This Monstrous Thing (26 page)

Father stopped in the doorway and looked back at me. His eyes met mine, and we both smiled.

As soon as my parents were gone, Clémence made to sit down again, but I grabbed her hand and tugged her onto the bed. “Come here, will you?”

Her mouth twitched, and after a quick glance at the door, she lay down beside me, on top of the blanket with her face away from mine. I slid my arm around her waist and pressed my forehead into her shoulder. Her hair still smelled like sulfur from the bombs, and for a moment I was back in the clock tower. “Do you know where Oliver went?” I asked.

“North,” she replied. “He said something about Russia.”

“Was he all right?”

“Yes,” she said, and she sounded sure. “He was very calm, which was surprising after everything. More than anything, he just seemed ready. Ready to go somewhere new. Try again.” There was a pause, then she added, “He asked me to go with him.”

“So why didn’t you?”

“I wanted to find you. Make sure you were all right too.” She shifted, and I could feel the gears on the other side of her skin thrum. “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” I said, and I realized that I was. My whole body hurt and I couldn’t remember ever being so tired, but I felt better than I had since Oliver died. I still missed him, but not in the way that I had for the past two years, when he was standing right in front of me and still not there. It was the way I used to miss him, on the nights he didn’t come home or when he’d go boxing and leave me alone at the shop. The way I’d missed him in the days right after he died, missed him so much I had to bring him back.

I didn’t know what was going to happen now—to him, or to me, or any of us. But that didn’t matter so much right then. My brother was out there: alive, and whole, and himself.

“Do you think things will be better?” I asked.

“For Oliver, or for clockwork men and Shadow Boys in general?”

“Either. Both.”

“The clockworks that stayed in Geneva won’t have an easy time after what happened. I don’t think your brother will either, no matter where he goes. It probably won’t be good for any of us for a long time, but I like to think that crooked things have a way of straightening themselves out.”

“Someday,” I said.

“Someday,” she repeated. “And what a world that will be.”

Sleep was closing in, but I focused on the feeling of Clémence beside me, her skin against mine, her heart beating through her shoulder blades and into my chest. “Will you come with me to see Mary?” I mumbled.

She didn’t answer for a moment, and I was afraid I was going to fall asleep and miss her answer. Then she said, “If you want me to.”

“I do,” I replied, and I fell asleep just as her hand fumbled its way into mine.

A
week later, I sat in the front room of the Shelleys’ house in Turin. It was warmer in Italy than it had been in Switzerland, and the combination of clear winter sunlight coursing through the windows and a roaring fire made the room stifling.

January 1, 1819. The first day of the new year.

I had cleaned up as best I could. There was nothing to be done about my bashed-up face, and my arm was back
in a sling, but before we left Ornex, Morand had found a jacket that nearly fit me, and my boots had shined up nicely. I still felt shabby. The Shelleys weren’t living as well as they had in Geneva, but it was a good deal finer than what I was accustomed to.

Mary was on the chaise across the room, her shoulders sagging so that she seemed to sink back into the upholstery. Percy Shelley stood at the fireplace, staring pointedly away from anyone. His dirty-blond hair was pulled into sleek pigtail and he wore a well-tailored tailcoat in midnight blue. Silhouetted against the fireplace in his fine clothes, he looked like a figure in a painting. When I’d arrived and Mary had introduced us, he’d gripped my hand harder than I thought he needed to, and his gaze had almost been as sharp as Jiroux’s. Perhaps he recognized me as Victor Frankenstein, or had heard other, truer stories about me. Or perhaps he hadn’t known I existed until Clémence and I showed up on their doorstep, the same way I hadn’t known of him until I kissed Mary on the shore of Lake Geneva.

The Shelleys had been easy enough to find. Gossip followed them like a rank odor, and we hadn’t even left Ornex before someone told us that Mary had traveled from Geneva to Turin on Christmas Eve. Our arrival had been uncomfortable, to be generous about it. Mary had hidden her shock poorly; Shelley hadn’t even tried to hide his, or the anger that came close on its heels. He’d objected
to my proposition and laughed at my poor attempts at extortion. As much as I knew about Mary, I had little ammunition against them. Their reputation was already so wretched that I could hardly do it further damage. Shelley had shouted at me for a while, and I’d endured it with a blank face in spite of the fear sitting heavy inside me that I wouldn’t be able to keep the promise I’d made to Oliver.

