Page 39 of Adam, Mine

Victor couldn’t help the snort of disbelief that came from him. Alain wiggled his eyebrows at him in mutual amusement.

“At the very least when you come to my doors, you get a crust of bread, a glass of wine, fresh fruit from my tree. The comfort of my surroundings, the warmth from my hearth,” Alain protested with another smile. “I’d say any unpleasantries are more to proclivity and personality, and even those vary from man to man. Mr. Fitz enjoys the pleasure of my company quite a bit.”

“Fitz seems to enjoy the pleasure of most people’s company,” Victor replied dryly.

Alain doubled over with laughter, running a hand through his bright hair before looking up at Victor—flushed and happy.

“Oh, Victor, you’re very funny when you wish to be. I sincerely hope you survive this.”

And there it was again, a wave of nausea.

Alain picked up the watering can. “That is all for today, I think. Next time you come to my door without an invitation, you’ll pay in two pints. Get out.”

Victor couldn’t leave this house fast enough. He scrambled to his feet, folded up his papers and shoved them in his coat.

When he was a hundred feet away and had the courage to look back over his shoulder, there was Alain. Watering his garden with Victor’s blood.

Victor returned to his inn hastily and took a long and expensive bath to wash the scent of Alain’s flowers from his nose.

Seethe

Victor tossed and turned in these perfumed French sheets. His window didn’t have a curtain and the moon was bright and relentless.

He ran Alain’s words over in his head. Turned them around for inspection. The devastation of this could have overwhelmed him—would have overwhelmed him—if he didn’t feel in some way . . . unsurprised.

Victor looked at his hands, then let his arms fall back down to the mattress.

In pursuit of his own damnation, he had killed twenty-one rats, fifty-two cats, one dog, and one man. Spent thousands of marks and many months bent to the task, feverish and determined. He opened doors to upper society and had the respect and the fear of people who mattered. This didn’t have to be an end if he was clever and lucky. It could be a stumbling block.

In some ways, he understood Alain in all of his strangeness. The French alchemist was the master of his own enchanted domain. He had the respect of the nearby town for his physician skills, and the freedom to chase his scarlet pleasures. The privacy to work without interruption. To focus his all.

Victor did not enjoy having his face licked. But he did like the idea of becoming the sort of man who could do as he pleased—to such an outrageous extent such as that—and get away with it.

Alain was allowed to live in duplicity between the cookie-cutter precociousness of his homemaking and his private palace of blood. It was an ideal that Victor strived to replicate within his own life when he got the chance.

More, Victor recognized the manic shine of Alain’s eyes, the flat empty space beyond them. His own eyes looked the same. Victor wondered if all of theirs did, alchemists. He hadn’t had the time to check at the party, and Mr. Sauer was simply an Archivist. He had the gaze of a professor or librarian.

Elias, on the other hand, had the gaze of prey. Open and hungry and curious . . . cautious—but not enough to avoid being eaten.

Victor wondered how he was doing. Roaming the streets of Ingelstad, burned and cut. He felt like he would know if Elias had expired of his wounds. If Elias was no longer living, Victor wouldn’t still feel dizzy, feel this ache in his chest, feel the spectra of eyes following him wherever he went.

Particularly if Alain was right about the spirit. Perhaps, when Elias did die, all of what they shared would rush to Victor. One hundred twenty-five percent vitality would likely feel divine for only a moment before Elias’s soul departed.

But, if all he could settle for was sixty-two percent of a soul, that would do. It wouldn’t hamper his work; it might make it easier. Tomorrow would start another day of travel, this time by carriage and then again by boat. Victor had been all over Europe, but the Netherlands and Russia would be new, and he had to travel by water to Russia to avoid Germany completely because of his crimes.

He sighed and wondered about the weather.

Some days Victor still dreamed of the cats, rats, and mice.

He would like not to.

Wave

The feeling of being watched was manageable when he was alone. The strangeness of it would never fade, but alone he could be sure that it was this . . . curse . . . nothing more.

In a crowd, bustling and loud, it felt dangerous. French pickpockets were less aggressive than Italian ones but quicker, more efficient.

Victor had things on his person that he could not afford to lose.