This Monstrous Thing(36)

“What in God’s name—”

Clémence bounced to her feet like a loosed jack-in-the-box. My hand was still so wrapped up under her coat, she nearly pulled me over. A professor in full robes was standing in the doorway, gaping at us. Me, I realized. Mostly gaping at me.

“What do you think you’re doing, young man?” he snapped.

“The door was open,” Clémence said breathlessly. She had somehow convinced her face to go as red as the strawberries.

“Keep quiet,” the professor snapped at her, then turned his steely gaze back to me. “We expect better of our students. And in a professor’s office. I should have you suspended at the very least.”

I tugged at my clothes and remembered suddenly that I had a uniform on under my coat. Clémence’s plan finally fell into place in my head. “Sorry, sir.”

The professor took a menacing step forward. “I’ll have your name, young man, and I will be reporting you to the head of your department.” He folded his arms and glared at me. His foot started tapping as well, and I was reminded of Father and the big show he always liked to make of waiting for me. “Your name, please,” the professor repeated.

“Victor Frankenstein,” I blurted.

His eyes narrowed. “Are you being smart with me?”

“God, I wish I was.”

The line of his mouth tightened. “Get out, both of you.”

I reached behind me for Clémence, found her hand, and together we skirted out of the office. At the end of the corridor we broke into a run, and we didn’t stop until we were through the university gates. I could have kept going—probably could have sprinted back to Geneva—but Clémence stopped, hand pressed to her chest as she caught her breath, and I halted too.

We stood in silence for a while, both of us breathing hard. I wasn’t sure if she expected me to speak first and give some sort of permission for what she had done, so I said, “That was clever.”

She shrugged. “I’ve been cleverer. Sorry, I didn’t mean to throw myself at you like that. It was just the only thing I could think to do.”

“It’s all right, I figured it out.” The rush was fading and I was starting to feel the cold again. I pulled my scarf up over my face. “God’s wounds, I left the papers all over his desk. He’s going to know we were snooping.”

“I left the strawberries too,” she said. “If it’s any consolation.”

I laughed louder than I meant to. A few people passing stared at me, and I clapped a hand over my mouth. The smirk crept back across Clémence’s lips. “Let’s go home,” she said. “I’ll go back later and tidy things up when that ass of a professor isn’t prowling.”

“So we didn’t find anything,” I said as we started walking. “A complete waste.”

“Don’t be so gloomy.” She knocked me lightly with her elbow. “Things will come together for you.”

I almost laughed again, because for the first time in years, it seemed like they might. The snow was clearing along the mountaintops. We’d be on our way to Geneva in days. Oliver would be free, and I’d be free too.

As we crossed the square toward the road to Geisler’s house, Clémence asked, “Was that your first kiss?”

My heart pitched. “No,” I replied. “Was it yours?”

“No.” She wiped her mouth on the back of her hand, then grinned. “So I guess you haven’t always been like this.”

“Like what?”

“So serious. It would appear that once you knew how to have a bit of fun.”

“Suppose I did,” I said, though if I had, I’d forgotten now.

Clémence stretched with a wince, then rubbed the side of her rib cage.

“You all right?” I asked.

“Fine. You were just a bit too passionate for me, that’s all.” She kicked a snowball down the road. It skittered and then burst against a tree trunk.

“What was his name?” I asked. “The first lad you kissed.”

For a moment, I thought I saw the same sort of deep sadness flash across her face that I recognized from the dozens of times I had seen Oliver wear it. But then she wiped it clean like rain fog from a windowpane and said, “Marco. It was back in Paris. He was an actor.” She glanced sideways at me. “What about you? Who was the first person you kissed?”

“Mary Godwin,” I replied. “Oh, not Godwin, though, she’s married.”

“You kissed a married woman?”

“An almost-married woman.”

“My, but you were wild. So Mary Godwin, but not Godwin. Do you know what she’s called now?”

We rounded the corner of the cobbled high street and crossed onto the dirt road, turned muddy by the snow. I looked down at my boots, which were turning from black to brown, and tried to silence my clattering heart, which had not stopped beating for her for two long years. “If everything went according to her plan,” I said, “then I’d imagine by now she’s called Mary Shelley.”


The night I kissed Mary was uncommonly warm for October. It was autumn heat, the sort of crisp, golden day that my mother assured me was a prelude to cold coming soon. But it was a rosy fall evening after that dreary, rainy summer.