Her Dark Curiosity (36 page)

A board creaked under my feet, and Elizabeth looked up.

“Juliet, you must look at this,” she said, voice brimming with excitement. “I think we’ve decoded a section of your father’s journal.”

In my exhaustion, my body mustered one last surge of hope. “Please tell me you’ve found the cure for Edward.”

She shook her head. “For you.”

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HarperCollins Publishers

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THIRTY-NINE

P
ERHAPS
I
SHOULD HAVE
felt a thrill at her words. After all, a cure is what I’d been searching for these past few months. Yet Lucy’s assertion—that Father’s science had been just as good as cruel—had given me so much to think about. Hadn’t Newcastle tried to argue the same thing? It was true that Edward was a phenomenal triumph of scientific achievement. Father had given animals the gift of speech. He’d created Balthazar, such a kind soul. Father’s science had even saved my life as a baby.

Had I misjudged his work this entire time?

What will you be without it
? the Beast had asked.

Montgomery hurried in, wiping his hands on a rag. “Did you say a cure?” he asked, hope in his voice. He picked up the loose pages to pore over the decoded text. “Juliet, look at this. Phosphorous salts—we were right there. But we were lacking something to staunch the cellules . . . my god, it’s so simple. We’ve been going about it all wrong.” His face, when he looked up from the page, was more handsome than I’d ever seen. “We can do it,” he said.

I forced a smile, and the motion alone started to give me hope. Yes—this is what I wanted. To be whole, to be pure, not to be plagued by these wracking spasms and hallucinations. I wanted to be just as honest a person as Montgomery, all the darkness caused by my affliction banished.

“What about for Edward?” Lucy asked. I turned to find her standing behind me, eyes still spotted with red, but cheeks dry.

Elizabeth exchanged a doubtful glance with Balthazar. “We haven’t finished decoding the journal entries,” she said. “There might still be something that can help him.”

“Then I’ll help you,” Lucy said, dragging out a chair. “What can I do?”

“Start with these,” Elizabeth said, handing her a stack of torn pages. “Compare the entries on these pages against this list of passages Balthazar is compiling. He can help you find the verse and line they reference.”

While they set to work, Montgomery snatched up the rest of the decoded pages and pulled me into the kitchen. He cleared the leftover dishes and set the crate from my workshop on the table. It still held the sweet-decay smell of the roses in my attic chamber, searing me with memories.

“It should be a relatively simple procedure,” he said. “We just need to include a binding agent to trick your body into thinking the animal organs are your own.”

I glanced back into the dining room, where Elizabeth and Lucy pored over the journal, while Balthazar flipped through the Bible chapters with big fumbling fingers. On the island he’d developed a fondness for religion, even daring to stand up to my father over reading a prayer at Alice’s funeral. It was a strange world when Balthazar was religious and my father a nonbeliever.

Could Lucy be right? Was Balthazar’s existence, like Edward’s, a blessing?

Some evils are necessary,
Newcastle had said.

I felt a nuzzle at my ankle and looked down to find Sharkey wagging his short tail. I bent to scratch his bony head, thinking of how much the little dog loved Balthazar, and Edward too. Dogs had a way of sensing if people were good.

“Juliet?” Montgomery asked. “I could use your assistance.”

“Of course,” I said, brushing my hands off. He handed me a beaker while he read through Father’s notes. My attention kept trailing to the cellar door, wondering if Edward also felt conflicted feelings over the prospect of the cure. Would he feel incomplete without the Beast? Would he miss it?

Montgomery and I worked through the afternoon and into the evening, not stopping even for tea. In the next room Elizabeth and Lucy exchanging frustrated words as they decoded page after page of useless observations. The first two serum batches failed, but Montgomery adjusted the ingredients, and as darkness fell outside on Christmas Eve, he held up a vial.

“This one has held steady for three minutes. I think it might work.” His blue eyes met mine. “Are you ready to try it?”

“Yes,” I said. “But let’s not tell the others yet. If it doesn’t work, I don’t want them to lose hope for Edward.”

