This Monstrous Thing (6 page)

I almost dropped the shovel. “Dr. Geisler? Is he here?”

“No, but he asked me to find you. I’m to take you to Ingolstadt to see him. You are Alasdair, aren’t you?”

“Yes.” My panic retreated just long enough to allow me a moment of reckless hope. Geisler was a name I could trust, and I needed to trust someone if I was on my own. I didn’t lower the shovel, but I took a step toward her. “How do we get there?”

“I have a wagon waiting outside the city.”

“I won’t get through the checkpoints.”

“We can go along the river. I know a way.” A shout peaked from the men at the pub down the road, and the girl glanced over her shoulder, then back at me. “If we go, we go now.”

Father was in prison. Mum was gone. But Geisler could help us, and I wouldn’t have to run alone.

“All right,” I said. “I’ll go.”

“Hurry, then.” The girl turned back to the street, and I abandoned my shovel and followed her. We’d only gone a few steps when she stopped so suddenly that I nearly smashed into her. A light was bobbing toward us from the end of the lane, moving fast and accompanied by heavy footfalls.

“Damn.” She seized me by the collar and dragged me after her back down the alley. Just before the dead end,
she turned, wrenched open a door to one of the decrepit stone houses, and plunged us both inside.

It wasn’t a house, I realized as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, but an abandoned shop with squatters and factory workers huddled together on the floor and against the walls. Glass display cases had been smashed out and small children slept inside them, curled around each other for warmth. A mist seemed to rise from the ground as everyone breathed, slow and steady in sleep. Somewhere amid the sleepers, I could hear clockwork ticking.

The girl was picking her way across the floor toward a small window that opened onto the opposite alley. I followed, trying not to step on too many people as I went. Someone moaned, and someone else swore at me, but I reached her side as she jimmied open the window and climbed out. She was half my size and fit easily, but it was tight for me. I had one leg through when behind me, the door flew open with a bang. “Wake up! Police!” a voice shouted from the doorway.

I crammed myself the rest of the way, in spite of the imprint the frame left in my side, and lurched onto the cobblestones. “Police,” I gasped as I steadied myself against the wall.

“We’re close,” she replied, and I followed her down the street at a run.

We weren’t as close as I hoped. She led me all the way out of Vieille Ville and back into the financial district, until
we finally stopped at a bridge, the Pont du la Machine. A few rough-looking shipmen were there, smoking with their backs against the industrial torches, but none of them looked twice at us as the girl led me to the edge of the bridge. A stone stairway ran down to the riverbank trail people used in the summer, but the Rhone had flooded to its winter height and the path was submerged. The stairs dropped into the waves.

She stopped on the step above the waterline and turned back to me. “How well do you swim?” she called over the rushing water.

I laughed, partly from astonishment but mostly refusal. I’d throw myself at the police’s mercy before the Rhone’s. “Are you mad? There’s not a chance in bleeding hell I’m—”

“God’s wounds, only joking.” She smirked. I glowered. “Come on, follow me.”

She jumped nimbly from the steps onto a rim of chain that the winter boats used for mooring. It hung in drapes between fat iron pegs, with the lowest links just above the waterline so that it formed a slick track against the stone retaining wall. I followed her, less nimbly. My heavy work boots made me clumsy, and I had to force myself to keep my eyes on the back of her head and not look down at the rusted chain and the Rhone beneath. I could feel the spray on my face.

We followed the river until the chain began to go taut. I looked up from my feet just in time to see the girl hoist
herself up over the edge and disappear from view. I followed, less gracefully. My limbs had gone shaky during our balancing act, and it took three tries before I managed to haul myself back onto solid ground. When I finally got sorted, I realized we were near the base of the foothills, surrounded by the bare vineyards that climbed up from the lakeshore. Behind us, I could see the city walls, Geneva’s slate rooftops peeking out above it. We were out.

The girl only gave me a moment to catch my breath before she started off again, down along a footpath cutting through the vineyard, and I followed, my feet sliding on the frozen mud.

There were no industrial torches outside the city, and the only light came from the moon and a smattering of starlight spread like salt across the sky. I looked out, down the hill and across the smooth top of the lake, then up to the pinpricks of firelight that dotted the hillside from cottage windows. I thought of Château de Sang, black windows somewhere against the black sky, and I stopped.

