Camille (15 page)

Strider raised a dark eyebrow.

“He hypothesized that cells, those things you
see through the microscope, divide to make new cells. He also
theorized that the walls around a cell allow growth…” I stopped
when I realized he was staring straight at me but not hearing
anything I said. “Forgive me. I’m rambling.”

“You are like no other girl I’ve met,” he
said.

“I don’t know whether to consider that a
compliment or an insult.”

“You have to analyze everything, Camille.
It’s a compliment. You are peculiar but in a very agreeable way.”
He popped a chunk of bread into his mouth and looked at me
warmly.

I fidgeted with the notes on the table. “The
rain has stopped,” I blurted louder than needed considering the
only other person in the room was sitting a tabletop away.

Strider rose and walked to the window. “Looks
like it will be a clear sky tonight. We should sit on the front
stoop and watch the stars.”

“I’d like that.” A small noise came from the
lab. Curiosity gnawed at me, but I knew never to disturb Dr.
Bennett when the door was closed. I hoped and prayed that he was
making progress with his study but pessimism kept sneaking its ugly
head into my thoughts. I moved to the comfort of the settee, and
Strider sat next to me. I rested my head against his hard shoulder
and through the comfort of the fire and his nearness, I dozed
off.

Strider’s prediction came true. The navy blue
sky was like rich satin and as the last bits of the Sun’s energy
drifted away, the stars appeared. Taking its usual place amongst
the glittering balls of light was the crescent moon, weak and dim,
unable to produce its own light, instead having to steal what it
could from the Sun.

Dr. Bennett strode purposefully out of the
lab, picked up a chunk of bread, balanced a cup of tea on a saucer,
and shoved a handful of notes under his arm. Then he returned to
his lab and shut the door behind him. But in his brief escape from
work, I’d seen his face. It was stretched into a weary frown, a
silent confirmation that things were not going well under the lens
of his scope.

Our stomachs full with cream covered bread,
Strider and I carried the wool throw from the sitting room out to
the front stoop and sat down. We sat closely so the small cover
could cross both our shoulders. A nervous laugh escaped my lips as
we huddled.

“What’s so amusing?’ Strider asked as he
scooted even closer to me for warmth. His leg pressed against
mine.

“I’m not sure. It just popped out. ‘Tis not
every day that I sit under a blanket with a boy.”

“Should I not sit so close?” He started to
scoot away, but I grabbed his arm. It was thick and solid.

‘No, it’s too cold without you under here.”
Heat constantly radiated off his skin. “You’re like a giant chunk
of coal.”

“I’ve been called many things but never a
piece of coal.”

“Perhaps I could have used a better
description, but somehow, the air is less frigid around you.”

“In that case. . .” He inched even closer and
our shoulders touched now too. His hand poked out from our wool
tent. “Look, the North star.” He pointed. “There, at the tip of the
bear’s tail.”

“A bear with a tail?”

“Aye, Ursa Minor. The little bear was placed
there next to Ursa Major, his mother.” His finger swept across the
sky. “Legend says that Zeus disguised himself and raped Callisto.
She bore him a son, Arcas. The goddess, Artemis was so angry she
turned Callisto into a bear. When Arcas was grown, he went hunting
and nearly shot his own mother. Zeus turned his illegitimate son
into a bear, as well, before placing them both in the sky.”

“Mythology is such nonsense.” I hugged my
knees to my chest attempting to make myself smaller. Suddenly, I
wanted to disappear under the blanket.

He looked down at me. “Tis romantic. If
everything were explained by science and logic, what a dull world
it would be.”

There was a terrible swelling in my throat
and my mouth felt dry. “And if everything were explained by pure
romance, what an ignorant world this would be.”

“Camille, what have I said to upset you?
Forgive me if my story offended you. It was something my brother
told me late at night to console me after one of my father’s
tirades.”

I shook my head. “I’m being absurd. Your
story didn’t offend me but part of it brought up a terrible
memory.”

Blindly, he searched for my hand under the
cover. When he found it, he wrapped his fingers around mine. “Your
father?”

