Page 34

On the street immediately beneath me, wrapped in the black shadows, a figure stood staring up at me.

No, not at me. No one could have known I was behind these shutters.

But the figure did not move. I watched, terrified that moving would reveal my presence. I had been able to put the chute and whatever or whoever splashed from it out of my mind, but now it rose like a specter. What if someone had been at Victor’s laboratory? What if I had nearly killed someone, and the person had followed me here to exact revenge?

But I had not come back here after the fire. I had gone to Mary’s house. So who would have known I was staying here?

Anyone I left the cards with. I squinted, as though narrowing my eyes would increase their ability to pierce the darkness. But I could not make out any features. I could not tell whether it might be Professor Krempe. The figure seemed far too tall for it to be the charnel house man. But it could have been Judge Frankenstein himself and I would have been none the wiser.

There was some strange trick of the darkness, though, a shifting and magnifying of perspective or perception that made the figure loom larger than life. It looked…wrong. The torso too long, the legs bending at not quite the right place. A bulk of chest that spoke not of excess weight, but rather of unnatural power.

Justine stirred, cooing in her sleep. I glanced over to see if she had awakened. When I looked back, the figure was gone.

Its unnaturalness did not leave my mind. It settled over me like a spider’s web, invisible and impossible to brush off.

TO MY SURPRISE—AND VAIN dismay—when I walked into Victor’s convalescence room the next morning, he looked better than I did. Whatever damage my sleepless nights had done to my face, his time here had erased all traces of his feverish delirium.

He was propped up by a pillow and was surprised to see me when I walked in.

“Elizabeth! What are you doing here?”

I bit back my impulse to berate him, to inform him I was there to save his foolish life. Instead, I pressed my hands to my mouth and rushed to his side. “Oh, Victor! When I found you, you were in such a low state. I feared I was too late.”

His eyes twitched. “You were the one to find me? I do not remember anything of the last few days. Weeks, perhaps.” He rubbed his forehead, eyes searching the air in front of him for some hint of what he had missed. “Did you…What state were my rooms in?”

I smiled gently, taking his hand from his forehead and resting my cheek against his much cooler fingers. “You certainly could have used a maid. I did not have much time to look around. We rushed you right here. I am so sorry to report that the same night we found you, the stove caught fire and burned down the building. All your things were lost. And to think—if I had not found you, you would have been inside the inferno!” I let tears pool in my eyes.

He dropped his head back against the pillow, but I knew every expression of his face. He was the text I had devoted my life to studying. It was relief, not despair, that caused him to lose his strength.

“My time here has been for naught anyhow. I sought to puncture heaven and instead discovered hell.” He closed his eyes. His eyelids were nearly translucent, traced with tiny blue and purple veins. I was reminded of the time when he mapped my own veins with his fingers, plotting the course of my heart with meticulous study.

“Victor,” I said, needing to speak to him before he fell back into sleep. If he wanted to remain silent on what his mad studies had cost him, I was more than happy to let him keep those secrets. We would never talk of them again. I had erased the evidence from the world, and perhaps Victor’s fever had erased them from his mind, too. But there was one mystery I could not set fire to and turn my back on. “Why did you never write? I was so worried about you that I sent Henry here just to find you. And then he left, too.”

“Henry?” he echoed. But his eyelids twitched, tightening from their relaxed state.

“Surely you remember. He came six months ago. And he wrote that he had found you. But then I never heard from him—or you—again. That is why we came. I was so worried about you without anyone to look after you.”

“I was working every day for us. For you. I never wrote because I had nothing to report. Surely you did not doubt that what I was doing was important.”

I wanted to pinch him, to pull on his hair until he cried out in pain. I also wanted to press my mouth against his and devour him. Consume him. Instead, I smoothed his hair back from his forehead, playing with the silky curls. “I know. And I knew you would have been lost in your studies and forgotten how desperately I would want to hear from you. But Henry left you all alone. And that is not like him. Your condition when I arrived proved I was right to be worried. Henry should not have gone.”

Victor opened his eyes and studied me shrewdly. “We did not part on good terms. You know why.”

I feigned innocence. “I assure you, I do not.”

“Do you know why Henry came here?”

“To learn Eastern languages so he and his father could open up trade with merchants from the Far East. I thought it was an excellent idea. He was unhappy, working as his father did, and this allowed him the freedom to pursue something he loved while remaining loyal to his father.”

Victor’s dark lashes swooped low as he narrowed his eyes. “It turns out that loyalty is not something Henry values highly.”

“What do you mean?”

“Henry tracked me down when he arrived. I am not certain how he found me. Or how you did.” He paused, curious.

“Mary Delgado.”

“Who?” Victor’s genuine confusion was a balm to my competitive spirit. She might have remembered him, but he had no use for her. All my initial regard for her settled back into place now that I had nothing to fear from her as far as Victor’s affections.