This Monstrous Thing(17)

“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.

I don’t know how long I lay in the dark, trying not to think about where exactly it was I was lying, or about the day we buried Oliver, or the riders I could hear on the other side of the wooden walls that suddenly felt impossibly thin. The wagon stopped and started a few times, and I heard Depace’s wheezy voice joined by others, though I couldn’t make out individual words. My heart was beating so loudly I was sure it would give me away. After a few long minutes, the wagon started moving at a steady pace, but it was still a while after that before the coffin lid was flung open.

I flinched, but it was only Clémence, her round white face floating above me. “You can come out,” she said. “Unless you’re cozy.”

I heaved myself out and collapsed across from her again, the coffins on either side scraping against my hip bones. The cold was sharper now, and the sweat from our sprint across the city was starting to dry and leave me shivering. I tucked my hands into my sleeves.

Across from me, Clémence huddled down against one of the coffins and pulled her scarf up over her face. “Get comfortable,” she said. “It’s a long way.”




Our journey to Ingolstadt continued in much the same way as in those early hours, with Clémence and me hunched between the coffins until we approached a checkpoint, and then we climbed inside. Rather than risk being caught trying to sneak over the border, we went through Basel, a port city on the Rhine, and crossed from there into Germany. The border took hours to get through, and when the patrol finally reached our wagon, there was enough banging and knocking about to make me stop breathing. “If they open the coffin, just lie very still,” Clémence had advised me. “Most men won’t bother the dead.”

But we made it through without incident, and passed into the German Confederation. Clockwork regulations weren’t as strict here, but I was still a wanted man without papers, and I kept a sharp eye out for trouble. Every cart or pedestrian we passed had me ducking out of sight and wishing for some better defense than hiding.

As we trudged along the snowy country roads, Depace sang tuneless Christmas carols that the wind carried back to us. Clémence and I spoke very little. The morning after we left Geneva, I got my first good look at her in the light. She was dead thin and pale, made paler by her brilliant blond hair, which I realized was properly white now that I saw it in the sunshine. Her eyes were blue as Lake Geneva, and her best smile was no more than a smirk, so it felt as though she was always sneering at me. It reminded me a bit of Oliver, and I had to swallow that hot guilt back yet again.

All the traveling in silence left me little to do but fret over whether I’d done the right thing in leaving him, until I thought I might go mad with it. I hated myself for abandoning him, and hated myself more for that small piece of me that was relieved for having an excuse to go. I hadn’t been away from Oliver for two years. Leaving still had its hooks in, but a part of me—a dark and wretched part—felt free.