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XII

Charlotte was nine when she found the rabbit dead.

By the time she came across the poor creature, it was little more than fluff, and fur, and blood. A patch of horror on the lawn.

The sight of the rabbit lying there, so still, its body curled in against the outside world, was enough to break young Charlotte’s heart. Which wasn’t hard—it had always been a fragile thing. Just like the little bunny, its ruined body almost weightless as she took it home.

Somewhere along the way she began to cry, and could not seem to stop. She stood in her mother’s workshop door and stroked the rabbit’s cooling ear, unsure what to do to make things right.

In the end, they’d dug a little hole between the roses and buried the rabbit there, deep enough that nothing would dig it up. And to be sure, her mother made a sculpture of the rabbit, to set on top, and Charlotte would stop and crouch down to stroke its little ear every time she passed.

For weeks, James claimed that they were having rabbit stew for dinner, even when they weren’t, and Charlotte would feel that sadness welling up again.

As if all her feelings lived right beneath the surface.

Just waiting to spill out.

Charlotte thinks about that rabbit now, as the carriage trundles on, wheels over cobblestones, then earth.

She is wide awake despite the hour, her whole body humming strangely, every inch of her alert.

Perhaps if she had a book—but she does not, and so her mind turns on itself, replaying those hours between the proposal and the carriage, the pieces of her life toppling one into the next.

Sabine stares out the window, a flatness to her gaze that says she’s looking past the world, not at it. She seems so calm, composed, while Charlotte feels like she is spinning, her mind so full of questions.

What is she now? Is there a word? What does it mean to live and die and live again, as the monster did in Frankenstein ?

Was it death she felt back in Sabine’s bed, or something else?

A vital spark, extinguished, then rekindled, and if so, is it the same animating force, or a new one?

And who made Sabine before Sabine made her?

And why does the sunlight leave her dizzy?

And how can she live and move and think without a heart beating in her chest? And why does she crave blood?

There was a moment, with George Preston, when the pulse had failed in him—but not in her—when Charlotte felt like she was holding his life as well as his heart.

And then the moment died, and so did he.

And she cannot help but wonder, what sets the two of them apart? What keeps her own life going while his stopped? Was it the blood? The heart? The soul?

She hasn’t found the voice to ask these thoughts aloud, but apparently she needn’t bother—Sabine sighs and blinks, returning to herself, and says, “Your mind is very loud.”

Charlotte startles, amazed that Sabine can hear—or feel—what she is thinking but then, is it so strange? After all, she could feel George’s panic, his worry, his fear, and wasn’t it Sabine who said she could not keep her feelings to herself?

“What do we take from them?” she asks. “Is it only blood, or something more?”

“Does it matter?”

But it does. Of course it does. A soul is an entire thing. All or nothing, there or not. But blood. Blood exists in quantity and by degrees. “Well, yes,” she says, her spirits lifting at the thought. “If it’s only blood, then they do not need to die.”

To her surprise, Sabine only shrugs.

“Perhaps,” she says, her gaze returning to the window. “But I’ve found it’s always better to finish what you start.”

They kill the carriage driver outside Canterbury.

Well, Sabine kills him, while Charlotte looks away, hands clasped over her mouth.

At first, she watched with a kind of static horror, struck by the strange contrast of their bodies—the graceful line of Sabine’s arms, one wrapped over the driver’s mouth and the other around his chest, the sound of his bones cracking beneath the force, the rictus mask of shock as Sabine’s teeth sank deeper still, through skin made fragile by her strength.

Charlotte could hardly bear the violence of it, the horror—but that’s not what made her turn away.

No, it was the way her mouth went dry, the way her teeth began to ache, hunger rising in revulsion’s wake.

Now Charlotte stands with her back to the scene, her gaze trained on the town waiting in the distance—it’s almost midnight, but she can see the outlines of the buildings, the halos made by gas lamps and lanterns—while she waits for it to end, is relieved when at last she hears the thud of dead weight hitting earth.

She turns, trying not to look down. To think, she has managed nearly nineteen years without encountering a human corpse, only to see two—the cause of one, the witness to another. The horror laps against her, threatening to overwhelm.

“We should bury him, at least,” she says.

They are just off the road, and the ground is soft and damp. But Sabine says no, and fetches the lantern from the driver’s perch, along with what looks like a bottle of spirits, hidden beneath the bench.

“Dead bodies make dead earth,” she says, handing the lantern off to Charlotte. “And dead earth is dangerous.”

She takes up the driver’s body as if it is a sack of wheat and flings it into the carriage, then upends the bottle over it and tosses the empty glass inside, does it all with such an easy, practiced air.

“Dangerous?” asks Charlotte, as Sabine holds her hand out for the lantern. “How?”

“Few things can hurt you now,” she says, letting it swing from her fingers. “Only the destruction of your heart will end your life. But sunlight will make you sick. And grave dirt will draw you down.”

With that, Sabine tosses the lantern into the wooden carriage.

Instantly, the fire catches, spreads, so bright it burns her eyes. The heat rolls off, and Charlotte feels herself draw closer, mesmerized by the new dimensions in the flame.

Until Sabine catches her hand.

“Of all the ways to die,” she warns, “fire is the worst.”

With that she draws Charlotte away from the burning carriage, and down the road, toward town.