had a sudden desperate urge to tell Simon about Roddy’s death, and how I felt sure it was Max who had saved me, but I could not. I could not discuss that day with anyone—at least not for a long time yet. I then decided it would be best to simply tell Simon what he should know now.
“I had another vision,” I said.
Simon leaned across the desk, attentive.
Quickly, I told him about the vision of the lamia brought on by the painting in the laboratory. While Simon had not yet seen the portrait of my mother as a lamia, I had told both him and William about it and he could understand my comparison.
“It’s quite bizarre,” I said. “The creature was not my mother—Mother had red hair, like mine. And although Gabriel painted the portrait, Christina mentioned once that my mother had given directions for how it was to be done. It’s unlike anything else that Gabriel ever created.” I bit my lip; it was always hard talking about this. “Mother told me nothing about her past with the Conclave. But I’m wondering if there is some sort of message to me, from her, in the painting.”
Simon remained silent. His eyes veiled.
I chuckled a bit. “Of course, this all seems like foolishness. Lamias only exist in stories. The creature in my vision cannot be real.”
Once again, I had all of Simon’s attention, and yet he seemed maddeningly unreadable. So I continued. “And then, last night, I had a vivid nightmare about Mariah. I was in Highgate Cemetery, and she was alive. And someone was behind me.”
I smiled even as I felt a tear prick my eye. “Perhaps, after all the psychic excitement we’ve gone through, I have finally gone batty, but … ”
My voice came out as a croak.
“Something is happening, Simon. I’m fearful. There’s a reason we haven’t seen Max yet. A reason that he hasn’t killed us by now.”
Simon’s light face seemed to shine a bit in the dim office. He started to speak, but at that moment I heard footsteps ascending the stairs, walking quickly past Simon’s office.
William. His office door at the end of the hall closed loudly.
Simon’s lips pressed together tightly; I felt my own face crumple a bit in distress and realized that I couldn’t talk about this anymore.
I looked down at my nearly empty teacup, feeling terribly awkward again. Why couldn’t I control my emotions any better?
“Excuse me.” I stood and left abruptly, descending the stairs and returning to my work in the nursery.
Later that day, I returned to the fourth floor to restock the pharmacy closet. As I put the bottles on the shelves in the darkness, I felt a firm grip on my wrist.
I turned around to meet William’s gaze, and I gasped sharply. He kept the viselike grip, leading me silently to his office. Against my will, I followed, promising myself that at all costs, I would be guarded.
William’s office felt warm and muggy, even though the spring day outside was chilly and sunless.
Pushing me back against the closed door, he pressed his forehead against my own. His skin felt scalding upon my skin. His curls tickled my cheeks.
“I am nearly physically ill,” he murmured.
I trembled, caught up in the spell of his warmth, of having him close to me. I recalled vomiting the previous night. Although I said nothing, I understood our shared malaise.
He put both of his hands on my cheeks.
I wanted to surrender. But I felt too bewildered, confused, angry, sad.
Scared.
I pulled away a little.
“Abbie,” William continued. “I do not understand why something I did before I met you matters so much.”
My bewilderment rose. Although I didn’t listen to her advice most of the time, in this matter, I could not ignore Grandmother’s words. I could not. They echoed in my mind, echoed too closely my own heart’s trepidation. I was inexperienced in love relationships. And William could be so … volatile. Good sense dictated that I should pull away. I removed his hands from my face and stepped away.
A tear slid down my cheek. “I’m scared, William.”
His eyes shined, perplexed. “I have never hurt you. I have never been untrue.”
“What if you tire of me?” I asked. “What if you become distracted? I have never felt this way about anyone. Anyone.”
“Abbie, I am not my father.” He saw my troubled expression. “Yes”—he ran his fingers nervously through his hair—“I followed him in that one regard. But please, Abbie, no one is perfect. Trust rather in the person I am now. I do not want to be Dante Gabriel Rossetti. I am more constant than that.”
He pulled me back to him and kissed me.
Blood rushed to my head, and I, incapacitated, kissed him back.
Somewhere in the distance, I heard Simon’s office door shut and his steely steps going toward the staircase.
Be guarded, Abbie.
“But there is no guarantee of your constancy,” I said firmly, finally pushing him away from me.
William sighed. “No, there is not.”
