This Monstrous Thing(84)
“Is Oliver all right?” Mary asked me.
It was such a stupid question after everything she’d done that I was tempted to say something just as thoughtless back, but I swallowed that and said instead, “I hope so.”
“Will you see him again?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” A gust of wind caught me under my coat, and I shivered. I looked down the drive at Clémence, who raised her hand. I nodded, then looked back at Mary. “I should go.”
She glanced at the house, then back at me, and tugged at her necklace. “I have to tell you something. I probably shouldn’t . . . but this may be my last chance, and I need you to know that when we first met, you weren’t wrong in thinking I was a bit in love with you. I was. And I think . . . I think I still am. Being with you again reminded me of that. And I think we could make each other happy. You could stay here in the city. We could see each other. See what happens. And I just think it would be good . . . for both of us . . .” She paused, and took a deep, shaky breath. “I want you to stay with me.”
I had waited two years to hear her say that, but my heart didn’t swell like I expected it to. It didn’t even stir. It was two years later than it needed to be, and there was too much between us, too many dark, jagged things filling the holes she’d left behind.
So I said, “No, Mary. I can’t.”
“Oh. That’s . . . unexpected.” She looked away, face turned into the wind so that it tugged her hair backward in a thick spiral. “Is it her?” she asked, and I followed her gaze down the drive to where Clémence was still standing straight as a soldier, watching us but out of earshot. “It’s all right if it is,” she added. “I just want to know.”
“It’s not Clémence,” I said, and it wasn’t.
Mary pressed her chin to her chest, and I thought for a moment she was crying, but when she spoke her voice was steady. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything. I’m an idiot.”
“You’re not an idiot,” I said. “You’re just . . .” I paused, not sure how I meant to finish. You’re not who I thought you were was the first thing that crossed my mind, but instead I said, “You’re just too late.”
She took my hand and squeezed it. “Take care of yourself, Alasdair.”
“You too,” I said.
She nodded once more, eyes still down, then turned and retreated back inside the house. The door shut behind her, so softly it barely made a sound.
I walked down to where Clémence was waiting. The wind whipped her hair around her face, but she made no move to push it away.
“Everything all right?” she asked.
I almost told her about Mary’s invitation to stay, but changed my mind at the last second. Instead I said, “Yes,” stumbling a bit on the lie, but Clémence didn’t ask.
“We could stay here another night,” she said as we turned off the drive and onto the street, “or leave now, if you feel up to it. Are you going back to Ornex?”
“For now. I think I should be with my parents for a while. There are things I need to explain.”
“And then?”
I put my hands in my pockets and took a deep breath. Freedom was still so unfamiliar that it felt like an empty space around me, gaping and vast, but alive with possibilities. “I still want to go to university. Not Ingolstadt—not anymore—but somewhere I can learn more about medicine and mechanics, and do research, and work with people who don’t think you’d have to be mad to be a Shadow Boy.”
“Well, you’ll certainly have a leg up on all other applicants. I’d bet none of them can put ‘reanimating the dead’ on a list of qualifications.” I snorted, and she ducked her head with a half smile.
“What about you?” I asked.
“What about me?”
“Where are you going?”
“I don’t know,” she said, and the words came out in the middle of a frosty sigh. “I don’t know if there’s anywhere I can go.”
“Don’t say that. You can go wherever you want to.”
“And do what? I’ve got no skills.”
“You could find something.”
She pushed her nose down into her coat collar so that her voice came out muffled. “There’s nowhere I’d fit. When I joined up with the rebellion, it was mostly because I thought I’d found somewhere people could know what I was made of and still want to speak to me. But I wasn’t like the other clockworks, and I wasn’t like Oliver either. No one would listen to me, or trust me, not like they did him.”
I looked sideways at her. With the sun full on her face, I realized there were freckles across her nose I’d never noticed before. “I don’t understand what that has to do with having nowhere to go.”
“Because everything about me is wrong,” she replied. “I’m not the same as other clockworks, but I’m not wholly human either. I say things I shouldn’t. I cuss. I’m contrary. I don’t act the way young women should. I can’t even love who I’m supposed to.” She wrapped her arms around herself and frowned down at the cobblestones. “I’ve sort of got nothing.”
“You’ve got me.”
Her mouth twitched. “And now I’m losing you too.”