Just like mine.
“I’m not mad,” she continued. “I’ve no desire to play God. The secrets I’ve sworn to keep have the power to save the world. There couldn’t be any reason more noble.”
I closed my eyes. Noble? Could my attraction to these darker sides of science actually have some noble ramifications? My heart thumped harder than it ever had. By my side, Montgomery took a step closer.
Elizabeth grabbed the book off her desk and handed it to me. “Take this. It’s the biography of the first Lord Ballentyne, who built this place. Before you make a decision, read this so you at least know what you would be walking away from.” She gave me a hard look. “Read it tonight.”
I took it from her, a bit shaken. Montgomery and I returned to our adjoining rooms, where I told him I needed a few hours alone to think. As soon as I closed the door to my bedroom, I opened the book. A piece of paper with Elizabeth’s hurried writing on it fluttered to the ground. She must have scrawled it while Montgomery and I had been distracted by Lucy eavesdropping.
Montgomery is a good man, but he’ll never understand why women like us do what we must do, her message said. If you want to know the real truth, I will teach you everything.
A shiver ran through me. I balled the paper and tossed it into the fire so no one would ever find it. I glanced at the door to Montgomery’s room, hating to keep secrets from him, but knowing that as important as promises were, sometimes my curiosity was just too strong.
ELEVEN
A FEW MINUTES LATER, as Elizabeth’s note burned to ash, pounding sounded at my door. When I twisted the knob and peeked out, Lucy burst through the doorway.
“Can you believe it?” Her cheeks burned with excitement. “Reanimation, Juliet. It’s incredible!”
I sank onto the bed, wishing I could have just a few moments alone with my thoughts.
“I know,” I whispered.
“For a hundred years they’ve had this power and only used it once, on a silly little boy. Think of all the people they could have brought back: Beethoven, Darwin, Charles Dickens—”
“It’s a dangerous science,” I cut in, my voice harsher than it should be. “The von Steins are right to keep it secret.”
The excitement fell from her face, just for a second, and then flared to life again. “But don’t you see what this means? It solves the paradoxical situation that Elizabeth was telling us about, that in order to cure Edward we would first have to kill him.” A madness shone in her eyes as her voice dropped. “It’s possible now. Death doesn’t have to be the end anymore.”
I stepped back. “What exactly are you suggesting?”
She came close enough that I could smell feverish sweat on her. “You know what I’m suggesting, Juliet. We make certain Edward dies, then perform the operation to cut out the diseased part of his brain and bring him back to life. He’ll be entirely cured.”
I took another step away from her until the cold glass of my bedroom window bit at my back and I could go no farther. I pressed a hand to my spinning head. Lucy usually talked about lace patterns and French powder, not experimentation on the dead. This wild-eyed girl in my room felt like a stranger.
I took a deep breath. “It’s impossible.”
“Is it?” she hissed. “Elizabeth has her oath, but we could find a way to convince her to help. We’d just have to drain the diseased portion of Edward’s brain of the infection, cutting it out if we have to, making sure the Beast is gone for good, and then bring Edward back to life. We’ve given him a chance to fight it on his own and he’s losing. He needs our help.”
“We would have to kill him, Lucy,” I shot back. “Are you prepared to do that?”
Her cheeks burned, but her eyes were even more aflame. She grabbed my arm hard enough that her fingernails dug into my skin.
“Not me,” she said. “You’d do it.”
I ripped my arm away from her, breathing heavily, and paced in front of the window. “I’m not going to kill Edward! Murder isn’t some lark. It isn’t a decision made lightly.”
Her eyes burned feverishly bright. “You killed Inspector Newcastle lightly enough. You killed your father easily enough.”
I gasped at her accusation. This wasn’t a stranger. It was Lucy, my best friend, who had a good heart but wasn’t seeing reason right now.
“Go to bed,” I said. “In the morning you’ll see how insane this plan is of yours, and you’ll thank me for putting an end to it right here.”