A corner of his mouth pulled into a bittersweet smile. He went to the table and readied the syringe. I rolled up my sleeve, touching the soft skin on the inside of my elbow where I’d injected myself daily for my entire life. Soon, if this worked, I would never need to hold a syringe again.

“Are you ready?” came Montgomery’s gentle words.

I nodded, and he pressed the tip of the needle against my skin, sliding it expertly beneath the surface until he found a vein. I winced as the hot liquid spread. First came warmth. Then pain. My arm jerked suddenly as a white-hot light seared me and I knocked the syringe from Montgomery’s arm, heard the glass crunch under my bare foot, and felt a sting of pain as I stumbled toward the window.

“Juliet?” I was vaguely aware of his arms around me, keeping me from falling, but it felt like my body belonged to someone else.

“The window,” I rasped. “Air.”

He threw open the pane behind the herb garden, and I gasped cold evening air that still smelled of rosemary and thyme. The lights of the city beyond were too bright. I squeezed my eyes closed, covering them with my hand, but they still burned behind my eyelids. All the sounds of the city—coal plants churning, rumbling carriages, people snoring—were magnified a thousand times.

The pain diffused through me, steady and throbbing. The sensation of my bones separating themselves from flesh had never been so great. My fingers curled against the open window, reaching for something that wasn’t there. Wanting to hold myself together but finding nothing more than air. My body started to shake uncontrollably, though by its own accord or Montgomery shaking me out of some kind of fit, I wasn’t certain.

“Juliet,” he called. “Juliet!”

And then my vision telescoped back into focus, my hearing sharpened, my bones crunched together as the disparate parts of my body pulled back together. Bones along bones, muscles quiet beneath skin, like all the disparate notes of an orchestra tuning up in a concert hall, coming together with a single jerk of the conductor’s bow.

I blinked, returning to my senses. Montgomery’s hands on mine no longer felt rough as sandpaper. I rediscovered my own legs.

“How are you feeling?” he asked. I blinked again, taking in the room with eyes that no longer burned. A fire roared in the stove. Sharkey wagged his tail at my feet. I stretched my fingers out, studying them, waiting for the telltale pops and clicks.

They were beautifully silent.

“Well.” My voice was rusty, but I wet my dry lips. “I feel

well.”

Montgomery smoothed the sweat-soaked hair off my face. “It near enough killed you.”

I couldn’t stop looking at my hands. Moving them, flexing the fingers. Something was missing, and when I realized what it was I nearly laughed. The stiff, lingering pain I’d lived with forever was gone.

This
is what life was meant to feel like.

“Have some water,” Montgomery said. I clutched the glass, drinking it greedily, then thrust the empty glass back at him. I wanted to cry with relief. I had been so worried and conflicted over nothing; the Beast was wrong when he said that I would miss that twisted, ill part of me. I didn’t miss it at all. Even better, if we’d cured me, we’d certainly be able to cure Edward, too.

I steadied myself against the door, no longer dizzy, but head reeling with our success. From the dining room came sounds of Lucy and Elizabeth arguing, but I couldn’t focus on anything except this feeling.

Montgomery shook me again, holding my chin to study my eyes, checking for illness, but I
could feel
it, deep inside.

I was cured.

I wanted to laugh. I was whole now, just like I always wanted.

Montgomery had told me once that my unnatural curiosity about my father’s work was a symptom of my illness, just the same as the popping knuckles and pain behind my left eye. At the time I’d doubted him, wondering if it was truly possible to cure a dark heart, but now . . .

“You were right,” I said, kneading the fabric of his shirt, wanting to never let go. We’d be married now, live the type of normal life that normal people did, church on Sundays and dancing on Saturdays and maybe, years from now, even pushing a baby pram through the park.

He smiled, and I matched it, and I had never felt such sweet relief in my life.

If only Edward can feel this way too . . .

Sharp voices came from the dining room, rupturing the perfect stillness between Montgomery and me. Lucy and Elizabeth were arguing in heated voices, and Montgomery frowned and headed for the doorway. I started to hold him back, to savor a few more precious seconds of this calm I’d never known. But just because the world had turned right side up for me didn’t mean it had for everyone else.

“No!” came Lucy’s voice.

