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The man sneered, his mouth puckering with greed as he tried to sound casual. “Lots of other buyers these days. Buyers who pay in advance. Always a demand with the university. He thinks he can just come back and claim the best goods again?”
“What do you mean?”
“The tallest! The strongest! The strangest! Has a taste for the unusual, your Henry. Treats me like a market where he can haggle over the price of apples! I have not missed him, no, not one bit. But I have missed the payments he owes me.”
His eyes kept darting to my purse, and I resisted the urge to clamp my hand over it. I was holding my cloak to hide my dress, and any movement might reveal my true state.
“I see,” I said coldly. “I will have to consult with him as to whether he wishes to continue to give you his patronage.”
The man’s face twitched as he attempted to smile. “I can give you a deal. I just received two bodies—foreigners, no family to claim them. No one to complain if the bodies never find the cemetery grounds. But you pay now and pay what he owes me.”
I stepped back, failing to hide the revulsion on my face. How could Victor have stooped so low? How could he have associated with such a repulsive man and such soul-curdling activities?
“Where are you going?” He lunged forward and grabbed my wrist, his hand cold. I shuddered at his grasp, imagining what else those hands had touched that day.
“I am leaving, sir. Let me go.”
He yanked me closer. My cloak flapped open, and he noted my appearance, growing rougher. “Not until I get what Henry owes me! You think I am dirty because of what I do? That he can stay away and be clean and fancy?” He turned toward the open door, pulling me along with him. “I will show you what filth your Henry trades in. I will show you what he thinks he can forget debts on.”
I should have screamed. I knew that I should be screaming. But I could not manage it. I had been too well trained in silence. But I could not go into that building. I had seen horrors this trip; I did not wish to see any more. And I did not want to know what he would do with me behind closed doors.
My heart racing, my tongue frozen, I reached up to my hat with my free hand and pulled one of the long, sharp pins used to keep it in place. And then I stabbed that pin down into the man’s wrist as hard as I could, taking care to aim for the space between the two bones of the forearm so it would go all the way through.
He screamed in surprise and pain, releasing me. I turned and ran.
His angry shouts followed me, but thankfully, footsteps did not. When I was safely back within the city walls, I leaned against a brick building and struggled to catch my breath. My heart continued pounding as though I were still being pursued.
I wished I could not imagine Victor doing business with him, but I could. Victor had left, possessed by the need to defeat death, and without me here to temper his obsessions, he had descended to hellish depths.
I had driven Victor to this madness. I would repair it in any way necessary.
* * *
—
Secluded as we were across the river, our only regular company Henry and occasionally his parents, we managed to avoid most illnesses that took toxic root and spread like mold in Geneva during the long winter months.
When I was nearly fifteen, however, illness found me and staked its claim with ferocity to make up for lost time. I fell into darkness and pain. Doctors must have been called, but I was sensible of none of it, lost to the violence of a body destroying itself. My world burned. It ached.
And then it felt like nothing at all.
The border between life and death had fascinated Victor for so long. I had crossed that border coming into this world—changing places with my mother, who died as I was born. I felt certain that once again I was on the edge of it. On one side: Victor. Justine. Henry. The life I had built with such vicious determination. On the other: the unknown. But the unknown beckoned, promising rest from pain. Rest from sickness. Rest from the endless striving and manipulating and working, working, working just to keep my place in the world.
But a cool hand on my brow broke through. Whispered pleadings, an endless stream of them, led me from those dark, unknown lands like a trail of crumbs glowing white in the moonlight to lead me home. After a time, days or weeks, I finally opened my eyes to find my determined savior.
Madame Frankenstein.
I had expected Victor or Justine, the two in the house who loved me. But I had underestimated how much Madame Frankenstein depended on me. How terrified she was of what would happen if I were to leave them.
Her eyes shone with mania, and she pressed my hand to her hot, dry lips. “There you are, Elizabeth. You can never leave. I told you that. You have to stay here, with Victor.”
I had not the strength to nod. My th
roat, parched and cracked, could not force out the words. But I held her gaze with my own, and we were in agreement.
Then Madame Frankenstein crawled onto the bed next to me and fell asleep.
Within a day I had regained enough strength to sit up and take some nourishment. But my gain was Madame Frankenstein’s loss. She had disobeyed the doctor’s orders, exposing herself to my illness in order to nurse me. The fever had abandoned me and claimed another prize.