I opened the door, but she didn’t make a move toward it. The light in her eyes burned colder now.
“I never thought I’d see the day when Juliet Moreau was too weak willed to do whatever it took to save a friend’s life,” she said. “Even if it meant ending it first.”
She slammed the door behind her.
I forced myself not to go after her. It was better this way. She was mad with grief and didn’t realize how insane it sounded to kill Edward so that we could cure him and bring him back.
Could we even do it? Could I?
I CRAWLED INTO BED, exhausted. It was dark outside, those witching hours between midnight and dawn when anything seemed possible and the idea of bringing a dead friend back to life was no more strange than rigging a remote manor with electric lights. If one was possible, why not the other?
Montgomery would tell me that I should stay far away from anything resembling Father’s dark science. He would remind me that I had another path open for me: my mother’s.
I closed my eyes, trying hard to picture her face, and a memory came from when I was seven years old and my parents took me to a carnival at Vauxhall Gardens. There were performing horses. Chinese jugglers. Ventriloquists. Mother had fanned herself with playbills and teased Father that he was going to run away with the bearded lady. Father swore that he’d never love a woman with more facial hair than himself, and she had laughed.
“Come with me to the music hall, Juliet,” Mother had said. “They’re playing Vivaldi on dueling pianos.”
Father scoffed. “Vivaldi, that repetitive hack? I’m off to see the monstrosities, myself. The Dog-faced Boy. Hairy Mary from Borneo.” He paused, as if for the first time noticing how I hung on his every word. “Would you like to come?”
My heart had soared. It was the first time he’d invited me to do something, just him and me.
But for the life of me, I couldn’t remember which one I had chosen: my mother and her piano music, or my father and his freakish science. In my head there was only a blank. Why couldn’t I recall?
I buried my head in my pillow. Now the past was hidden from me, just like my future. And the future seemed so terribly important in light of Lucy’s plan. Which was worse—letting Edward succumb to the Beast, or going against God—and Montgomery—to tear his body apart and stitch it back together again?
I tossed and turned in bed for hours, trying to foresee the future, before I remembered that I knew someone who specialized in precisely that.
I THREW OFF THE covers, the smell of caramel apples from my childhood memory lingering in the back of my head. It was still dark outside, with only a faint glow on the horizon to tell me that dawn was coming. I dressed quickly and hurried through the sleeping house. I ran through the fields. The carnival troupe had camped out in the fields since the Twelfth Night bonfire the night before last, and I half feared they would be gone, but their tents loomed beneath the dying stars. As I approached, darkness hid the stains and tears in the tents’ fabric, and it looked like a fairy village, magical and forgotten by time.
A voice came from behind me.
“It isn’t good to ramble at night. It betrays a wandering spirit.”
I turned to find Jack Serra silhouetted in the moonlight, skin so dark I couldn’t read the expression on his face. I stood straighter. “That’s ironic, coming from a member of a wandering troupe.”
“There’s method to our wandering,” he said. “I wonder if there is to yours, Miss Moreau.”
I wrapped my arms t
ightly across my chest, against both the cold and his probing question. He came closer and lifted the flap of the tent. Inside, a lantern glowed softly, showing a tidy bed and a neatly stacked pile of clothes. I hesitated to enter a strange man’s tent, but he seemed to read my mind and only laughed. “You’ve nothing to fear from me, pretty girl. You can trust me. Isn’t that why you came tonight?”
I gave him a hard look. “Can you read minds now, too, fortune-teller?”
“I can read your face. That’s enough. Now, come in.”
I followed him inside, where he motioned to a stool. The tent was warmer than I’d expected, but I didn’t unclench my arms from across my chest.
“You never finished telling me what my fortune means.” I paused to take out the water charm I still wore around my neck. “About a child being like a river headed for the ocean. Finish it, please. I’ll pay you however much you want.”
