Boneseeker (8 page)

Just make it out of the auditorium.

Henry is staring at my expression, his mouth contorted with worry.

We mercifully exit, stage right, and my breath exhales in a whoosh.

The world upends and I’m disoriented and I’m blinking, but it feels slow and deliberate.

Henry has scooped me into his arms. His heart pounds against my arm.

“What are you doing?” I try to sound incensed, but I’m honestly too weak to care.

“Taking you to your cottage. No arguments.”

Six Impossible Things

Henry deposits me gently on the bed, shooing Newton onto the floor. As soon as he stands, the dog leaps back up, draping his black and white body across my legs. He rolls on his back, pink tongue lolling to the side.

“Good boy.” I scratch behind his ears, avoiding Henry’s eyes. “Don’t you have to get back?”

I finally look up. His intense stare elicits a falling sensation.

“No. I’m staying till I’m satisfied you’re alright.”

He walks around my room, fingers dragging across the furniture tops. His eyes skip across my bookcase, and halt…and squint.

I hear my heartbeat in my ears
. The Antiquarian Journals.

He turns to face me with narrowed eyes. “I’ve read those journals. You’ve been studying—”

“Yes, the oversized skeletons found in different regions of these states.”

His lips twist into a triumphant smirk. “Pray tell, how long have you been mad-keen for oversized skeletons?”

“Speak plainly.”

His expression turns black; I envision dark thunderclouds rumbling across his forehead.

“You are researching the Nephilim. Admit it.”

I sigh. “Science makes sense, Henry. Please quit ruining my world.”

He steps closer. “You mean your very structured, barricaded, do-not-touch-my-heart-world, makes sense.”

My heart gives a violent pitch
; my hand strays to my chest before I can stop it. My heart quivers inside its metal case, rumbling like a kettle drum. I swallow and admit, “Rules are my comfort.”

The bed depresses as he sits, blue eyes boring into me. “Rules are made to be broken.”

A foreign wanting stirs in me. I picture my hands entangled in his thick, tousled hair.

I clear my throat. Terrified I will do it. My heart is a wild-bird in my chest.

“For instance, women permitted on expeditions. One rule that should be broken.”

He slides so close our legs are touching, my skin burning at the contact. I don’t answer so he prompts again. His eyebrows pull together, creating a deep furrow between them. “The best parts of life are the sticky parts, Bella. The ones you’re strategically avoiding.”

He stands abruptly, and I’m ridiculously out of breath.

Stygian was right. I am not used to human contact.

Affection was the exception rather than the rule in my household.

There was love, after a fashion, but not affection.

Henry is still and staring. I follow his gaze and brace myself.

He’s spied my map, stuck to the wall.

He strides across the room, head whipping comically back and forth, his mouth agape.

At least twenty sets of pins jut out in clusters from the map. His fingers trace over the pinheads in wonder, starting with the grouping in Ohio, to Tennessee, all the way to Arizona and California.

He whirls. “Out with it.”

I cross my arms and defiantly shake my head.

His eyes narrow. “No. No. This will not do. You’ve obviously been doing even more digging than I, despite your protests of the impossibility of such creatures. What do you know?”

His face changes abruptly, his voice lowering; apparently changing tactics.

His voice suddenly drips like honey. “If I am to accompany you, would you place me at risk, without all the data?”

I bite my lip. “Fine.” I chuck a book at him.

He deftly deflects and flips it to examine the spine. “Life among the Piutes. I don’t understand?”

I slither out of bed and walk to the map, pointing to the congregation of pins in Nevada.

“A woman named Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins wrote that book, chronicling Indian histories. Piute legends describe very large visitors with flaming auburn hair, and double rows of teeth. At this site, twenty-three skeletons were unearthed in 1883. They were discovered in Lovelock Cave and all were between seven and eight feet tall. The Piute called them,
Si-Te-Cahs.
”

Henry’s jaw drops. “Really?”

He begins to pace, hands twisting furiously. He whirls. “What do the different colors signify—the red and green pins?”

I smile. Only he would notice my classification system in one minute flat. “Red are for double rows of teeth. Green is for six toes.”

