Her Dark Curiosity (41 page)

“There’s no clock—” I started.

He took it from me and closed it in one snap. “You wish me to join you? Very well. Let us be gone from this place.”

His voice was heavy, almost a mockery of himself, as he held his wrists out. I closed the shackles around his hands guiltily, wishing we didn’t have to treat him as a prisoner, angry at the Beast for making it necessary. I uncapped the syringe of valerian and injected it into his arm. He winced as the drug wove its way through his system, causing his body to shudder. I was relieved that his eyes, when they met mine, had cleared at least briefly.

I helped him to his feet but he paused at the door. “It isn’t that I don’t care for Lucy,” he said. “There is much to admire. But Juliet . . .” He paused. “Ah well, it doesn’t matter anymore.”

I twisted the ring on my finger anxiously as we made our way up the stairs, through the kitchen toward the waiting carriage. He was being strangely quiet again, and a premonition that something was wrong itched at the back of my neck and made me throw sidelong glances at him in the gas-lit courtyard.

His face was the same; no sign of the Beast. What was it about him that had changed? He came with me too easily, as though he’d given up, content to be a puppet pulled along at my feet.

Montgomery locked the townhouse behind us, then climbed into the driver’s seat with a bandaged Balthazar. Elizabeth was already inside the carriage with the professor’s cuckoo clock in her lap, the best thing she had to remember him by. Lucy sat next to her with Sharkey, a bit of twine tied around his neck as a leash. His tail thumped at the sight of Edward. We climbed inside and, with a tap on the roof, Montgomery started the carriage.

He drove the horses with haste. Elizabeth clutched the clock, lost in her own thoughts. I marveled that she was so willing to help us, until I remembered that without the professor she had no family save me, her new ward, and that family meant much to her. Neither she nor the professor had spoken much of their deceased relatives. Only that they’d been Swiss by ancestry but Scottish by birth, descendants of an illegitimate line of unscrupulous scientists not so unlike my own father. Maybe for this reason, Elizabeth saw a younger version of herself in me as well.

Edward coughed, pulling his coat tighter the best he could with his wrists bound. Lucy rested a hand on his knee, but then frowned and slid closer to touch his forehead.

“Edward, you’re burning up.”

“A fever. That’s all.”

I studied him in the faint light as we bounced over the streets. Sweat poured down his brow despite the cold night. He doubled over, coughing harder, a deep rattling that came from too far down in his chest. Even Elizabeth seemed unsettled.

“Edward . . . ,” I started.

He squeezed his pocket watch and coughed more, starting to shake. I inched forward and took his hand in mine, feeling for his temperature. He was sweating all over.

“My god, Edward, what have you done?” I whispered.

His fist tightened over the watch and I ripped it from his weak fingers, inserting my fingernail into the seam to open it. What had he been keeping in here, in the space meant for a clock? All those times he’d toyed with it, I’d thought it nothing but a bauble.

I lifted it to my nose—odorless. On closer inspection, I found a faint trace of white powder. The watch fell from my hands and clattered on the floor.

Arsenic.

My heart stopped. My breath stilled.

The horses were moving faster now; we must have left the city center for the open roads of the country. It didn’t matter how fast they moved, or if we turned around and rushed to a hospital. There was no antidote for this poison.

“Why?” I whispered. Neither Elizabeth nor Lucy had seen the powder, and for a few moments the poison was a secret only Edward and I shared.

He doubled over again. “You know why. Someday soon, the Beast would take control. He’d kill one of you. You’ve protected this city tonight in your way; now let me protect it in mine. I’ve tried to end my life a dozen times but he was always too strong—until now. I’m becoming him, but he’s becoming me, too—he can no longer stop me.”

I fell back against the cushions, stunned. I wanted to argue. I wanted to scream. I wanted to do anything but sit on this soft carriage seat in my fine coat and watch him die.

Lucy gasped as she realized what had happened. “Stop the carriage!” she cried.

But neither Montgomery nor Balthazar, outside in the wind, heard her. Lucy screamed as Edward convulsed and fell onto the bottom of the carriage.

“Now it’s done,” he coughed. “The worst of your father’s creations, finished.”

“Edward, no!” I collapsed next to him. “It didn’t have to be this way. I would have found a cure.”

He convulsed again, pressing a hand to his head as though it ached, the skin around his eyes and mouth turning dark.

“Elizabeth, help him!” I pleaded.

She set the clock aside and felt his pulse, brow furrowed. The carriage hit a rut and the cuckoo clock tumbled to the floor with a crash of gears and squawk of the wooden bird. Squawking and squawking, each time the carriage jostled. Furious, I reached over and ripped the back panel off, clawing at the gears until they came loose in a terrible mess and the squawking stopped.

“There’s no cure for as much as he’s taken,” Elizabeth said, releasing Edward’s wrist. For the first time since I’d known her, she looked lost. “He’ll be dead before we reach Derby.”

Lucy wailed everything that I wanted to but couldn’t express. I slumped to the bottom of the carriage amid the wreckage of the clock. I picked up the little wooden bird, thinking of the professor, how I’d failed him, too. There was an inscription I’d never noticed before, written on the underside of the bird in German.

Für meine liebe Cousine Elisabeth, VF.

To my darling cousin Elizabeth, VF.