I held out my palm flat, insistently, but he didn’t take it.
“I didn’t think you were the superstitious type,” he said.
“It seems I have a much more open mind these days. And you know so much about me that I’d like to hear what you have to say.” In the lantern light, it was plain to see that my hand was shaking. What must he think of me, coming out here alone in the early morning, demanding a fortune? If he judged me, however, his face showed nothing. He just took my hand in his warm one.
“You want me to tell you something to reassure you,” he said, his dark brown eyes mirroring my own. “You have a decision to make, and you want me to make it for you, but that isn’t how this works.”
My lips had gone dry in the cold air. “Please. I need help.”
“Fate is a tricky concept. Where I am from, people do not linger over the future. They live in the moment. If they are hungry, they eat. If they are tired, they sleep. The only things that dictate their lives are the earth and the seasons and their own instincts.”
“And yet you read fortunes for a living.”
His mouth curled in a half smile. “I left my people for a reason.” He pressed my hand reassuringly before releasing it. “The river can be good, pretty girl. It can bring water to the thirsty and carry travelers to better lands. It can be cruel, too. An angry river can tear down whatever gets in its way.”
“Then you’re saying I have a choice?” There was hope in my voice. “I can choose whether to be helpful or to be destructive?” It was like Montgomery kept insisting, that it was up to me to choose to be either like my mother or my father.
But he looked at me with pity, as if all my hopefulness was but silly dreams. “The river always runs downhill, pretty girl. Always.”
His words turned my insides cold.
“So I can’t change who I am?” On impulse I reached out and grabbed his hand, squeezing it tight. “Just tell me, please! No more riddles. Am I destined to be like my father? I need to know. I have a choice to make—a friend is ill and I have the power to save him, but only if I follow my father’s footsteps. I swore I wouldn’t. What do I do?”
Sounds came from beyond the tent. The rustle of fabric, a man’s yawn, pots and pans banging together. The other members of the troupe were waking.
“You should go,” he said.
“Please!” My fingernails dug into his palm. “I don’t know how you know so much about me, and I don’t care. I’ll believe that magic is real, if you want. Just help me.”
He paused, staring down at my hand clutching his. I would have given anything to see what was going through his mind in that moment.
“To make the right decision you must understand both paths before you,” he said quietly. “You must know your demons before you know whether to follow them.”
I sat back on the stool, considering his words. Know my demons. In the flickering light of his lantern, it made more sense than anything else. Before I could begin to consider Lucy’s plan, I needed to know if it was even possible to cure Edward through death and bring him back to life. Only Elizabeth could help me to know those particular demons, and she had already made me the offer.
“Think about my words very carefully,” he said.
I nodded, as the sound of more pots and pans came from outside. “Thank you,” I said, and hid the charm back under my dress.
It wasn’t until I was back in the field, running toward the manor as dawn broke, that I realized he hadn’t looked at the lines in my palm even once.
TWELVE
THE FOLLOWING NIGHT, AFTER the household had gone to bed, I stood at the base of the southern tower stairs that led to Elizabeth’s laboratory. Faint beams of light came through the cracks in the door, drawing me toward it like a moth to a flame.
A hand sank onto my shoulder and I jumped. Elizabeth leaned over my shoulder, smelling of roses. “I see you got my note. Does that mean you’ve decided to learn my secrets?”
I gave a nod I hoped looked confident.
She smiled. “Good. Come with me.”
She led me up the steps, but to my surprise we stopped at a door one floor below the laboratory. She opened it to reveal a round chamber with simple wooden furniture, lit by a fading lantern. A girl woke and rubbed the sleep from her eyes.
“Is his sleep troubled again tonight, Lily?” Elizabeth asked.
“Not tonight, mistress.”
“Good. You can return to your bedroom. I’ll watch him the rest of the night.”