He steps back for a wider look, as if seeing the map for the first time. His mouth works furiously.

He gesticulates, rapid-fire at the states, first to Arizona. “This one?”

My mind rifles through the files. I see the pages perfectly, just as I read them. “Stone sarcophagus housing a twelve-foot, six-toed skeleton.”*

He touches the one in Tennessee. “This one?”

“Human footprints, preserved in rock, measuring thirty-three inches, and six toes.”

“I must see your notes.”

My eyes open wide, my hand shooting to my hip. “I don’t have notes.”

“Of course you don’t.” He sighs. “Would you write some for me?”

I walk back to the bed and sit. “I suppose.”

“We lesser mortals appreciate notes. Besides, you will need them for references in your paper.”

I tap the side of my head. “Easily transcribed.”

He rolls his eyes and half-smiles. He reluctantly turns from the map, heading back toward me.

He reaches my desk and picks up a paper.

It’s my Neanderthal thesis. I can tell by the pinched look on his face.

Our eyes lock again. “Arabella. Do you really assume we are the greatest creation? Even after… all those pins? Doesn’t that seem arrogant to you? I mean let’s consider the laws of gravity—up, down. We’ve witnessed evil, surely there must be good.”

I shrug. “I don’t know what to think, Henry.”

“That’s a first.”

We both laugh out loud.

He walks back to my bookshelf, fingers tracing the titles. He lifts
Alice in Wonderland
and cracks it open.

“Do you remember—?”

“Reading it in the barn, acting out the scenes by candlelight? Of course.” My smile is so wide it’s painful. It’s as if I am bearing my soul.

But I love this memory.

It lit so many lonely, dark days while Henry was away at school.

I’ve had so few friends, and the ones I did were mostly male.

To women, I’m a foreigner, unable to speak their language of pin curls and parasols. I must pretend, pretend to be normal.

He sits beside me on the bed, much too close.

I smell him; woods and musk. I feel my stomach pitch and bite my lip again.

My mind shifts, slowly, deliberately; like emotive clock-cogs, from data…to him.

His fingers brush the back of my hand in a singular stroke.

“What about six impossible things before breakfast?”

“That’s child’s play, Henry.”

“Is it? How amazing is it that we’re both here, after all this time? That can be one.”

He grasps my hand out of my lap, gently pulling up one of my fingers.

I shake my head, but can’t help the smile that breaks through. Can’t help being pleased.
How
does he always convince me that the world might hold more than my eyes can see?

We shall be dismissed if we’re caught alone in my room. And him sitting on my bed. Touching me.

Not to mention the chastisement from father and John.

But my heart throbs with raw, unfamiliar demands.

“This possibly-preternatural hand shall be two.” He flicks up another finger. “We shall see what else transpires. I expect we’ll make six before a fortnight.”

In a blink the teasing is gone; he’s deadly serious. His hands fidget, twirling his pocket watch, considering.

I sigh. “Go ahead. I know you wish to ask me something. Something dreadful by the way you’re mucking about.”

He smiles. “You honestly don’t know the meaning of small talk, pleasantries—”

“Wastes of breath. Speak, Henry?”

“Your mother. I’ve never asked about her, not in all this time. Do you know who she was?”

My face boils with heat. “I believe your father actually knows more than I. I know she was…an opera singer.”

Henry’s eyes widen as his brows disappear beneath his hair. “Really?”

“Yes. Apparently I was a burden, so off to the Holmes’s I went.”

Henry’s fingers steeple. He’s lost in thought, staring past me.

“Ahem?”

His blue-green eyes flick back. “So,
do you
show musical inclination?”

I know what he’s thinking. Stygian’s predictions from my skull, and now, the revelation I’m descended from musical blood.

“I never had much time to find out. All science and math and Latin and—”

“Yes. Well, perhaps we should find out.”

“You only want to test the phrenology’s prediction. That I’m gifted in music.”

He shrugs. “Perhaps. We will go to the theater, when the expedition allows.”

He leans forward plucking up my journal, my locked journal, from the bedside table. “What secrets do you keep in here?”

“None of your bloody business.”

