This Monstrous Thing(7)

“Father seems keen on it. You don’t remember Morand, do you?” He shook his head. “He runs a boardinghouse just over the border in France for clockworks who need a place to stay. He keeps trying to get us to come work for him there, but Father isn’t interested. I think he and Mum are getting tired of moving around so much. I just wish they’d gotten tired somewhere friendlier.”

“No, I mean you. Will you stay?” He scooped up a handful of paper scraps and tossed them into the fire. “Weren’t you meant to apply to university this year?”

“I was.”

“So what happened?”

I stripped off the pulse gloves and dropped them back into my bag. Just thinking about university sent a heavy pang through me, like a taut wire plucked inside my chest. I’d planned on it for so long—going to university in Ingolstadt to study mechanics with Geisler, the way Oliver was going to before he died. Wanting it still stung deep, and it was worse with Oliver on the other end of the question. “I didn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Didn’t fancy it. Father needs me. Money.” I shrugged. “Why does it matter?”

He picked up a fire poker from beside the grate and jabbed the flames. “I just thought if you went to uni, maybe I could go somewhere too.”

“Go where?”

“Somewhere not here. Away . . . and not with you.” I didn’t mean to, but I laughed. Oliver scowled, and I shut my mouth quick. “What’s funny?”

“I couldn’t leave you alone.”

His scowl went deeper, and for a strange moment, I saw a shadow of Father in his face. “I could look after myself.”

“Like hell you could. Oliver, all I’ve ever done our whole lives is look out for you when you did daft things. Even when we were lads. Who took the fall for stealing sweets so you wouldn’t get thrown out of school? Who bailed you out of jail twice so Father wouldn’t find out? Who fixed all those clocks so you wouldn’t lose that shop job in Paris?”

“And don’t forget, I’d be dead without you,” he added, his voice suddenly closer to a snarl.

I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes. “Please, Oliver, I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

“You’re not going to uni because of me. You didn’t even apply because of me. Going to university used to be all you talked about, I remember that. I’m not an idiot, Ally.”

A flare went off inside my chest, and I stood up so hard my chair wobbled. “Sod it, fine. You’re right, is that what you want to hear? I didn’t apply to Ingolstadt because I have to stay here and take care of you.”

I didn’t realize what I’d said for a moment. Then Oliver repeated, “Ingolstadt?” And my heart sank. “You want to go to university in Ingolstadt?”

“Oliver—”

“Because Geisler’s on faculty there.”

I could feel his anger—that feral creature that had barely been controlled in his first life and now raged untamed in his second—rear its ugly head. I took a step toward him, one hand rising between us. “I didn’t mean—”

He flung the fire poker, and it skittered across the floor. A few pieces of glowing charcoal separated from the tip and sparked against the stone. “Here I was touched by your sacrifice, and come to find out you’re still obsessed with Ingolstadt and studying with the man who killed me.”

A cold stone dropped in the pit of my stomach, but I kept my face blank.

When I had told Oliver the story of his own death, Dr. Geisler being responsible for it had seemed the best lie there was, and the easiest. It was the same story I’d told my parents, and the police, and Mary, and everyone since—there had been an accident in the clock tower while Geisler was escaping the city. It wasn’t intentional, but it was Geisler who’d pushed Oliver, and he’d fallen through the clock face and onto the riverbank. It was too late to retreat from it now. I’d told Oliver the story too many times, burned it into him myself in an attempt to ward off the truth. But I wished desperately that I could go back and make up something else. Police, maybe, or too much wine, or loose floorboards. Something that wouldn’t stand so firmly in the way of the things I wanted.

“It was an accident,” I said. “I told you that.”

“But I still ended up dead. Geisler’s the reason I’m a monster!”

“You’re not a monster,” I said, though my voice rang hollow with the frequent reprise. If you say anything enough, even the truth, it starts to sound like a lie, and I wasn’t certain what the truth was where Oliver was concerned.

“Then I suppose you lock me up for my own safety, is that it?” he said. “Because I’m fragile and you want to protect me, not because men would run screaming if they saw me.”

“You’re not a monster,” I repeated.

“But Geisler is,” Oliver said, and his voice peaked to a shout. “He killed me—he bleeding killed me, Alasdair—but you want to go to Ingolstadt and keep his mad research going.”

“You’re alive because of that mad research,” I retorted.

“Well, I’d rather be dead!” He snatched up the copy of Paradise Lost and flung it against the wall. It opened like wings and fell to the ground with a hollow thud. For a moment, we both stared at it. I could feel the silence between us—thick and gasping like a living presence.