“You’re a hustler. You remind me of a younger version of me.” And then he barks a laugh that turns into a fit of coughing. His spine knocks hollowly against the back of the chair. “Just don’t lose focus on the Stone,” he reminds me. “Juliet’s husband still doesn’t respond to your letters?”
I shake my head.
“Perhaps you need to pay another visit to Gardner.”
I nod, fingering the vial of Vala’s Peace.
“Now, admittedly, comes the hardest part,” I say. “Finding a human to . . . practice on.” It’s a turning point, the edge of the knife. I consider the mouse bodies that mounted in piles over the months of my failed attempts.
Phineas cocks his head toward the clanking of the sour-faced maid in the next room who is scrubbing splotches from the stolen silver.
“I doubt anyone would miss her,” he says, lighting a cigar.
I stand. Push back the small voice in my head that pleads reason, pleads restraint. Push it back until I simply can’t hear it anymore.
“Laurette?” I call, reaching into the cabinet for Larkin’s chloroform. “Can you help me with something in the cellar?”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
February 4, 1943
Keats. Keats for music.
And Freud for teeth.
I crumple the list I’ve made about Shakespeare’s disappeared seven years—?that he was looking for something valuable, that he was ill or escaping punishment for illegal poaching. But I can’t quite bring myself to put Mother’s book away again. I like the way the pages look covered in her handwriting and mine, as if our words are holding hands.
“Aila!” Mrs. Cliffton calls me to the kitchen.
“Tea?” she asks.
I nod, rubbing my hands together.
“Put some water on for us, would you?”
Genevieve has the night off, but she’s left a big pot of stew simmering on the stove. Mrs. Cliffton brings a ladle of it to her lips, then sorts through an array of spices. A flowering sprig of rosemary sticks out from her bun.
“Aila, how does Miles seem to you lately?” she asks as I light the stove under the kettle.
“Better,” I say. “Though it’s hard to be certain.”
“Things seem to have quieted down,” Mrs. Cliffton agrees thoughtfully. “Do you know what the trouble was about at school? He seemed hesitant to tell me.”
I pick at the crescent of my thumbnail. “It was about Mother. The things people say.”
Mrs. Cliffton sighs. “I figured as much.” She sets out two mugs for us. Through the window I watch Will disappear into the garden shed and leave with his toolbox. My old curiosity sparks.
“Your mother wasn’t perfect,” Mrs. Cliffton says, paging through the rows of tea bags. “But she did a lot of good here.” She curls her fingers around the white threads of two mint teas. “I want you to know that.”
“I think you’re the only person who believes it,” I say. A cluster of burrs appears at the back of my throat.
“You probably never knew this, but your mother set me up with Malcolm.” Mrs. Cliffton plucks the kettle off the stove just as it starts to howl. “We might have wound up together anyway, but Juliet was the one who recognized that we had feelings for each other and pushed to make it happen.” She smiles. “So I suppose that without Juliet, there’s a chance Will might not have even existed.”
I take the steaming mug from Mrs. Cliffton. The burrs recede a bit.
“And, as I think Malcolm told you, your mother had a hand in creating the first Variants. She found us the thistle.”
I watch the tea bleed into the water.