Oliver.

It was like waking from a dream. I had been so panicked about getting out of the city I hadn’t even thought about what I was leaving behind, and it all caught up with me as suddenly as if someone had grabbed me by the throat. “I can’t go with you,” I said, louder than I meant to.

The girl stopped too and turned. “What?”

“I can’t leave,” I repeated, but the words rang empty. This city had caged me for so long, and here I was on its edge, past the checkpoints and close to free, but I couldn’t leave Oliver alone. His death was my fault, and now his life was too.

The girl crossed her arms over her chest. “I haven’t got time for this. We need to go.”

“I can’t.”

“What does that mean, you can’t?”

“I just can’t!” I said again. “There’s someone who needs me here. So thank you for helping me get out but I can’t . . . I can’t go to Geisler.” I turned and started in the opposite direction, back into the foothills and toward Château de Sang, but her hand clamped down on my elbow and jerked me back around to face her. She was stronger than she looked.

“Where are you planning on going?” she demanded.

“I’ve got somewhere.”

“Well, you can’t go back to Geneva, not with the whole police force looking for you. Your only choice is to run, and I can help you. Geisler can help you.” I tried to pull my sleeve out of her grip, but she clung on tighter. “I’ll knock you over the head if I have to but I can’t go back to Ingolstadt without you.”

I yanked my arm free and took a few steps back. She looked too scrappy to throw a good punch, but I didn’t think that would stop her from trying. For a moment we glared at
each other, the silence interrupted by the bare grapevines clattering against their trellises as the wind rocked them.

I took a deep breath. I could to go to Ornex. I
should
go to Ornex—that had always been the plan, and if Mum had gotten out, she would be there. Morand himself had said to come if I needed somewhere safe. But there would be nowhere to hide Oliver there. I hadn’t left him on his own for more than a few days since his resurrection. If I didn’t show up, perhaps he’d figure we’d been run out of the city, though knowing Oliver and his flair for the dramatic, he’d probably assume I had abandoned him by choice.

But if I stayed with Oliver, there wasn’t a thing I could do for him. I had no money to go on the run, nowhere to go if we did. We’d sit together in that castle and starve slowly, if we didn’t murder each other first.

And it was Geisler calling me. Geisler in Ingolstadt. This wasn’t the way I had wanted it to happen, but here it was being handed to me. Wanting it felt sharp and glittering, like broken glass under my skin, but, bleeding hell, did I want it. I wanted to go to Ingolstadt. And I needed someone who could help me and my family better than I could help myself. Geisler could help me. That’s why I would go, I told myself. To help my parents. And Oliver.

“Fine,” I said, and fought the urge to look backward again. “Let’s go.”

At the end of the path, a stout wagon was waiting
along the lakeshore; it was the old-fashioned sort with a horse hitched to the front instead of a steam pipe. “This is us,” the girl called to me. As we drew level with it, I glanced over the lip and saw that the back was lined with coffins. It was an undertaker’s wagon.

“Are we riding to Ingolstadt in coffins?” I asked as I hoisted myself up.

“Not all the way,” she replied. “Just at the checkpoints.”

I hoped this was more black humor, like her joke about swimming the Rhone, as I sank down into the narrow gap between coffins. The girl climbed up onto the driver’s seat and tapped the driver on the top of his bald head. He started. “Are you feeling quite awake, Monsieur Depace?” she asked him in French.

“Awake enough, Mademoiselle Le Brey,” he replied. His voice wheezed like bellows. “I had a good nap while I waited for you.”

“Well then, we’re ready.”

“You’ve got him?” Depace twisted backward in his seat for a look at me. His face was so wrinkled that it seemed to be collapsing in on itself. “That?” he said. “That’s him? He’s very small. I thought he would be older.”

I felt a flush start in my neck, and it deepened when the girl, a smirk playing along her lips, said, “Well, I thought he would be better looking, so we’re both disappointed.”

“As long as you’re certain he’s the right one.”

“Fairly certain.”

“Well then, we’re off.” Depace flicked his reins and the wagon shuddered forward.

