This Monstrous Thing(16)

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 fran?ais.”

“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.”