He pulled away and I saw a realization wash over his expression like a wave rushing over sand
.
We stared at each other, unable to proceed. A cord had been severed that could not be repaired.
Unbelievably, I saw his dark eyes fill with tears before he turned his head to walk to the window, to stare at the dirty, busy street far below. He squinted and shielded his face with his hands as if he had a headache.
“Goodbye, William,” I said.
“Goodbye.”
He did not even turn around.
Seven
After the bath, she went outside in her monstrous form to rest upon one of her favorite tall craggy peaks on the island. She couldn’t stop thinking of that last kill. Immediately after she’d killed the French boy, so many years ago, her keeper had disposed of the body and returned to her in the menagerie. She was feeding one of the dodo birds; Robert Buck had been trying to breed the two birds with no success for some time. All the animals in the large underground room—indeed, it was larger than the entire house itself—were dear pets to her. They were the only living beings she saw most of her days. She made toys for the monkeys and allowed the numerous parrots and other birds to fly free from their cages on many days. She even allowed her particular favorite, the Bengal tiger Petey, to wander in her own quarters. The tiger had been a man-eater in India when the Conclave had captured him thirty years before. They had made him—like the other birds and animals of the menagerie, and like she herself—immortal with the elixir. Still, in spite of the tiger’s violent past, with her he was tame as a kitten.
Though she tried to tend to the animals only when in her human form, the few times she had transformed inside the menagerie the animals never cowered from her. They knew that she would never harm them.
This was probably the reason her keeper was always safe around the tiger, and around her. She smiled to herself. Even though her keeper was human in form, his heart seemed half-beast itself.
“Effie,” Max had said when he’d entered the menagerie after burying the boy. Her keeper was the only person who ever made a nickname from her full name, Seraphina. “My dear, dear Effie.” He hauled several bags of birdseed down the steps from outside and into the menagerie. That time, as now, he had been gone for too many months, but when he returned he brought her an abundance of new supplies, more food for herself and the animals. “You had such a lovely record—you had become almost tame since your early days here.”
“It was reckless of me.” Seraphina bit her lip. “I didn’t want to kill this one. But I was … ” She struggled for the right words. “Overcome.”
“That happens to me quite often,” Max had said as he fed Petey.
She swept the floor. With pride she thought of how Max had told her that most menageries reeked of animal wastes and smells. Hers had no odors other than the incense
she burned twice a day. Her menagerie was a place of beauty, the floors the same marble as the rest of the house. She took care to hang her unfinished portraits on these walls also. Animals needed beauty in their environment as much as humans. This she believed as she would a religious creed.
“I have much to tell you of our affairs in the world,” Max had said later, as they took their dinner in the house. They ate on the floor in front of the fire in the library, reclined on pillows.
Seraphina took a sip of wine. “Affairs.” She smiled. “I have no interest in your affairs.”
“Effie, you know I am always yours.” She could still remember how his eyes had glinted green, that evening in the firelight.
She did know. She always knew this. Whatever he did in the rest of the world, he always returned to her. Her lover. Her companion. He knew her—he had seen her transformation many times and it made no difference to him. Still, she was well aware that there was only so much he could offer her. Max was a libertine, free from the laws of love and constancy. He was loyal to no one—except to the Conclave. And she secretly believed that he did their bidding only because of the power it bestowed on him, the immortality they gave him every year in that ceremony.
As she had sat there with him on the floor, their empty dinner dishes now set aside, she’d thought of how Max made certain that she had enough activity to entertain herself. He brought her painting supplies, and books on nearly every subject to fill her library. He worked with her extensively to try to control her transformations. But mastering the monstrous part of herself was still impossible. Until she could keep the transformation from happening, or until Robert found a cure, she would always be confined to this island and the surrounding waters. And yet she still had no knowledge of the world, about how it had changed since she had been banished to this place near the turn of the century … 1810. That year seemed engraved upon her mind.