Lily gathered up her half-finished needlepoint and left the room quietly. Elizabeth held a finger to her lips and motioned me to follow her. The hearth was cold and the room seemed little more than a cell, until I tripped over a small object and looked down at a wooden duck on a string.
Elizabeth pulled back a heavy curtain to reveal a small bed where Hensley slept soundly. She knelt by the bed, petting his head.
“Sit,” she whispered to me, and motioned to the floor next to her.
I knelt cautiously as Elizabeth straightened Hensley’s collar. “He only has nightmares after an operation. Normally he can sleep through anything. I suppose that’s a benefit of knowing you cannot die.”
I bit my lip, both unnerved and drawn to the sleeping boy. Part of me knew I shouldn’t even be here, listening to her explanations. But another part of me was fiercely curious.
I eased slightly closer. “He can’t die at all?”
“Very few things could kill him. Fire, for one. Everything else I can stitch back together and he’s good as new.”
“How does his body work?”
“Just as yours and mine does, only stronger. Even at his small size, he has the strength of three men.” She unbuttoned his tiny shirt carefully so as not to wake him. At least three dozen scars ran across his chest, a puzzle of flesh and black stitching, a record of more than thirty years of wounds that had been healed by Elizabeth and the professor.
My stomach tightened even as my curiosity flared.
“He doesn’t feel pain,” Elizabeth whispered, staring at the scars with a fascination that mirrored my own. “If he’s injured, he knows I can always fix him again. It makes him much bolder than a normal child.”
She led me to a small locked doorway that she opened with a key around her neck. It was a storage room crowded with old trunks and toys and, to my surprise, an entire wall of cages with dozens of white rats.
“So many?” I asked. “I thought he only had one rat.”
“Yes. Well, he thinks there’s only one, too.” She dropped a hand into her apron pocket. “He’s very gentle with them—most of the time. Sometimes he doesn’t understand his own strength and kills one by accident.” She withdrew her hand from her apron pocket, her fingers wrapped around the body of the rat Hensley had been playing with the night I’d nearly drowned in the bog. My throat tightened at the memory.
“The night you returned to Ballentyne,” I whispered. “He suffocated it while we were all in the library, didn’t he? I told myself I must have imagined it.”
Elizabeth nodded. “He didn’t mean to. I alw
ays take them from him before he realizes what he’s done. I throw them out on the moors. It keeps the foxes from going after our chickens.” She gazed down at the dead rat. “With all the commotion, I haven’t yet had the chance. I’ve kept this one in my laboratory.”
“So he doesn’t know he’s killing them?”
“No.” She sighed, rubbing the sides of her head. “It’s better to keep him in the dark. He doesn’t grow or age, but his body deteriorates over time and his brain doesn’t work as well as it should anymore. He’s growing unpredictable. I fear what he might do if he knew his beloved pet was only one of many he himself had killed and I’d replaced.”
I shuddered at the thought.
“Better the rats than the girls,” Elizabeth said. “He’s fond of them as well, and he could hurt them just as easily without meaning to. The rats give him something to focus his attention on.”
I hugged my arms across my chest. If Montgomery were here, he’d tell me to leave right now.
But Montgomery wasn’t here.
“Would you like to hear the story of Victor Frankenstein?” She stared at the dead rat in her hand, then smiled tightly. “The legends are true, but they don’t tell the full story. He was nineteen when he began his research, just a few years older than you are now. His family was Genevese. Very modern thinkers. They sent him to Ingolstadt for a scientific education, but his mother passed away of scarlet fever before he left. He was devastated. He became obsessed with the idea of defeating death. Creating humans who would never die.”
She paused, stroking the dead rat’s fur.
“The creature he made was . . . well, not far off from the thing described in legends. Eight feet tall with yellow skin and a lumbering gait. Some versions of the legend say the creature lacked the gift of intelligence and speech, but that wasn’t true. He was quite smart.” She paused. “I think, if the creature had been a mindless thing, the past would have turned out differently.”
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