The Curse of the Wendigo (The Monstrumologist #2)(58)

I pulled the covers up to my chin. I was self-conscious of my appearance, for I was wearing one of von Helrung’s nightshirts and, though he was a small man, he was much larger than me.

We regarded each other for a moment by the flickering candlelight, and then she said without preamble, “He’s going to die.”

“Maybe he won’t,” I answered.

“Oh, no. He’s going to die. You can smell it.”

“Smell what?”

“That’s why Mr. Skala is keeping watch. Uncle says we have to be ready.”

“Ready for what?”

“You have to be quick, very quick, and you can’t just use anything. It has to be silver. So that’s why he carries the knife. It’s silver plated.”

“What’s silver plated?”

“The knife! The pearl-handled Mikov switchblade knife. So when it happens—” She made a slicing motion over her heart.

“The doctor won’t let that happen.”

“That is very odd, Will—the way you talk about him. ‘The doctor.’ All whispery and fearful—like you’re talking about God.”

“I just meant if there’s any way he can help it, he won’t just let him die.” I confided to her the most striking thing about that most striking scene in the sickroom—the tears in the monstrumologist’s eyes.

“I’ve never seen him cry—ever. He’s come close before”—I am a mote of dust—“but it was always for himself. I think he loves Dr. Chanler very much.”

“Do you? I don’t. I don’t think he loves him at all.”

“Well, I don’t think you know him at all.” I was becoming angry.

“And I don’t think you know anything at all,” she shot back. Her eyes sparkled with delight. “Fell into the Danube by accident! He jumped off and nearly drowned.”

“I know that,” I said. “And Dr. Chanler saved him.”

“But do you know why he jumped? And do you know what happened after he jumped?”

“He got very sick, and that’s when Muriel and John met, over his sickbed,” I said with a note of triumph. I would show her who didn’t know anything!

“That isn’t everything. It’s hardly nothing. They were engaged to be married and—”

“I know that, too.”

“All right, but do you know why they didn’t?”

“The doctor is not constitutionally suited for marriage,” said I, echoing Warthrop’s explanation.

“Then why did he propose in the first place?”

“I—I don’t know.”

“See? You don’t know anything.” She smiled broadly; her cheeks dimpled.

“Okay,” I sighed. “Why did he propose?”

“I don’t know. But he did, and then the next day he jumped off the Kronprinz-Rudolph Bridge. He swallowed a gallon of the Danube and got pneumonia and a case of putrid sore throat, coughing up blood and vomiting buckets of black bile. He nearly died, Uncle said.

“They were madly, desperately in love. They were the item, here and on the Continent. He is quite handsome, when he cleans himself up, and she is lovelier than Helen, so everybody thought it was a perfect match. After Dr. Chanler fished him out of the river, she came and sat by his bed day and night. She called to him, and he called to her, though they sat right beside each other!”

She ran her fingers through her thick fall of curls and stared dreamily into the distance.

“Uncle introduced Pellinore to Muriel, so he blamed himself for what happened. When your doctor didn’t get any better after two weeks in Vienna, Uncle shipped him off to a balneologist in Teplice, and that’s when things got really bad.”

She paused for dramatic effect. I found myself fighting the urge to grab her by the shoulders and physically shake the rest of the tale out of her. How often does our desire spring upon us unawares—and from what unexpected hiding places! There was so much about the man that was hidden from me—hidden to this day, I will confess. To now have even the smallest of peeks behind the heavy curtain . . . !

“He stopped eating,” she continued. “He stopped sleeping. He stopped talking. Uncle was desperate with worry. For a whole month this went on—Pellinore in silence wasting away—until one day Uncle said to him, ‘You must decide. Will you live or will you die?’ And Pellinore said, ‘What have I to live for?’ And Uncle answered, ‘That, only you can decide.’ And then . . . he decided.”

“What?” I whispered. “What did he decide?”

“He decided to live, of course! Oh, I’m beginning to think you are thickheaded, William Henry. Of course he decided to live, or you wouldn’t be here, would you? It wasn’t the perfect ending. The perfect ending would have been him deciding the opposite, because it’s the best kind of love that kills. Love isn’t worth anything unless it’s tragic—look at Romeo and Juliet, or Hamlet and Ophelia. It’s all there for anyone who isn’t so thickheaded he can’t see it.”

The doctor returned shortly after ten that morning, his morning suit slightly rumpled, the black cravat that had to be tied just so now hanging limply over his collar and dotted with a dark greenish stain—most likely the regurgitations of his friend. When I asked how Dr. Chanler was faring, he replied tersely, “He is alive,” and said no more.