Camille (22 page)

He peered over my shoulder. “What are you
searching for?”

“Remember the day Dr. Bennett took blood from
your arm?” I continued to shuffle through the pile.

“Actually, no. I slept through it as I
recall.”

“Precisely. Ah ha! I found it.” I waved the
crumpled paper in the air. “That day, John gave you some chloral
hydrate to make you sleep. I needed to find his calculations
showing the amount he gave you. Too much could be harmful, too
little ineffective.”

He shook his head. “You don’t actually think
I’ll be able to sleep through this?”

“It’s not for you. It’s for John.”

****

“Have you had your coffee, John?” I peered in
from the doorway.

He looked up from his books. “I thought you’d
sleep all morning. Strider is not awake yet.”

“I didn’t sleep well,” I said. “I’ll make
breakfast.”

“Camille, I need to talk to you first.” He
closed the book in front of him. It was Father’s journal. “Please,
sit here with me.”

Hesitantly, I walked over and sat down. My
mind was completely occupied with saving Strider, and I was in no
mood to discuss his indiscretions. “John, couldn’t this wait until
after…” I had no idea how to finish my statement. There were too
many possible scenarios.

“Actually, this concerns the lad. I found
something in the journal that caught my interest. It runs along the
same theoretical line as your immunity idea.”

“But my idea failed.” I slumped back in the
chair. “Along with every other idea.”

He leaned forward and he had that look in his
eyes that made me always think of a clock with the gears grinding
away behind the face. “Camille, I know you don’t like to dredge up
the memory of that dreadful night of your father’s death, but I
need you to recount some of the details.”

I stared at him in shock. He knew well that
I’d rather speak about anything than that night. “Truly, John, I
don’t think I can bear talking about it with you at this time.” I
kept my tone calm extinguishing the sparks of anger before they
surfaced.

“But it may help us find our next path,” he
insisted.

“There are only two days left. How can it
possibly help now?”

“I realize time is short for Strider, but for
the next time…”

“Time is not short for Strider! He—we will
get through this, then you may start your theorizing again.”

He reached for my hand, but I snapped it away
quickly. The anguish of my small motion dragged on his face. “That
night,” he forged ahead unimpeded by my rudeness, “your arm was
injured. I was sure you’d been bit, yet nothing ever came of it.”
He leaned his face closer to mine. “Camille, I know it is difficult
but think back to that moment. Did the beast leave the marks on
your arm?”

“The beast? You mean my father?” That was the
whole problem with this situation. Somehow we’d managed to convince
ourselves that beneath the monstrous exterior there existed only
murderous evil. And while believing that had certainly made our
hunts easier to swallow, it wasn’t true. I stared at him. “We’re
hunting human prey. No matter what form, there is still a human
soul within.”

Dr. Bennett stood abruptly, his face coloring
red. “And what of the human lives they devour?” He leaned far over
the table and grabbed my hand too quickly for me to snatch it away.
“Camille,” he pierced me with his gaze, “you’ve seen what is left
of the innocent people who were unfortunate enough to be in the
wrong place under a full moon. Strider was very nearly one of
them.”

He released my hand, and I pulled it back
into my lap. A phantom pain shot through my arm as the memory
surfaced. “The darkness that night suffocated my senses, but I
remember sitting in the center of the kitchen floor with my doll
clutched against me. The gun had frozen to my fingers. An odor
seeped down the stairs, making my eyes water. A horrid roar slammed
against the walls of the room, but I couldn’t move. Father had
lied. I was not the strong one.”

Dr. Bennett sat back down. “Were you
bitten?”

I brought my feet up onto the chair and
hugged my knees to my chest in an attempt to hold myself together.
“I was in his jaws, my father’s jaws, when the pistol
exploded.”

His eyes widened with interest rather than
shock. There was nothing shocking anymore in our bizarre life it
seemed. “And, afterward,” he blurted, “what happened between you
and your sister while you waited? When did Emily cut your arm?”

