This Monstrous Thing(55)

“Alasdair.” She put her hand on my cheek. “Trust me.”

I swallowed hard and held her gaze. She looked more serious than I’d seen her before.

“All right.”

We stood for a moment, eyes locked, then I felt a rush of cold air on my back as the door opened again. Clémence glanced toward it, and I felt her fist close around my arm. All around us, the room went quiet, like everyone had stopped what they were doing and was holding their breath. I couldn’t see what we was happening, but I held my breath too.

Then, from behind me, I heard someone say, “Dr. Basil Geisler, you’re under arrest.”

My heartbeat was suddenly so loud it was hard to hear anything over it. Geisler said something I couldn’t make out; then there was the sharp scrape of a bench being pulled back. Someone near us gasped.

“He’s not fighting,” Clémence said quietly. “He’s going with them.”

Heavy footsteps crossed between the tables and passed by where we were standing. I glanced over my shoulder just for a moment and saw the backs of two police officers as they led Geisler away. He looked startled, and somehow old and harmless between the two tall men in their greatcoats with rifles slung over their shoulders. In the doorway, he looked back and his eyes found Clémence and me. It was good the police had hold of him, for he looked like he wanted to leap across the room and skin us alive.

But then they were out on the street, swallowed by the darkness. There was a flurry of noise beyond—the raised voices of more officers, the shrill hiss of a steam-powered carriage—then one of the officers slammed the inn door and the noise in the room returned at twice the level it had been before. I took a deep breath, and Clémence’s grip on my arm relaxed. I hadn’t realized how tightly she was holding me until she let go.

We stood in silence for a moment, both of us breathing hard. Then she said, “You’re shaking,” and I realized I was. “Do you need to sit down?”

She didn’t wait for me to respond, just led me by the hand to a bench against the wall, and we both sank down onto it. Everyone was going wild around us. One of the servers looked like she was about to faint, and the barkeeper kept saying, “Geisler . . . Dr. Geisler . . . here! I made him a drink!”

“You turned him in,” I said to Clémence.

She shrugged. “Slavery doesn’t really breed loyalty.”

“Bleeding hell.” I still felt sort of unsteady, and I put my head in my hands for a moment.

“I thought it would make things easier.” She paused, then added, “For both of us.”

“It does. That was . . .” I looked up at her. “You really are something.”

“I like to think so. Damn, I think we’ve been spotted.” I followed her gaze across the room. One of the servers had leaned across the counter to speak to the barkeeper and was pointing in our direction. “We don’t have much time,” she hissed. “Geisler will return the favor first chance he has and tell the police about us, and probably your brother as well. We need to get you and Oliver out of Switzerland.”

“What about my parents? I think they’re in prison here. I need to help them.”

“I’ll stay. See what I can do about that.”

“You don’t have to.”

“There’s no danger for me here, not like there is for you.”

“No, I mean . . . you don’t have to do that for me. They’re not your concern.”

She fiddled with a loose thread on her coat sleeve, then turned her face up to the ceiling. “I have to tell you something. But you have to promise you won’t hate me after I do.”

“I think I owe you too much to hate you for anything.”

“Don’t make any promises yet.” She snapped the thread, then tugged her sleeves down over her hands and took a deep breath.

“Just say it.”

“I’m the reason your parents were arrested.”

I blinked. “What?”

“I mean, I didn’t . . . It was Geisler. He told me their names and said I was to give them to the police when I arrived, then find you. He wanted to be certain you didn’t have any reason to stay in Geneva. I’m so sorry, Alasdair, I was only doing what he told me to.” When I didn’t say anything, she knocked me with her elbow. “See, I told you you’d be angry.”

Part of me wanted to be—I could feel a hot fist tightening inside my chest, and it would have been so easy to loose it on her. But I had so few allies at that moment that it felt stupid to push her away. And she had turned Geisler in, and kept the police from finding me, and now she was looking at me with her eyebrows knit together and her mouth tight, the most sincere I’d seen her, like she didn’t know what she’d do if I stormed off and left her behind. And she was still here. She hadn’t run from me yet. “I’m angry,” I said, “but not at you.”

“Are you sure?”

“It was Geisler. You worked for him, I understand, you were only doing what you were told. At least we got to return the favor.”

Her mouth twisted into a half smile. “Bastard got what was coming to him.”

“Something like that.”

“I want to help get your parents out of prison. I can’t make what I did right, but I can at least do that.” When I didn’t say anything, she added, “I know you’re not used to people being on your side, but I am. I swear to it.” She put her hand on top of mine, and when she squeezed my fingers, the knot inside me loosened a bit. “You should eat something.”