I stood in the doorway with Montgomery, watching as she balled her fists in the papers as Elizabeth tried to calm her. “It’s not true! It can’t be. . . .”

“There’s no other way,” Elizabeth said.

Lucy looked up suddenly and, through the layer of tears, her eyes met mine. Blinded by her own panic, she didn’t see how changed I was since the cure. She rushed over and grabbed me by the shoulders. “It’s all there, in the journal. The unknown ingredient. And it’s impossible to replicate. Juliet, there’s no hope for him!”

Her hands dug into me like claws. I pried them from my shoulders and rubbed them gently. “Don’t say that, Lucy. We won’t give up. We found a cure for me—we’ll find it for him, too.”

But Lucy couldn’t stop sobbing. She shook her head and then stumbled off to the kitchen for a rag to wipe her face. Balthazar pushed up from the table clumsily and went after her, offering her his handkerchief.

Outside, the church on the corner chimed six o’clock mass. I glanced at the window, where the family across the street appeared at the door with rosy faces as they made their way to the Christmas Eve service at St. Paul’s.

Elizabeth squeezed my hand. “I’m so relieved to hear your cure worked, Juliet, truly. But I’m afraid Lucy was right. We can’t do the same for Edward.”

“Why not?” I asked, baffled. My hands were still now. My heart cured of darkness.

“It came down to the unknown ingredient,” Elizabeth explained, clutching the letters.

I bit my lip. “What is it?”

To my surprise, her eyes shifted from me to Montgomery. She took a deep breath. “Montgomery, did Dr. Moreau ever draw your blood?”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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FORTY

T
HE SOUND OF
L
UCY’S
sobbing in the kitchen faded as the beating of my own heart grew. Beside me, Montgomery was tense as wrought iron.

“What are you suggesting?” he said.

“Did he, or didn’t he?” Elizabeth asked.

Montgomery glanced at me as he dragged a hand through his hair. “Yes—all the time. There were few illnesses on the island, but malaria was a threat. Only to us, not to the islanders. I caught it a few times, and he drew my blood to study the disease, the same with his own.”

I recalled the conversation I’d had with Edward when he first told me what he truly was.

Whose blood did my father use to make you
? I had asked.

I don’t know. I’ve never known,
Edward had said.

My God, it was all so clear now.

Elizabeth continued, “When we decoded the journal, we discovered that the unknown ingredient was human blood. Moreau hadn’t wanted to use his own because of his advanced age. He wanted strong young blood, and there was only one source to get it from.” She paused. “Edward was made from your blood, Montgomery.”

“Mine
?” His head shook in denial, even in anger, but I knew him better than that. There was an uncertainty to the way his hand hovered anxiously over his mouth, the same move he’d made a year ago when I’d found him again. That move betrayed tender emotions that he was afraid to admit. All his life he’d wanted a family. It was why he’d been so loyal to my father. It was why he’d kept Balthazar alive.
When I was young,
he had told me once,
I used to watch the other boys play in the street and wish I had a brother.

What a terrible twist of fate: Edward shared his blood—a brother of sorts. It meant if there was still some way to cure Edward, that Montgomery would have the family he’d so desperately wanted. Edward would, too.

Montgomery paced by the windows, and it struck me that this information might be far more welcomed by Edward than by Montgomery. Over the past year Montgomery’s sense of mercy had given way to a harsh desire for justice. Would this information soften him at all? Give me back the boy I’d fallen in love with?

Or would it only make him more determined to kill Edward?

“I don’t understand,” I said to Elizabeth. “If we only need Montgomery’s blood to cure Edward, it should be a relatively simple procedure.”

“That’s the problem, I’m afraid,” Elizabeth said. “Montgomery’s blood was tainted with malaria at the time. The malaria played some role in the composition of Edward’s genetic material; without that strain, we won’t be able to replicate it. It’s winter in London. The closest mosquito is halfway around the world.”

“It’s true, then,” I muttered. “There really is no hope for him.” Even spoken aloud, I couldn’t bring myself to believe it. I had always thought Edward’s and my fate were intertwined, and yet here I was cured, meant to live a long, healthy, wholesome life—and for Edward there was no future but melding into the Beast.