I bit my lip to keep from talking, but the
words were too strong. They surged through. “I still remember the
night as if it were this moment. My father had been pacing like a
madman in the hallway. I’d chided him about wearing a groove in the
floor.” Another inappropriate laugh escaped my lips, but it was not
from the giddiness I’d felt earlier. It was from the near hysteria
I felt knowing that I was about to narrate the memory in its
entirety, something I had never done before. And not just to anyone
but to Nathaniel Strider who was now tied to all this.

“Emily and I sat on the pink damask sofa of
our drawing room. The rag doll my mother made me the Christmas
before her death was tucked into my lap. Moonlight flooded through
the window. Its unearthly glow made the roses on the wallpaper seem
real enough to pick. My sister and I’d spent many evenings in that
same room, snug and content. But that evening, though the hearth
blazed, a chill filled the room. And all the time, my father’s
heavy, anxious footsteps echoed through the house. Then he entered
the drawing room, our comfortable family meeting place. He knelt in
front of us. I will never forget the anguish in his face. His lips
were tight and bloodless, and his cheek twitched convulsively.”

Momentarily my voice was lost behind a sob.
Strider squeezed my hand. I swallowed hard to bring the words to
the surface. “My sweets, my loves, he’d called us, still unable to
control the spasm in his face. He drew out a small pistol and
handed it to me. It was so cold and heavy. You’re the strong one,
he assured me.” Another sob crept out. “I need you to hide
somewhere in the house. If the beast finds you, use this gun, he’d
said. The word beast kept charging through my mind. I remember a
violent shaking starting at my shoulders and making its way to my
hands. I had to grasp the pistol tightly to keep it from bouncing
to the floor. Father leaned forward and kissed us both on the
cheeks before rushing out of the room. Emily looked as if she had
turned to a pillar of salt. One breath and I could have collapsed
her into a shower of white grains over the plush cushions. I
grabbed her hand and pulled her down the stairway into the deserted
kitchen.”

Strider released my hand and lifted his thumb
to wipe a tear from my cheek. He leaned over and kissed the wetness
on my face then lowered his hand to find mine again.

“What a peculiar site I must have been with a
floppy doll tucked under my arm and a pistol hanging from the
fingers of that same arm. We ducked under the preparation table
where the cook plucked feathers from geese and twisted flour and
water into bread. My sister’s shallow breaths echoed through the
blackness.” I stopped for a moment to slow my own breath. It left
behind clouds of vapor in the cold night air. “The clock in the
drawing room clanged, and we both shot up and bumped our heads on
the solid wood above. Emily cried uncontrollably, and I squeezed my
eyes shut hoping when I opened them I’d wake from the nightmare.
But it was all too real. A noise came from my father’s room, a
sound that made every inch of me shudder. I had to hold my breath
to keep from retching.” I peered up at Strider.

He stared straight ahead now absorbing the
details of my horrid story. But the worst was yet to come. He must
have sensed my hesitation. “I want to hear all of it, Camille.” The
words shot out as if there was uncertainty behind them. His hand
tightened around my fingers and I gasped in pain. He released them
instantly but didn’t say anything else.

Beneath the warm cover, I hugged myself
tightly. “A hideous roar filled the stairwell, and a repellant odor
oozed down the stairwell. Then I saw her, my doll, in the middle of
the floor where I’d dropped her. I scooted out of our hiding spot,
grabbing the doll just as a terrible clamor exploded through the
kitchen. It was a sound that made thunder seem like a whisper. I
froze with my doll and the pistol. Someone pulled the gun from my
hand. There was a terrible pain in my arm followed by a blast that
lit the room as if lightning had broken through the walls. An
agonizing moan rolled through the darkness. Then silence. It did
not take long to recognize that the silhouette on the floor was my
father.”

Strider did not say a word. My head felt
lighter as if I’d removed bricks of lead from it. Absently, I had
moved even closer to him, so close I nearly sat on his thigh. His
face was turned down as he seemed to contemplate our shoes poking
out from the cover.

Then his voice floated up. “Bloody coward.
Why did he not take his own life rather than endanger the lives of
his daughters?”