I closed my eyes and rested my forehead on
the tops of my knees. Footsteps prompted me to lift my head.
Strider stood in the room, and I wanted to run to him. I looked at
him for a long time before returning my gaze to Dr. Bennett. “Emily
had just shot our father. She didn’t know what she was doing. She
reached for a knife on the table and carved a crescent shape into
her forearm. She told me she wanted the moon to be a permanent
sliver, never to be full again. Then she grabbed the wrist of my
uninjured arm and carved a crescent on my arm.” I pushed up my
sleeve and touched the puckered scar. “I was so numb, I didn’t even
feel it.”

“Did you exchange blood with your sister?”
Dr. Bennett asked.

I nodded. “We pressed our arms together to
seal away the horrible secret we shared.” I released the hold I had
on my legs and dropped my feet to the ground. A laugh spurted from
my lips. “Although, it’s hardly a secret anymore. It’s been peeled
open like all the other layers of my life.”

Strider pulled a chair up to the table and
smiled at me as he sat. It was a simple gesture, yet it was all the
fortification I required to make it through another day.

“It can’t be possible,” Dr. Bennett mumbled,
“and yet it must be so.”

I watched him for a minute. Deep thoughts
were flashing across his face as he obviously tried to reason
something out. “John, will you be having this conversation with
yourself for long, or will we be involved soon?”

“Soon,” he said and stood to leave. “You will
both be involved very soon.”

“What was that about?” Strider asked as he
came to sit near me.

“I’m not quite sure, but it has something to
do with the night of my father’s death and Emily’s crazy desire to
carve our skin that night.” I lifted my sleeve, and he winced at
the scar.

“Emily did that to you?”

“Yes, ‘tis a quarter moon. I’m afraid she’s
more talented with folding paper than cutting skin. She has a
matching one. Remember when she scratched her arm on our
visit?”

“It was like she had a spider crawling under
her sleeve.”

“Not a spider. Just a scar that becomes
irritated every time…” My words fell off. “Emily’s blood! Why did I
not see it? The natural immunity pulses through her veins. All this
time searching for a cure when my dear, sweet, beautiful sister
held the answer.”

Strider looked at me. “So you think your
sister’s blood should be mixed with mine?” His face paled at the
idea. “Do you think it might work?”

“It worked for me. I had been bitten just as
you have. Yet I never showed signs of transmutation.”

“Maybe it’s because you’re a girl.”
Flirtatiously, he traced his fingers along my arm.

I lifted my brow and stared at him. “We are
the same species, Nathaniel. Aside from the obvious differences,
males and females share most traits.”

“Aye, it is those obvious differences that
make the girls so appealing.” He smiled.

“Does your mind ever wander past the subjects
of girls and food?”

“I’m sorry, what did you say? I could not
actually hear you over the din of my empty stomach.”

I jumped up and threw my arms around
Strider’s neck. “Let’s go feed that cavernous hollow you call a
stomach.”

Dr. Bennett hired a cab, and the three of us
climbed in for the trip to Bethlem Hospital. As was always the
case, we had no idea in what state of mind we would find Emily.
With all three of us descending upon her at once, her reaction
could go in many directions, so it was decided Strider would stay
in the lobby, making Sarah’s day and keeping my sister from
scratching a self-made hole in her arm. Dr. Bennett had a lancet
for that. Momentarily, I‘d thought of leaving Strider home, but I
worried he might leave.

We’d barely turned onto Lambeth Road, and the
small hairs on my arms stood at attention. I leaned forward to look
out the small window. The hospital stood in its usual state of
elegant composure. There was nothing untoward occurring out front,
yet I sensed something was terribly wrong.

Dr. Bennett scooted forward on his seat.
“Camille, what is wrong?”

“I don’t know,” I said more to myself than to
him.

We climbed the stairs and stepped inside.
Sarah was not at her station. In fact it was eerily quiet until two
hospital workers raced past us from the men’s ward to the garden
exit.

“What’s happening?” Dr. Bennett rushed to ask
them as they flew past, but they waved us off.

By the time the door shut behind them, my
insides were churning. I ran down the corridor to Emily’s room. The
door was ajar. I pushed it open just as Dr. Bennett and Strider
pulled up behind me. A gasp caught in my throat. The wires which
normally held Emily’s forest of paper creatures lined the walls in
utilitarian fashion. The kingdom of sprites was gone, along with
its creator.