The clock was an heirloom; the inscription a century old. It wasn’t
this
Elizabeth then, and the V must stand for a different Victor. I started to toss the bird back into the wreckage of the clock, yet at the last minute paused, and looked at the inscription again.

I turned to Elizabeth as a strange sensation grew in the corners of my mind. Elizabeth and Victor von Stein—they must have been named after ancestors of the same names. I pieced together everything I knew of the von Stein family, from those nameless portraits, the journals in German, even the ancient doll in the nursery stitched together by the hands of a long-ago surgeon.

There was only one conclusion to draw, only one dark science that must be detailed in their ancestors’ journals, only one explanation for their names.

“But that’s not the end, is it, Elizabeth?” My own hands trembled at the thought. “Death, I mean. It isn’t the end.”

She regarded me as one might a madwoman. “What are you saying?”

“Your family was from Switzerland. They were illegitimate. They changed their name, didn’t they?”

She didn’t respond with even as much as a nod. She was clever, perhaps far cleverer than me, and yet I had figured out the von Stein secret.

“What was their name, Elizabeth?” I demanded.

“Frankenstein!” she cried. “Their name was Frankenstein before they changed it. Is that what you wished to hear?”

Lucy gaped. “But that’s just an old story!”

I had heard the tales too, like most children. But I also remembered Father mentioning the name
Frankenstein
in his study with his colleagues. At the time I’d thought they were swapping ghost stories, until I realized that grown men didn’t sit around at night telling stories.

“Victor Frankenstein was my great-great-uncle,” she admitted quietly. “He died in 1794. He’d traveled to the Orkney Islands and fathered a bastard son with a Scottish lord’s daughter—that son was the professor’s grandfather. What you’ve heard are only rumors. But all rumors, Victor Frankenstein’s tale especially, are rooted in truth.”

“That’s why the King’s Club wanted your family journals, isn’t it?” I asked. “They knew. They wanted Victor Frankenstein’s research.”

“Yes,” she said, her voice revealing nothing. “They wanted those journals. My great-great-uncle was very precise in his notes. And I’ve helped you because this far, you’ve been merely victims to dangerous science like his. But what you are suggesting crosses that line. It’s a hard line to come back from. My uncle dabbled when he was younger, but saw the errors of his ways before it was too late. Your father wasn’t as fortunate. If you cross that line, Juliet, you’ll be in danger of becoming just like him.”

Unconscious at our feet, Edward’s fingertips had already turned black.

“Edward’s not just anyone,” I said. “He’s Montgomery’s blood relation. He sacrificed himself to protect all of us.” My voice dropped. “If he hadn’t poisoned himself, I know I could have cured him in time.”

Elizabeth leaned closer. “Think hard, Juliet. It’s only a handful of scientists who are ever even faced with this decision. The smart ones turn back. Only the mad push forward.”

Edward would be dead within hours. He
was
like kin to me, my father his creator as much as mine. Was Edward worth more than my soul? My sanity?

I was already a murderer, after all. Already damned.

As Edward lay dying and my thoughts turned fast as the carriage wheels, the horses whisked us away, far north, where the heath grew and wind twisted the trees, to a place where people were forgotten.

To a place we’d never be found.

To a place where I might lose myself to the same dark madness that had claimed my father.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

T
O MY EDITOR,
K
RISTIN
Rens: You know exactly what to say to inspire me to take my drafts to the next level. Taking this book from the spark of an idea to the finished version has been a wonderful and challenging journey, and I’m so lucky to have you as my guide.

To my agent, Josh Adams, and Tracey and Quinlan Lee at Adams Literary: Any author would be fortunate to be on your team. You guys are the whole package!

My thanks to the Balzer + Bray and HarperCollins team: assistant editor Sara Sargent, publicist/miracle worker Caroline Sun, designers Alison Klapthor and Alison Donalty, copyeditors Renée Cafiero and Anne Dunn, marketing mavens Emilie Polster, Stephanie Hoffman, Margot Wood, and Aubry Parks-Fried. I owe my book’s beautiful design, marketing savvy, and book shimmies to you guys.

To my critique partners and writing support team: Megan Miranda, Ellen Oh, Carrie Ryan, Constance Lombardo, Andrea Jacobsen, Melissa Koosmann, the Bat Cave superheroes, Friday the Thirteeners, and Lucky 13s. This book is a thousand times better for your insight.

To my wonderful family: Peggy & Tim for reading my drafts and being my biggest cheerleaders; Lena for being a constant inspiration and the hardest worker I know; and Nancy, Gene, Marilyn, & the Shepherd clan for your enthusiasm and accepting me into your family, weird book ideas and all.

And lastly, to my husband, Jesse: I can’t possibly put into words everything you mean to me. Because of your encouragement, I became a writer. Because of your support, I became an author. With you life is an adventure, and I can’t wait to see where it takes us next.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

MEGAN SHEPHERD
is also the author of
The Madman’s Daughter
. She lives in Asheville, North Carolina. You can visit her online at www.meganshepherd.com.

www.epicreads.com

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ALSO BY MEGAN SHEPHERD

THE MADMAN’S DAUGHTER

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COPYRIGHT

Balzer + Bray is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

Her Dark Curiosity. Copyright © 2014 by Megan Shepherd. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-0-06-212805-8 (trade bdg.)

EPub Edition June 2013 ISBN 9780062128058

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