The girl slid down from the seat and settled across from me with her knees drawn up to her chest. I could feel her gaze through the darkness. “You should sleep,” she said. “I’ll wake you if there’s trouble.”

“I’m not going to sleep,” I said, and my voice came out hoarse. Everything that had happened was starting to catch up with me, and it left me sounding haunted. “I don’t think I could if I tried.”

“Certainly not with that defeatist attitude.”

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Clémence Le Brey.” The full flourish of her Parisian accent emerged, and I realized we were still speaking in English.

“French is fine,” I said.
“Je parle français.”

“That’s good,” she replied, switching casually, “because I don’t care for English.”

“Where are you taking me?”

“I told you, to Ingolstadt. To Geisler.”

“Did he know the police were coming for my family?” It seemed so strange she had come the same night they were arrested.

She tugged at her cap, and her blond hair flashed like moonlight through the darkness. “If he did, he didn’t share with me.”

“Then why does he want
me
?” That, more than
anything, felt like a mistake. We hadn’t heard from Geisler since he’d left Geneva, and before that I’d never had a real conversation with him without my father or Oliver present. For a time, I wasn’t even certain he knew my name.

She shrugged. “All I was told was to collect you. When I went to your flat, your mother said you’d be home later, but the police came before you did. I was hoping you’d be stupid enough to turn up as well.” Then, after a moment, she added, “You look very familiar to me.”

“You don’t to me.”

“Did you work in Geisler’s laboratory?”

“No, but I had a brother who did.”

“The tall boy with the dark hair who was always scowling?”

I almost laughed. “Yes, that was him.”

“That must be it, then. You look very similar.” The wind rising off the lake struck the cart, and it wobbled. Clémence pulled her coat tighter around her shoulders. “I never saw him again after Geisler went to Ingolstadt. I thought he was meant to join us. Did he leave?”

“He didn’t leave,” I said shortly. “He died.”

She blinked. “I didn’t know.”

“Are you from Paris?” I asked quickly, hoping to avoid the subject of Oliver.

“Yes,” she replied. “But I work for Geisler now.”

“Are you his . . . ?” I didn’t have a clue what she was
to him. I considered saying
mistress
, but that would be so dead embarrassing if I was wrong that I let her finish instead.

“Assistant.”

“Assistant? You’re his assistant?”

“That’s right.” She crossed her arms. “Is there a problem with that?”

“That was . . . ,” I started, without knowing how I was going to finish. I thought of Oliver and it hit me again—I wasn’t just leaving him, I was
abandoning
him. I tried to swallow the thought, but it pushed back, rising molten inside of me.
I’ll come back
,
I vowed. This wasn’t for forever—just until things calmed down.
I’ll come back
, I thought again—a silent, steady promise to shoulder some of the guilt.
I’ll come back for you.

“That was what my brother did,” I finished. “That’s all.” Then I buried my mouth in my scarf and pushed a heavy breath into the wool so that it rebounded, warm and damp, against my dry lips.

“Is it a girl?” she asked.

“Is what a girl?”

“Whoever it is that needs you in Geneva. Is it your sweetheart?”

“No. It’s not a girl.”

Her mouth twisted into a sly smile. “How disappointing. A pretty girl’s about the only thing that would keep
me
in a shithole like Geneva.”

I barely had time to register what she’d said—or be properly shocked over hearing a girl cuss—when Depace’s whistling voice carried back to us on the wind. “Patrol ahead. Could be trouble.”

Clémence sprang into a crouch, head beneath the driver’s seat, and cracked the lid of one of the coffins. “Get in,” she hissed at me.

“You mean it?”

“What—are you afraid of the dark?” She knocked the side of the coffin with her foot. “Get in.”

“Not the dark,” I said. The last coffin I’d seen was the one we’d buried Oliver in, and the memory was so sharp and sudden that for a moment I couldn’t convince myself to move.
Go away
,
I thought as Oliver prodded at me again.
Leave me be.

But Clémence nudged the side again, and I could hear the horses down the road. They were getting close. I took a steadying breath, then wormed myself through the narrow gap into the coffin. Clémence shut the lid without another word, and I was left drowning in darkness.