“Oh my God,” Dr. Bennett muttered. “Where
could she be?”

“There’s a group of people staring out the
window at the end of the hall,” Strider said.

We ran to the window. I stood on my tiptoes
to get a view over the heads of the onlookers. Before I could catch
a glimpse, Strider grabbed my waist and lifted me. “There, in the
tree,” he said.

In the center of the courtyard stood the
majestic plane tree nearly devoid of all leaves but thick with
spiraling branches, and perched on the end of one of those branches
was my fair-haired twin with a basket of paper fairies clutched in
her arms. Dr. Bennett was already halfway to the exit before my
feet were back on the floor. Strider grabbed my hand, and we raced
after him.

A crowd of onlookers circled the tall tree.
Hospital staff shuffled beneath Emily’s branch anxiously calling to
her to hold on tightly. Several patients seemed completely amused
at the entertaining break in their otherwise monotonous existence,
and several others looked on in horror, shaking their heads and
wringing their hands. Samuel, the man Emily had befriended, stood
directly below her staring up with his large arms outstretched.

I spotted my sister’s nurse in the crowd and
grabbed her arm. “Virginia, how did this happen? Did she take her
tonic this morning?” Dr. Bennett stood behind me now. Virginia’s
face paled as she looked at him.

The nurse fished in her apron pocket for a
bottle. “Aye, she took her tonic.” She pulled out a blue glass
bottle. “I have it right here. She was in fine spirits all morning.
Even ate two biscuits for breakfast.”

Dr. Bennett’s long arm reached past my face,
and he seized the bottle from her hand. He pried out the cork and
covered his pinky with the liquid before tasting it. “This is
laudanum.”

Virginia’s face blanched further. “That can’t
be.” She grabbed the bottle back and ran her finger around the top
before putting the contents on her bottom lip. Amazingly, her face
blanched even whiter until all the ruddiness on her round cheeks
faded to pink cream. “Tis not my fault.”

I grabbed Dr. Bennett’s arm. “It’s of no
matter now, John. Besides, I’m glad her irrational behavior was
caused by laudanum and not her own mind.” Before he could respond,
I ran to where Samuel stood and turned my face up. Emily’s petite
feet, clad only in bedroom slippers, dangled over the branch like
that of a small child in a high chair.

“Em, what are you doing up there?”

Her small face peered over the edge of the
branch, and my head spun as if I were the one staring down from the
height. “Hello down there, baby sister. You’ve come to watch them
go free.” The delight in her voice was something I’d not heard in
years.

“Who are you setting free, Emily?”

Emily leaned back and the branch bobbed
slightly, shifting her weight dangerously to one side. Dead leaves
rained down drowning out the simultaneous gasps from the onlookers.
My sister, completely undeterred by the fact that she dangled a
good four meters in the air on what appeared to be a rather rotted
branch, lithely righted herself on her narrow perch. Emily’s slight
build had always allowed her to be agile and light on her feet. My
father would often insist that her feet never touched the ground
when she ran across the room. He would tease her, telling her only
a fairy changeling could fly across a wood floor without touching
it. His needling was surely what prompted her to fall in love with
fairies.

“You know, Emily, I think they would much
prefer to stay with you. You know they don’t all get along. Without
you, they are sure to get into trouble.”

Emily dug her hand into the basket and came
up with a palm full of paper sprites. “Nonsense, they have promised
me they’d behave. They’re so bored stuck on their wires.” Emily
threw her head back and giggled. Samuel’s arm rose up anticipating
her fall. But she did not. Her long blonde hair flowed in the
breeze like gold silk. If she had her own wings, she might have
resembled a forest creature herself.

I glanced back at Dr. Bennett. He stood right
behind me with an expression that seemed to shift between terror
and helplessness. Movement behind the wide trunk of the tree caught
my eye. It was Strider. Without a sound, he climbed the tree and
maneuvered to the branch where my sister sat humming and smiling
down at the crowd.

My heart raced. If she spotted him, it might
frighten her off the branch. Samuel looked strong enough to catch
her, but it was a long drop and even though she weighed little, the
impact might injure her.