Mary had said very little while Shelley raged, and she’d made no move to stop him. But she caught me at the door as I left and asked me quietly to come back the next day. When I arrived, there was a small, round man sitting in the armchair beside the fire, clutching a notepad while a white-faced Shelley stood at the mantelpiece. He was a reporter, Mary explained to me, from an English newspaper, stationed in Turin. She had invited him—without asking Shelley—to report on what she had promised him would be the story of the year. Which was a big claim, considering we were only a day in.

“Mrs. Shelley,” the reporter prompted, and Mary looked up at him. She had broken off midsentence and was staring out the window.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and tugged at her necklace. “Could you repeat the question?”

“What was your intention when you wrote
Frankenstein
?”

“I had no intention but to tell an imagined story,” Mary replied. “I never meant to cast my allegiance to
one side, or for my novel to be such a rallying point for oppression and fear.” Her gaze flitted to me, the moment too brief to be called eye contact.

The reporter scribbled something down on his pad, then dipped his pen again. “Why did you choose to publish the novel anonymously?”

“That was my suggestion,” Shelley interrupted. “We wanted to see if the book had merit on its own without my surname attached to it.”

Mary’s mouth tightened into a frown, but she said nothing.

The reporter made a note, then looked back to her. “And now you will be republishing under your own name?”

“Yes,” Mary replied. “I want everyone to know I wrote it.”

“There has been a good deal of speculation, Mrs. Shelley, particularly with the recent uprising in Geneva, that your novel was based on an incident surrounding the late Dr. Basil Geisler and his work.”

My hand flexed on the arm of my chair. There had been no mention of Mary or the resurrected man in the official reports out of Geneva, and only a hint that the rebellion might have been sparked by
Frankenstein
. The unofficial reports had ranged from laughable to shockingly close to the truth. In Ornex alone, I’d heard stories that included the resurrected man and
Frankenstein
,
as well as Mary. But no mention of my own name, or Oliver’s.

Mary pursed her lips but managed to keep her tone light when she spoke. “I don’t know anything about the uprising.”

“Really?” The reporter leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, and his mustache twitched. “Because I heard that you were seen in Switzerland just before—”

“Move on,” Shelley growled from his post at the mantel.

The reporter sat back with a wary glance at Shelley, then ran his finger down his pad like he was finding his place again. “Could you tell me, Mrs. Shelley, where precisely the inspiration for the novel came from? If not from truth, that is.”

Mary looked to Shelley, but he kept his back to her. For one gut-twisting second, I thought she was going to change her mind and leave me with the shards of another broken promise. But then she said, so softly the reporter and I both leaned closer, “It came to me in a dream.”

“A dream?” the reporter repeated, and he sounded disappointed.

“While my husband and I were in Geneva, some of our friends were having a competition to see who could write the best ghost story, but I couldn’t think of anything. Then one night I dreamed of a student, kneeling, with a corpse made of gears and cogs stretched out before him. And then by the working of the engine placed inside, the monster came to life.”

“So none of it is based on true events?” the reporter asked. “There is no Dr. Frankenstein, and no resurrected man?”

“No,” Mary said, and this time she looked at me. Met my eyes, and touched her fingers to her heart. “It’s only a story.”

There were a few more questions after that; then the reporter stood up and shook hands with all of us. “I don’t think I caught your name,” he said when he reached me.

“He’s a friend of the family,” Shelley interjected.

“Well, good to meet you, friend of the family.” I could see him reaching for his pad again. “Would you care to comment on anything?”

“No,” I said flatly. “No, I would not.”

Shelley watched the reporter leave through a gap in the drapes. Then he twitched them shut and rounded on Mary and me. “How dare you go behind my back,” he snapped at Mary.

She smoothed the front of her dress and said calmly, “It’s not your choice, Percy. It’s my book, and I want people to know that.”

“This had nothing to do with credit, it’s because of
him.
And you—” He swiveled his gaze to me. “You have no right to be in my house. You’ve done your damage, now get out.”