As if to compensate for her isolation, Max had kept her updated on the Conclave’s activities and accomplishments. He showed her sketches of the hospital that Julian Bartlett planned to establish in East End London. He once showed her pictures of their large and sprawling house on Montgomery Street, as well as their other homes in the Alps, in Scotland, and in the wilderness of the American West. Then, after the astronomer John Herschel described his discovery of photography to the Royal Society in London, the Conclave directed Max to take up the art, to document their life and work: their houses, Robert Buck’s specimens, places around the world that they visited. Max would often practice his photography at the island, taking pictures of the sea, the rocky paths. He often photographed her body, both in its nude human form and its monstrous one. He arranged all the photographs neatly in books, and Seraphina looked through them obsessively in his absences. For her, the photographs of the Conclave’s activities were nothing less than rows and rows of glimpses into the outside world.
On the evening of that day that she killed the boy, long after dinner while Max was out securing his boat from the impending storm, Seraphina stayed in the library and flipped through his latest photographs: the beaches, jungles, one of Julian Bartlett with midwives in Africa. Then she stopped at a photograph of a red-headed woman.
The photograph was out of place—this was not a picture documenting the Conclave’s travels. Rather, it was of a woman with long hair, loose down her back, painting in a garden. The woman appeared to have no idea that she was being photographed; she was biting her lip in intense concentration, and the image was fuzzied from her movement.
Seraphina knew that Max had other lovers, but he was thoughtless, ruthless, and had never cared at all for them. Why had this picture been taken with such apparent care, and been made part of the Conclave’s documented history?
At that moment, Max had entered the library. His black curls were wet, tousled from the wind and rain, and he brought with him the smell of salt, of wood.
“Who is she?” she had asked sharply, pointing to the photograph.
Max lit a cigar and considered Seraphina through a cloud of smoke.
“Caroline Westfield.”
“Is she one of your … conquests?”
Max smiled brilliantly. “Not yet.” He sat on the sofa near Seraphina and gazed distractedly at the ceiling. “She means more than that to us. To Julian.”
Seraphina cocked her head. Perplexed.
“Does she know?” She held her breath. “About the Conclave … ”
“We are planning to tell her.”
Seraphina’s heart stopped. “You are offering her the elixir, then?”
“Yes,” Max said, peering carefully at Seraphina. He looked at her steadily: “We need another physician this time, a female one. And she has many talents … ” His voice dwindled a bit.
Seraphina laughed, bitterly.
“After four hundred years, a woman in your ranks.”
“You are in our ranks,” Max said.
“As a pet.”
“You are invaluable,” he said, with a strange mixture of affection and irritation.
“Take me with you,” she begged suddenly. She felt desperate this tim
e, as she had been so many times in the past.
His green eyes flashed at her. They could go from blue to the exact color of the seagreen ocean that she swam in, and then back to blue. Wearily he answered her plea: “We have talked of this already. You know that is impossible. You could expose us all. You nearly did at one point, remember.”
She always tried not to remember that time. “But I am better at controlling it,” she said weakly.
“Seriously, love?” Max smiled widely in the candlelight. A mere few hours earlier he had been cleaning up the blood and gore from the French boy.
She chuckled in spite of herself.
“Robert is working on a cure, Effie.”
He has been for over half a century, she thought bitterly. With every passing decade, she despaired that she would always be like this. And though she never said anything to Max, she questioned how hard, truly, Robert Buck was working on a cure. After all, the Conclave needed her; they needed her to care for their many animals, to guard their wealth.
She feared she would always be as she was now.
Wearily, she had changed the subject, but her mind kept returning to that redheaded woman—Caroline.
Max reclined a bit, leaning back upon her. He stared up at the ceiling as he smoked, deep in concentration. Seraphina felt her jealously flare up. A woman in the Conclave … but a woman who could travel and study with them, who would see more of the world than she had. Seraphina always felt like a child, pushing against the glass walls of a fabulous world that she could not venture into.
Petey roared in his cage, only seconds before lightning cracked in the sky outside. The tiger always roared before the fiercest storms, and that night there was a terrible one.
She leaned over, curling into Max. She wondered where his thoughts were. She knew that he had mental powers and physical powers that others did not—psychic abilities, the ability to climb down walls, defy gravity. The elixir had had this odd effect upon him, and he was almost as mythical as she was. She wished now that she had his mental powers, that she could see his visions, that his thoughts would slip out toward her mind like water. He had shared so much with her. Now he seemed distracted, and she was interested in his sealed-away thoughts. She wondered if he thought of Caroline; she wanted him to be hers alone. Only hers.
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