The Final Descent (The Monstrumologist #4)(4)

“Have I been kidnapped?” she wondered aloud.

“Rescued,” I reminded her. “From the clutches of mediocrity.”

“That word again.” Nervously smoothing the folds in her gown.

“It is a lovely word for a terrible thing. Down with mediocrity! Who is Samuel?”

“You mean you don’t know him?”

“You failed to introduce us.”

“He’s Dr. Walker’s apprentice.”

“Sir Hiram? Imagine that. Well, it isn’t too hard to imagine. Like attracts like, they say.”

“I thought the saying was quite the opposite.”

I waved my hand. The gesture came from the monstrumologist; the disdain was wholly my own. “Clichés are mediocrities. I strive to be wholly original, Miss Bates.”

“Then I shall alert you the moment it happens.”

I laughed and said, “I have been drinking champagne. And I wouldn’t mind another taste.” We were close to the river. I could smell the brine and the faint tartness of decaying fish common to all waterfronts. The cold wind toyed with the ends of her hair.

“You’ve taken to alcohol?” she asked. “How do you hide it from your doctor?”

“For as long as I’ve known you, Lillian, you’ve called him that, and I really wish you’d stop.”

“Why?”

“Because he isn’t my doctor.”

“He doesn’t mind that you drink?”

“It’s none of his business. When I return to our rooms tonight, he will ask, ‘Where have you been, Will Henry?’ ” Lowering my voice to the appropriate register. “And I will say, ‘From walking up and down the earth, and to and fro in it.’ Or I may say, ‘It’s none of your damn business, you old mossback.’ He’s become quite the fussbudget lately. But I don’t want to talk about him. You’ve grown out your hair. I like it.”

Something had been loosed within me. Perhaps the alcohol was to blame, perhaps not; perhaps it was something much harder to define. Upon her face, light warred with shadow, but within me there was no such conflict.

“And you’ve grown up,” she said, touching the ends of her hair. “A bit. I did not recognize you at first.”

“I knew you right away,” I replied. “From the moment you walked in. Though I’d no idea you were back in the States. How long have you been home? Why did you come home? I thought you weren’t coming back for another year.”

She laughed. “My, haven’t you become the loquacious one! It is so un–Will Henry–like. What’s gotten into you?”

She was teasing me, of course, but I did not miss the hint of fear in her voice, the tiny quiver of uncertainty, the delicious thrill of confronting the unknown. We were kindred spirits in that: What repelled attracted; what terrified compelled.

“The ancient call,” I said with a laugh. “The overarching imperative!”

The cab jerked to a halt. I paid the driver, tipping him handsomely in a gesture of contempt for the doctor’s parsimony, and helped her to the curb. Sound carries better in colder air, and I could hear the rustle of her skirts as she stepped down and the whisper of lace against bare skin.

“Why have you brought me here, Will?” Lilly asked, staring at the imposing edifice, the hunkered gargoyles snarling down at us from the cornices.

“I want to show you something.”

She gave me a wary look. I laughed. “Don’t worry,” I said. “It won’t be like our last visit to the Monstrumarium.”

“That wasn’t my fault. You chose to pick the thing up.”

“As I recall, you asked me to sex it, knowing very well the creature was hermaphroditic.”

“And as I recall, you decided that handling a Mongolian Death Worm was better than admitting your ignorance.”

“Well, my point is we’re both perfectly safe tonight, as long as Adolphus doesn’t catch us.”

We stepped inside the building. She laid a hand on my arm and said, “Adolphus? Surely he’s gone home for the evening.”

“Sometimes he falls asleep at his desk.”

I pushed opened the door beneath the sign that read ABSOLUTELY NO ADMITTANCE TO NONMEMBERS. The stairs were dimly lit and quite narrow. A musty odor hung in the air: a hint of mold, a touch of decay.

“People forget he’s down here,” I whispered, leading the way; the stairs were too narrow to walk abreast. “And the cleaning staff never ventures lower than the first floor—not for fear of anything in the catalog; they’re terrified of Adolphus.”

“Me too,” she confessed. “The last time I saw him, he threatened to bash my head in with his cane.”

“Oh, Adolphus is all right. He’s just spent too much time alone with monsters. Sorry. Not supposed to call them that. Unscientific. ‘Aberrant biological specimens.’ ”

We reached the first landing. Stronger now the smell of preserving chemicals flimsily covering the sickly-sweet tincture of death that hung in the Monstrumarium like an ever-present fog. One more flight and we would be steps from the old Welshman’s office.

“This better not be some kind of trick, William James Henry,” she whispered in my ear.

“I’m not one for revenge,” I murmured in return. “It isn’t in my nature.”