His fingers trace my neck and my heartbeat surges. I freeze, wanting more, but unable to ask. My face falls as he slips his finger under my necklace.

He tugs it gently and I feel it slide up my stomach and between my breasts till it appears on my chest to reveal a key.

He smiles wickedly. “I assume
this
key, fits in
this
lock.” He gives the journal a little shake.

His attention shifts again and he drops the journal into my lap.

He sits beside me and leans closer and I’m lost again in a deluge of his scent.

My heart skips a too-long beat in my chest as his lips pass so close to mine. Anticipation and want dizzy my head as he plucks a letter from my nightstand.

“You’re—” I try to swallow the tremble in my voice. “You’re in rare form. Are
all
my private papers your personal expedition?”

He smiles. “You don’t reveal much. So I’m conducting research. I’m not often privy to the cave of the reclusive genius.”

He’s clutching father’s letter. I don’t care. I’m almost bloody unconscious.

His eyes scan the perfect penmanship and he looks up. His smile is crooked. “Digger? He calls you digger?”

I snatch the paper from his hands. “Yes. What of it?”

“May I call you it, too?” His lips are trembling as he tries not to laugh. He stands.

I spring.

He leaps out of the way, running around my bed.

I chase him and grab hold of his sleeve. I hang on as he tries to throw me off and manage to off a punch at his chest.

“You are a brute. An awful, sophomoric little boy in a man’s body.”

Newton’s bark is sharp, his hackles rising in my defense. He bears his teeth.

I point at the door. “Go, you imbecile! You shouldn’t be in here in the first place. We’ll both be let go!”

Henry runs out the door, but turns to look through the crack. “Good night, Digger.”

I throw my shoe and he slams the door shut.

Judgment Day

Racing down Mutter Hallway

Henry

I flip my hair from my eyes and hurry down the Mutter hallway, checking my watch. My boot-falls echo wildly off the high ceilings.

I grit my teeth as a curse slips out; I am going to miss the meeting about Arabella.

“Blast.”

A nightmarish blur of images fly past me on either side—a plaster cast of a fifteen foot colon, my wax specimens of syphilis and smallpox. I avert my eyes, breaking into an all-out dash.

I skid to a halt outside the boardroom door and make a last, futile attempt to smooth down my hair.

Father sits at the massive circular table, his hands folded calmly before him. They itch to strangle me for my tardiness, I know.

Dr. Jeremy Montgomery sits at the one end, looking even younger than I. Father informed me he was three years my senior, but his smooth, clean-shaven face reminds me of my pupils back home.

Dr. Earnest sits at the table’s head. His watery eyes crinkle with delight when I enter. “Henry! Welcome. We are very excited to have you join the Mutter. Your father’s reputation precedes him—so I have no doubt we’ll see some wondrous things from you!”

My smile feels like a cringe. “I shall certainly do my best, sir.”

My eyes flick to father. I bristle at the grin playing at the twitching sides of his mouth.

I slide in between father and Jeremy, while Earnest prattles on to a secretary about the excursion.

Jeremy shoots his hand in mock-introduction, and I give him mine. He gives it a vigorous pump, as if we’ve never met.

“Glad to have you, Henry.” He leans in, whispering conspiratorially, “I can’t tell you how relieved I am to have someone of my own species on board. It’s been a lonely three months.”

“You’re new to the Mutter, as well then?”

“Yes. I am a Philadelphia native, born and bred. I’ve heard rumors about you from the staff.”

My eyebrows rise. “Such as?”

“Your reputation with the ladies. I could use some help with one particularly recalcitrant female. Perhaps you might scribble some of that infamous poetry of yours—”

The door opens and Jeremy breaks off and sits utterly still like a naughty schoolboy caught cheating.

Stygian enters.

The temperature in the room drops a degree and the hairs rise on the nape of my neck.

He sits and all eyes around the table fly to his attention. Except father. His eyes tick up in polite regard, but quickly return to scanning the document before him.

Stygian inhales, his barrel-chest protruding. “Gentlemen. I shall not waste your time with small talk; we all know the purpose of this council meeting. There has been a motion to add Arabella Holmes to the expedition team. We are gathered to present arguments both for and against this appointment.”