“Don’t be cruel,” Mary said.

“I want him out,” Shelley snapped, and he stalked from the room, coattails swinging.

Mary looked like she might cry, so I said quickly, “It’s all right. I need to go. We’ve got a journey.”

Mary helped me into my coat and followed me out onto the front step. Clémence was waiting at the end of the drive, sitting with her back against one of the gateposts. When she saw us, she stood up, but didn’t come closer.

“Is Oliver all right?” Mary asked me.

It was such a stupid question after everything she’d done that I was tempted to say something just as thoughtless back, but I swallowed that and said instead, “I hope so.”

“Will you see him again?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” A gust of wind caught me under my coat, and I shivered. I looked down the drive at Clémence, who raised her hand. I nodded, then looked back at Mary. “I should go.”

She glanced at the house, then back at me, and tugged at her necklace. “I have to tell you something. I probably shouldn’t . . . but this may be my last chance, and I need you to know that when we first met, you weren’t wrong in thinking I was a bit in love with you. I was. And I think . . . I think I still am. Being with you again reminded me of that. And I think we could make each other happy. You could stay here in the city. We could see each other. See what
happens. And I just think it would be good . . . for both of us . . .” She paused, and took a deep, shaky breath. “I want you to stay with me.”

I had waited two years to hear her say that, but my heart didn’t swell like I expected it to. It didn’t even stir. It was two years later than it needed to be, and there was too much between us, too many dark, jagged things filling the holes she’d left behind.

So I said, “No, Mary. I can’t.”

“Oh. That’s . . . unexpected.” She looked away, face turned into the wind so that it tugged her hair backward in a thick spiral. “Is it her?” she asked, and I followed her gaze down the drive to where Clémence was still standing straight as a soldier, watching us but out of earshot. “It’s all right if it is,” she added. “I just want to know.”

“It’s not Clémence,” I said, and it wasn’t.

Mary pressed her chin to her chest, and I thought for a moment she was crying, but when she spoke her voice was steady. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything. I’m an idiot.”

“You’re not an idiot,” I said. “You’re just . . .” I paused, not sure how I meant to finish.
You’re not who I thought you were
was the first thing that crossed my mind, but instead I said, “You’re just too late.”

She took my hand and squeezed it. “Take care of yourself, Alasdair.”

“You too,” I said.

She nodded once more, eyes still down, then turned and retreated back inside the house. The door shut behind her, so softly it barely made a sound.

I walked down to where Clémence was waiting. The wind whipped her hair around her face, but she made no move to push it away.

“Everything all right?” she asked.

I almost told her about Mary’s invitation to stay, but changed my mind at the last second. Instead I said, “Yes,” stumbling a bit on the lie, but Clémence didn’t ask.

“We could stay here another night,” she said as we turned off the drive and onto the street, “or leave now, if you feel up to it. Are you going back to Ornex?”

“For now. I think I should be with my parents for a while. There are things I need to explain.”

“And then?”

I put my hands in my pockets and took a deep breath. Freedom was still so unfamiliar that it felt like an empty space around me, gaping and vast, but alive with possibilities. “I still want to go to university. Not Ingolstadt—not anymore—but somewhere I can learn more about medicine and mechanics, and do research, and work with people who don’t think you’d have to be mad to be a Shadow Boy.”

“Well, you’ll certainly have a leg up on all other applicants. I’d bet none of them can put ‘reanimating the dead’ on a list of qualifications.” I snorted, and she
ducked her head with a half smile.

“What about you?” I asked.

“What about me?”

“Where are you going?”

“I don’t know,” she said, and the words came out in the middle of a frosty sigh. “I don’t know if there’s anywhere I can go.”

“Don’t say that. You can go wherever you want to.”

“And do what? I’ve got no skills.”

“You could find something.”

She pushed her nose down into her coat collar so that her voice came out muffled. “There’s nowhere I’d fit. When I joined up with the rebellion, it was mostly because I thought I’d found somewhere people could know what I was made of and still want to speak to me. But I wasn’t like the other clockworks, and I wasn’t like Oliver either. No one would listen to me, or trust me, not like they did him.”