This Monstrous Thing(51)
“Sort of makes you want to what?” I asked, my voice suddenly hoarse.
Between us, hidden in the folds of her skirt, her fingers slid into mine. Her skin was dewy from the rain but still impossibly warm. I felt the electric flare of her touch straight up my arm and all the way through me, our pulse points meeting like charged wires and sending up sparks.
“Sort of makes you want to write about it,” she said.
I wasn’t certain how we were going to get into the city, being possibly the two most wanted men in Geneva and traveling with a clockwork girl, but Geisler seemed unconcerned. He gave me a set of false identification papers that labeled me a student named Dieter Hahnel from Ingolstadt. Clémence had her own name on her papers, though I assumed they too had been forged, since nothing on them designated her as clockwork.
Geisler decided it would be better to travel apart in case one of us was recognized, so he left for the city just after breakfast; Clémence and I waited until nearly midday. The queue snaking along the city walls to the checkpoint was long when we arrived, and we waited for the better part of an hour, moving forward in shuffling steps as everyone around us buzzed nervously. The muddy snow was soaking through my boots, and I kept shifting from foot to foot to keep my toes from freezing. Beside me, Clémence kept her hands in her pockets and her gaze straight ahead. She seemed dead calm. When the girl in front of us dropped her scarf, Clémence plucked it out of the snow and tapped her on the shoulder. The girl turned, and smiled as she took it. “Oh! Merci.”
“De rien,” she replied, and ducked her head as the girl turned forward again. Clémence’s cheeks went pink, and she kept glancing up at the back of the girl’s head as we moved forward.
We reached the front of the queue sooner than I’d anticipated. I kept my scarf over my face and my knit cap pulled low as I handed over my papers to a tall officer. He glanced at them, then up at my face, then back at my papers. I held my breath.
“Parlez-vous fran?ais?” he asked.
Dieter Hahnel was supposed to be German. I didn’t have a clue if he would speak French, so I kept my mouth shut and my face blank like I didn’t understand. The soldier watched me for a moment with his eyebrows raised, then shrugged and flipped to the second page.
He was reaching for his stamp when another officer appeared and tapped him on the shoulder. “Your shift’s up,” he said in French. “I’m here to relieve you.”
The first officer looked up from my papers. “Fantastic.” His hand was still on the stamp but he didn’t seem like he was going to use it until his conversation was finished. I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from shouting, Just stamp the damn thing! “What happened with the protest?” he asked.
“All taken care of,” the second officer replied. “A few arrests, but no one was hurt.”
“Was it the Frankenstein lot again?”
Suddenly I was quite content to stand and eavesdrop.
But the officer chose that moment to stamp the second page of my papers and hand them back to me. “Danke, Herr Hahnel,” he said with a smile, and waved me forward.
I didn’t have a clue how to respond in German, so I said in my best imitation of schoolboy French, “Merci, monsieur.”
He laughed, and I kept grinning like an idiot as I walked past him and Clémence took my place. I was starting to relax when someone caught my arm, and I turned. It was another officer. He must have heard his fellow speaking to me in German, and must have spoken none himself, for he simply mimed instructions to me to hold out my arms. I’d gone through the checkpoint dozens of times and never had to do this before. Maybe they’d recognized me after all.
I kept my face straight as I held my arms out from my sides, bracing myself for whatever was about to happen. But the officer didn’t grab me; instead he traced my silhouette with his hands, fingers a few centimeters away from me. I didn’t realize what was happening until the tin buttons on my coat wobbled, and I realized that his gloves were magnetic. He was checking for hidden metal parts.
I resisted the urge to look back at Clémence. I would make it through without a problem, but she’d be caught. And with Frankenstein on everyone’s mind, clockwork lungs would earn her more than just a bronze cog badge.
After a quick check of the rest of me, the officer beckoned Clémence forward. I watched her from a few steps away. She said something to the officer that I didn’t catch, but he laughed. She smiled, a different sort of smile than I’d seen her give anyone before. Not a smirk, just a genuinely lovely smile as she raised her arms in an elegant sweep like she was making a snow angel. They kept chatting as he ran his hands along her arms and down her back. One hand lingered for a moment on her waist before sliding down to check her knees. I hoped he’d skip any area of her body that would attract the magnets, but as his fingers passed her collarbone, they flinched to her coat. He frowned.
But before he could say anything, Clémence said, with that same sweet smile, “Oh, my pendant!” And she reached under her coat and produced a short gold chain with a heavy pendant dangling from it. The pendant tottered in midair, defying gravity as it swung toward the guard’s magnetic fingertips. “Perhaps this is why you find me so attractive.” And she winked at him. Actually winked, like some dopey schoolgirl.
The guard smiled. “Not the only reason, mademoiselle.” He pried the pendant from his fingers and she tucked it back down the neck of her coat. “You can go on,” he said, waving her forward to where I was waiting. Clémence gave him a quick bob of a curtsy, then trotted off to join me.