“Yes.”
He smiled grimly, though there was no glee in it, as though for once he understood how heartbreaking this was for me. “No serum can change who you are. Nor should you change. Genius or madness—it all depends on who’s telling the story.” His hand stopped tapping, and that humanity flickered again in his eye. “You’re perfect as you are, my love.”
I took a shaky step away from him, fearful and confused, and hurried up the stairs. It didn’t matter. I couldn’t get away from his words.
He was right. No serum could cure who I really was—a Moreau, through and through.
IT WAS LATE WHEN I rejoined the others. I told them I was exhausted and wanted to be alone, then picked up Sharkey and climbed to the attic nursery. I liked the quiet here, the stillness of the unused toys, Sharkey’s grainy fur beneath my fingers.
I sat in the rocking chair and leaned my head back, watching the moon beyond the city’s skyline. It was so easy now to move my neck, my hands. Their former stiffness was nothing but a fleeting memory.
But the Beast was right. A coldness lingered in my heart, and always would, no matter how much I lied to myself.
I shouldn’t have been so single-minded in the way I viewed Father’s research. Elizabeth had told me Father was more than just a madman, but I hadn’t listened. The Beast had seen the truth on me, plain as day, among the jungle vines of the greenhouse. Even Lucy—even Newcastle—had known that science in and of itself wasn’t good or bad.
Sometimes, even, it was a necessary evil.
As I pet Sharkey, I watched the tendons on the back of my hand plucking like piano strings. I had tried to deny the darkness inside me, but all this time, perhaps I should have embraced it for the potential good it could wield.
Sharkey jumped out of my lap, stretching on the rug so that half his body was thrown in moonlight, half still cast in shadows. I sat straighter as an idea tickled the back of my head.
Enough with the secrets.
Enough with hidden horrors.
There was only one way to protect Edward from the King’s Club’s machinations, and also ensure that no one would replicate or condone what they were trying to do ever again.
Outside, church bells chimed midnight. I thought of the family across the street, tucked into warm beds, the children dreaming of waking in the morning to toys wrapped in big red bows. All over the city, families like theirs slumbered. Families that wouldn’t sleep nearly so deeply if they knew what was happening in those basement laboratories of King’s College.
I swallowed. My plan was a cruel one, dangerous, yet I couldn’t deny that the curious corners of my soul curled at the thought: Maybe the best way to prevent the King’s Club from enacting their plan was to enact it for them, and show them—and the world—exactly what would happen if my father’s science was unleashed.
FORTY-ONE
I WOKE TO THE sounds of Saint Paul’s bells ringing in Christmas Day.
I had stayed up half the night going through the details of my plan. Lucy slept over after sending a note home to her mother and was now fast asleep in the sea of pillows on my bed. I made a list of three King’s Men—Inspector John Newcastle, Dr. Hastings, and Isambard Lessing—and when she woke, told her to write an urgent message to each one in her father’s forged handwriting, calling for an emergency meeting at precisely nine o’clock in the evening and not to be a moment late. When she asked to what purpose, I refused to say. Still half asleep, with the trust of a life-long friend, she did as I asked regardless.
In the meanwhile, I gave Edward another injection of valerian to keep him sedated, then pored over every word in Father’s journal and letters, studying his procedures, focusing on the science the King’s Club was trying to duplicate. For the first time I allowed myself to truly delve into it, guiltlessly, and the genius of his work made my whole body feel alive.
Elizabeth paced around the house like an unquiet ghost, throwing wide-eyed glances at the cellar door, never far from the musket and bottle of gin. In the afternoon Lucy left with Balthazar to deliver each of the letters personally, with instructions to meet back at the professor’s house in the evening. The final step in my preparations involved Montgomery, but when I asked him to get his medical bag and come with me to King’s College, he didn’t obey as unquestioningly as Lucy had.
“You must tell me what this is all about,” he said. “I’m to be your husband. You must trust me.”
I bristled at the word husband, still unused to the idea despite how much I loved him.
“That trust goes both ways,” I said. “Once we’re there, I promise to make everything clear. You said once that before we are wed, you want no more shadows in our lives. Tonight I can end all our fears about the King’s Men and Edward falling into dangerous hands.” I held his hand, squeezing hard. “But I can’t do it alone.”
He leaned in, resting his forehead against mine, and the feel of him so close kindled the coldest parts of my body.
“Come with me,” I whispered. “I need you.”
The tensed muscles in his back eased. “You know I’d follow you anywhere. Though I fear we’ll both end up damned.”
We left Elizabeth to keep an eye on Edward and slipped out the back alleyway under cover of darkness. As we darted down the lanes, I peeked into open windows. Each one showed a different vignette of city life. A stout family shared a feast of ham and bread pudding amid the twinkling lights of a Christmas tree. A wife baked a meat pie for her husband. A young woman tucked a baby into a bassinet under a spring of mistletoe.