The Daughter of Doctor Moreau(71)

She grabbed the glass again and poured and drank more. She would be sick in the morning, but it wasn’t his concern.

She wanted peace, yes? But as he watched her, as he examined the softness of her profile, he remembered how she had dug her fingers into Moreau’s throat, and instead he pictured the girl committing violence. The macehuales told tales of warlocks who slipped into a second skin, who turned into dogs and cats and wreaked evil across the land. He didn’t believe those stories, yet his hands trembled. His cigarette was burning down quickly. He tossed the butt into the teacup and set it on the night table.

Carlota’s head was angled sharply to the left, and she was looking down.

“I can smell your fear, you know?” she muttered.

“What?”

“My senses are sharper. I can smell you. If you should snuff out all the lights in this house, I’d be able to find you in pitch darkness,” she said. He couldn’t see her eyes with her head tipped down; couldn’t see whether they gleamed strange and terrible, or they looked human. “Don’t worry. Eduardo was afraid, too. Did you see his face when he looked at me? He was afraid. He was also disgusted. My father was not disgusted. Only terrified. Are you disgusted right now, Mr. Laughton? On top of the fear, I mean.”

“I’m not afraid.”

She strode over toward him, cradling the glass of aguardiente against her chest. “Did you ever know? Did Dr. Moreau tell you what I am?”

“No.”

“But you keep secrets. You knew Ramona was taking our supplies.”

“As I said, I simply chose not to investigate the matter.”

“If you knew and you didn’t tell me, I’ll hate you forever.”

“I didn’t know.”

He hadn’t even guessed. Maybe that made him stupid, but it would have been too wild a thought. She’d never appeared to him anything other than entirely human.

She was standing in front of him, looking pensive. The folds of her robe brushed his knees, and she nodded, a hand going up to her lips as she nibbled at a nail. Human hands and human nails. For now.

“He said I’m a sphynx, but sphynxes aren’t real,” she whispered, and she was still glancing down, evading his gaze. “I don’t know if I even exist anymore.”

“Have you exhausted the self-pity? Can I get that glass back from you?” he asked angrily, because he’d had a sufficient measure of her theatrics, and he was truly tired. He couldn’t take more of her.

“You are trembling in fear! Tell me you’re afraid of me!” she yelled, tossing the glass away. It shattered against the wall and sent shards flying everywhere across the floor.

Her eyes, when she stared at him, were like marigolds, a burst of yellow, but still human. If they hadn’t been, it would not have changed things. He pulled her down and kissed her on the mouth, felt her nails against his skin as she clutched him tight. It made him shiver.

He drew her under him. He thought maybe she’d kill him for the impertinence. But Carlota sighed, and there she was, willing and eager, with her hair spread across his pillow. Carlota Moreau, who was inhuman, a hybrid dreamed by the old doctor. If she’d been a siren luring him to the bottom of the sea, he would have followed. If she’d been a gorgon he’d have let himself be turned into stone.

Let him be mangled and devoured. It didn’t matter. That was what she’d come for, and he wouldn’t dance around it a second longer; he wanted her too badly. Let her be rough with him, let her bruise him if that was what would bring her to the edge.

But her hands were careful, and she kissed him slow and gentle, in a way he hadn’t been kissed for years and years. He knew it would be easy to lose himself in her, and he could make it pleasant for Carlota; he could trace her body with his fingers, take his time. Her boy was pretty but he was young. Age at least gives hands a certain skill, and Montgomery had learned a thing or two through the years.

The robe she wore was velvet with a green lining and gold trim. It had grown shabby, like everything else in the house. Perhaps it had belonged once to the doctor’s wife, who must have been a fine lady. Carlota was fine, too; finer than anything he’d ever gazed at. Fanny Owen, she’d been pretty, and she’d peppered his face with kisses the day they wed, but she hadn’t pressed her forehead against his own the way Carlota did. Nor had he slid the robe off Fanny the way he did with Carlota, because back then he had been both shy and too keen.

He wanted to please her, make her happy. She was sweet and tender and the world was bitter. He didn’t want her to know sorrows.

But her eyes were closed. He wasn’t so stupid as to think it a sign of passion. He’d done things like this in the past, sought the anonymous embrace of women in drinking dens and whorehouses. Closed his eyes tight. He knew what she was after, and it wasn’t him. If he took her now, he wagered she would whisper the wrong name in his ear. All that yearning, all the featherlight touches, they were for another man.

He sighed. “Look at me.”

She did. There were tears there, unshed yet but bright. Her hands were on his chest.

“You don’t love me,” he said. It was a statement of fact. He wasn’t going to bother with a question.

“So?” she replied, her voice defiant. Her breath was perfumed with the aguardiente. “You don’t love me, either.”