This Monstrous Thing(82)
“Always.”
“You’re not going anywhere for a few days.”
“I know that.”
“Your mother and I were thinking we might stay here until things have calmed down. Help Morand.” He paused, then added, “You don’t . . . you don’t have to stay with us. But we’d like to know you’re all right.”
“I can do that.”
He gave a small humph, then nodded shortly, and I knew that was as close to permission as I was going to get.
We talked for a bit longer, in a roundabout way where none of us actually mentioned anything that had happened over the course of the past few weeks. There would be a better time for that. The conversation wore me out, and after a while they left me to sleep. Mum kissed me on the cheek, then tugged on one of my curls. “You need a haircut, Alasdair. You’re getting scruffy.”
Father stopped in the doorway and looked back at me. His eyes met mine, and we both smiled.
As soon as my parents were gone, Clémence made to sit down again, but I grabbed her hand and tugged her onto the bed. “Come here, will you?”
Her mouth twitched, and after a quick glance at the door, she lay down beside me, on top of the blanket with her face away from mine. I slid my arm around her waist and pressed my forehead into her shoulder. Her hair still smelled like sulfur from the bombs, and for a moment I was back in the clock tower. “Do you know where Oliver went?” I asked.
“North,” she replied. “He said something about Russia.”
“Was he all right?”
“Yes,” she said, and she sounded sure. “He was very calm, which was surprising after everything. More than anything, he just seemed ready. Ready to go somewhere new. Try again.” There was a pause, then she added, “He asked me to go with him.”
“So why didn’t you?”
“I wanted to find you. Make sure you were all right too.” She shifted, and I could feel the gears on the other side of her skin thrum. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” I said, and I realized that I was. My whole body hurt and I couldn’t remember ever being so tired, but I felt better than I had since Oliver died. I still missed him, but not in the way that I had for the past two years, when he was standing right in front of me and still not there. It was the way I used to miss him, on the nights he didn’t come home or when he’d go boxing and leave me alone at the shop. The way I’d missed him in the days right after he died, missed him so much I had to bring him back.
I didn’t know what was going to happen now—to him, or to me, or any of us. But that didn’t matter so much right then. My brother was out there: alive, and whole, and himself.
“Do you think things will be better?” I asked.
“For Oliver, or for clockwork men and Shadow Boys in general?”
“Either. Both.”
“The clockworks that stayed in Geneva won’t have an easy time after what happened. I don’t think your brother will either, no matter where he goes. It probably won’t be good for any of us for a long time, but I like to think that crooked things have a way of straightening themselves out.”
“Someday,” I said.
“Someday,” she repeated. “And what a world that will be.”
Sleep was closing in, but I focused on the feeling of Clémence beside me, her skin against mine, her heart beating through her shoulder blades and into my chest. “Will you come with me to see Mary?” I mumbled.
She didn’t answer for a moment, and I was afraid I was going to fall asleep and miss her answer. Then she said, “If you want me to.”
“I do,” I replied, and I fell asleep just as her hand fumbled its way into mine.
A week later, I sat in the front room of the Shelleys’ house in Turin. It was warmer in Italy than it had been in Switzerland, and the combination of clear winter sunlight coursing through the windows and a roaring fire made the room stifling.
January 1, 1819. The first day of the new year.
I had cleaned up as best I could. There was nothing to be done about my bashed-up face, and my arm was back in a sling, but before we left Ornex, Morand had found a jacket that nearly fit me, and my boots had shined up nicely. I still felt shabby. The Shelleys weren’t living as well as they had in Geneva, but it was a good deal finer than what I was accustomed to.
Mary was on the chaise across the room, her shoulders sagging so that she seemed to sink back into the upholstery. Percy Shelley stood at the fireplace, staring pointedly away from anyone. His dirty-blond hair was pulled into sleek pigtail and he wore a well-tailored tailcoat in midnight blue. Silhouetted against the fireplace in his fine clothes, he looked like a figure in a painting. When I’d arrived and Mary had introduced us, he’d gripped my hand harder than I thought he needed to, and his gaze had almost been as sharp as Jiroux’s. Perhaps he recognized me as Victor Frankenstein, or had heard other, truer stories about me. Or perhaps he hadn’t known I existed until Clémence and I showed up on their doorstep, the same way I hadn’t known of him until I kissed Mary on the shore of Lake Geneva.
The Shelleys had been easy enough to find. Gossip followed them like a rank odor, and we hadn’t even left Ornex before someone told us that Mary had traveled from Geneva to Turin on Christmas Eve. Our arrival had been uncomfortable, to be generous about it. Mary had hidden her shock poorly; Shelley hadn’t even tried to hide his, or the anger that came close on its heels. He’d objected to my proposition and laughed at my poor attempts at extortion. As much as I knew about Mary, I had little ammunition against them. Their reputation was already so wretched that I could hardly do it further damage. Shelley had shouted at me for a while, and I’d endured it with a blank face in spite of the fear sitting heavy inside me that I wouldn’t be able to keep the promise I’d made to Oliver.