His words were like a sharp slap. Never had I
considered that as an option. Never had I thought of my father as
being anything but splendid. Never had I considered him a coward.
And yet, Strider’s reaction, his offered proposal of how things
might have been handled differently rang painfully true. But I had
to defend my father’s honor.

“My father was the smartest, bravest man I
knew,” I said weakly. “And that night I discovered that I was not
the strong one.”

Strider twisted around and faced me. His skin
had paled. “You could have been killed. You and your sister. And he
would have been completely to blame. You were not weak. You faced
your own death rather than kill the father you loved.” His brown
eyes looked nearly black, but there was more there than repulsion
for my father’s actions. “I will not go like a coward.”

It was a statement that froze my heart. “Do
not think like that, Nathaniel. We will figure this out before…” I
peered up at the sky and the white crescent hanging overhead.

“Aye, before the next moon.” He sounded as
convinced as I felt. “Wait. The pain in your arm. Had you been
bitten as well?”

“There were four small punctures in my arm.
The skin had been broken but there was only a small amount of
blood. Since I never showed signs of transmutation, Dr. Bennett
concluded there had not been an exchange of fluids and therefore no
contamination. For once in my life, I’d been lucky.”

“For once? And what about the day you met
me?” His long arm snaked around my shoulders, and he pulled me
against him.

The clamor of a cab rolling down the street
was drowned out by the beating of his heart against my ear.
Suddenly, I wished for a Vesuvius style eruption, with lava and ash
to cover us, his arm round my shoulder and my face pressed against
him, frozen that way for eternity like the victims of Pompeii.

“Damn England for its lack of volcanoes,” I
muttered.

He rubbed his chin on the top of my head.
‘You’re a very odd girl, Camille. Very odd indeed.”

“Tell me, Cami, are you planning a visit to
Emily soon?” They were the first words in an otherwise still house.
Dr. Bennett spoke them from the small office he’d arranged for
himself. It was really more of storage place for his endless
collection of books and scientific papers. Most people would see
the cluttered space and think only an eccentric, disorganized man
would keep such an office. But if you asked for a certain volume or
subject, Dr. Bennett could go immediately to the correct stack and
pull the requested book.

He came to the door for my answer. His eyes
were swollen from fatigue, and his hair looked as if he’d just
stood on a windswept moor for hours.

“I have some red paper to bring her. I could
go today, I suppose, if you’ll lend me a few French chocolates.
Since it’s not a visitor day, I’ll need to bribe the girl at the
desk.”

Dr. Bennett’s face showed no indication of
how things were progressing. His lips turned down ever so slightly,
which could have been interpreted in many ways. It was never easy
to read a man of science. He bent down and retrieved a volume of
Histoire Naturaelle from beneath a desk which had only three and a
half legs but stood erect with the help of a stack of journals. It
was the desk where he kept the pistol.

He lifted the book he held. “I need a
refresher on morphological analysis of organic structures.” He
lowered the book and his eyes. “I’m afraid it’s not going as well
as I’d hoped. The elements closest to silver, while not as
virulent, are still poisonous to the organism.”

“What did you need from Emily?” I asked, but
I knew the answer.

“Your father’s journal.”

Strider stepped into the hallway with the
gloss of sleep in his dark eyes and his tousled hair curled up on
the collar of the borrowed white shirt. There was an almost little
boy quality to the pillow messed hair, yet he was purely masculine
standing there in his bare feet. “Forgive us, did we wake you?” I
asked.

He placed his hand over his stomach. “No,
twas my empty belly.”

“Breakfast is in the kitchen. But I must warn
you, Dutch is down there.” I glanced at his feet. “You might want
to put on your shoes.” The cat always managed to take several
effective swipes at Strider’s calves and ankles. I motioned with my
head. “Come, you’ll need fortification. You’re going to meet my
sister.”

Stomachs full of over salted oatmeal and
leftover ham, we trudged through the mob of people bustling through
Whitehall. There were no heavy clouds overhead, but dampness made
the late morning dreary. I tucked three wrapped chocolates and two
sheets of red paper in my coat pocket. The weather urged me to wear
my beloved trousers and hat. A breeze lifted the hat off my
forehead, and Strider tamped it back down.