I steadied myself against the door, no longer dizzy, but head reeling with our success. From the dining room came sounds of Lucy and Elizabeth arguing, but I couldn’t focus on anything except this feeling.
Montgomery shook me again, holding my chin to study my eyes, checking for illness, but I could feel it, deep inside.
I was cured.
I wanted to laugh. I was whole now, just like I always wanted.
Montgomery had told me once that my unnatural curiosity about my father’s work was a symptom of my illness, just the same as the popping knuckles and pain behind my left eye. At the time I’d doubted him, wondering if it was truly possible to cure a dark heart, but now . . .
“You were right,” I said, kneading the fabric of his shirt, wanting to never let go. We’d be married now, live the type of normal life that normal people did, church on Sundays and dancing on Saturdays and maybe, years from now, even pushing a baby pram through the park.
He smiled, and I matched it, and I had never felt such sweet relief in my life.
If only Edward can feel this way too . . .
Sharp voices came from the dining room, rupturing the perfect stillness between Montgomery and me. Lucy and Elizabeth were arguing in heated voices, and Montgomery frowned and headed for the doorway. I started to hold him back, to savor a few more precious seconds of this calm I’d never known. But just because the world had turned right side up for me didn’t mean it had for everyone else.
“No!” came Lucy’s voice.
I stood in the doorway with Montgomery, watching as she balled her fists in the papers as Elizabeth tried to calm her. “It’s not true! It can’t be. . . .”
“There’s no other way,” Elizabeth said.
Lucy looked up suddenly and, through the layer of tears, her eyes met mine. Blinded by her own panic, she didn’t see how changed I was since the cure. She rushed over and grabbed me by the shoulders. “It’s all there, in the journal. The unknown ingredient. And it’s impossible to replicate. Juliet, there’s no hope for him!”
Her hands dug into me like claws. I pried them from my shoulders and rubbed them gently. “Don’t say that, Lucy. We won’t give up. We found a cure for me—we’ll find it for him, too.”
But Lucy couldn’t stop sobbing. She shook her head and then stumbled off to the kitchen for a rag to wipe her face. Balthazar pushed up from the table clumsily and went after her, offering her his handkerchief.
Outside, the church on the corner chimed six o’clock mass. I glanced at the window, where the family across the street appeared at the door with rosy faces as they made their way to the Christmas Eve service at St. Paul’s.
Elizabeth squeezed my hand. “I’m so relieved to hear your cure worked, Juliet, truly. But I’m afraid Lucy was right. We can’t do the same for Edward.”
“Why not?” I asked, baffled. My hands were still now. My heart cured of darkness.
“It came down to the unknown ingredient,” Elizabeth explained, clutching the letters.
I bit my lip. “What is it?”
To my surprise, her eyes shifted from me to Montgomery. She took a deep breath. “Montgomery, did Dr. Moreau ever draw your blood?”
FORTY
THE SOUND OF LUCY’S sobbing in the kitchen faded as the beating of my own heart grew. Beside me, Montgomery was tense as wrought iron.
“What are you suggesting?” he said.
“Did he, or didn’t he?” Elizabeth asked.
Montgomery glanced at me as he dragged a hand through his hair. “Yes—all the time. There were few illnesses on the island, but malaria was a threat. Only to us, not to the islanders. I caught it a few times, and he drew my blood to study the disease, the same with his own.”
I recalled the conversation I’d had with Edward when he first told me what he truly was.
Whose blood did my father use to make you? I had asked.
I don’t know. I’ve never known, Edward had said.
My God, it was all so clear now.
Elizabeth continued, “When we decoded the journal, we discovered that the unknown ingredient was human blood. Moreau hadn’t wanted to use his own because of his advanced age. He wanted strong young blood, and there was only one source to get it from.” She paused. “Edward was made from your blood, Montgomery.”
“Mine?” His head shook in denial, even in anger, but I knew him better than that. There was an uncertainty to the way his hand hovered anxiously over his mouth, the same move he’d made a year ago when I’d found him again. That move betrayed tender emotions that he was afraid to admit. All his life he’d wanted a family. It was why he’d been so loyal to my father. It was why he’d kept Balthazar alive. When I was young, he had told me once, I used to watch the other boys play in the street and wish I had a brother.
What a terrible twist of fate: Edward shared his blood—a brother of sorts. It meant if there was still some way to cure Edward, that Montgomery would have the family he’d so desperately wanted. Edward would, too.
Montgomery paced by the windows, and it struck me that this information might be far more welcomed by Edward than by Montgomery. Over the past year Montgomery’s sense of mercy had given way to a harsh desire for justice. Would this information soften him at all? Give me back the boy I’d fallen in love with?
Or would it only make him more determined to kill Edward?
“I don’t understand,” I said to Elizabeth. “If we only need Montgomery’s blood to cure Edward, it should be a relatively simple procedure.”
“That’s the problem, I’m afraid,” Elizabeth said. “Montgomery’s blood was tainted with malaria at the time. The malaria played some role in the composition of Edward’s genetic material; without that strain, we won’t be able to replicate it. It’s winter in London. The closest mosquito is halfway around the world.”