This Monstrous Thing Read online

  “They’re hard to get now. Every tool the Shadow Boys use is monitored dead close. Shopkeepers have to do an inventory for the police of who buys them. Some places you need a permit.”

  “Geneva’s getting smarter.”

  I separated my palms with a grunt. A flicker of white-blue light ran along the plates. “Brace yourself.”

  I pressed the gloves to the conducting plates on clockwork shoulder. There was a faint flash as the metal connected, then Oliver’s whole body jerked as the shock went through it. The gears in his arm sped up as the energy coiled through the mainspring, running faster than before. He bent his elbow a few times, and nodded. “Better.”

  “Next time give me some warning before it needs oiling.”

  Oliver swatted that away, then stood up and rotated his mechanical arm in its socket. “You think you’ll stay in Geneva?” he asked.

  “Father seems keen on it. You don’t remember Morand, do you?” He shook his head. “He runs a boardinghouse just over the border in France for clockworks who need a place to stay. He keeps trying to get us to come work for him there, but Father isn’t interested. I think he and Mum are getting tired of moving around so much. I just wish they’d gotten tired somewhere friendlier.”

  “No, I mean you. Will you stay?” He scooped up a handful of paper scraps and tossed them into the fire. “Weren’t you meant to apply to university this year?”

  “I was.”

  “So what happened?”

  I stripped off the pulse gloves and dropped them back into my bag. Just thinking about university sent a heavy pang through me, like a taut wire plucked inside my chest. I’d planned on it for so long—going to university in Ingolstadt to study mechanics with Geisler, the way Oliver was going to before he died. Wanting it still stung deep, and it was worse with Oliver on the other end of the question. “I didn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Didn’t fancy it. Father needs me. Money.” I shrugged. “Why does it matter?”

  He picked up a fire poker from beside the grate and jabbed the flames. “I just thought if you went to uni, maybe I could go somewhere too.”

  “Go where?”

  “Somewhere not here. Away . . . and not with you.” I didn’t mean to, but I laughed. Oliver scowled, and I shut my mouth quick. “What’s funny?”

  “I couldn’t leave you alone.”

  His scowl went deeper, and for a strange moment, I saw a shadow of Father in his face. “I could look after myself.”

  “Like hell you could. Oliver, all I’ve ever done our whole lives is look out for you when you did daft things. Even when we were lads. Who took the fall for stealing sweets so you wouldn’t get thrown out of school? Who bailed you out of jail twice so Father wouldn’t find out? Who fixed all those clocks so you wouldn’t lose that shop job in Paris?”

  “And don’t forget, I’d be dead without you,” he added, his voice suddenly closer to a snarl.

  I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes. “Please, Oliver, I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

  “You’re not going to uni because of me. You didn’t even apply because of me. Going to university used to be all you talked about, I remember that. I’m not an idiot, Ally.”

  A flare went off inside my chest, and I stood up so hard my chair wobbled. “Sod it, fine. You’re right, is that what you want to hear? I didn’t apply to Ingolstadt because I have to stay here and take care of you.”

  I didn’t realize what I’d said for a moment. Then Oliver repeated, “Ingolstadt?” And my heart sank. “You want to go to university in Ingolstadt?”

  “Oliver—”

  “Because Geisler’s on faculty there.”

  I could feel his anger—that feral creature that had barely been controlled in his first life and now raged untamed in his second—rear its ugly head. I took a step toward him, one hand rising between us. “I didn’t mean—”

  He flung the fire poker, and it skittered across the floor. A few pieces of glowing charcoal separated from the tip and sparked against the stone. “Here I was touched by your sacrifice, and come to find out you’re still obsessed with Ingolstadt and studying with the man who killed me.”

  A cold stone dropped in the pit of my stomach, but I kept my face blank.

  When I had told Oliver the story of his own death, Dr. Geisler being responsible for it had seemed the best lie there was, and the easiest. It was the same story I’d told my parents, and the police, and Mary, and everyone since—there had been an accident in the clock tower while Geisler was escaping the city. It wasn’t intentional, but it was Geisler who’d pushed Oliver, and he’d fallen through the clock face and onto the riverbank. It was too late to retreat from it now. I’d told Oliver the story too many times, burned it into him myself in an attempt to ward off the truth. But I wished desperately that I could go back and make up something else. Police, maybe, or too much wine, or loose floorboards. Something that wouldn’t stand so firmly in the way of the things I wanted.

  “It was an accident,” I said. “I told you that.”

  “But I still ended up dead. Geisler’s the reason I’m a monster!”

  “You’re not a monster,” I said, though my voice rang hollow with the frequent reprise. If you say anything enough, even the truth, it starts to sound like a lie, and I wasn’t certain what the truth was where Oliver was concerned.

  “Then I suppose you lock me up for my own safety, is that it?” he said. “Because I’m fragile and you want to protect me, not because men would run screaming if they saw me.”

  “You’re not a monster,” I repeated.

  “But Geisler is,” Oliver said, and his voice peaked to a shout. “He killed me—he bleeding killed me, Alasdair—but you want to go to Ingolstadt and keep his mad research going.”

  “You’re alive because of that mad research,” I retorted.

  “Well, I’d rather be dead!” He snatched up the copy of Paradise Lost and flung it against the wall. It opened like wings and fell to the ground with a hollow thud. For a moment, we both stared at it. I could feel the silence between us—thick and gasping like a living presence.

  “Don’t say that,” I said. “You don’t mean that.”

  Oliver pressed his chin to his chest. “Some days I do.” His voice still shook, but he’d gone quiet again. “Some days I want to tear myself apart.”

  “Don’t,” I said quickly. “Don’t . . . do that. I’ll come more. I’ll come stay with you for a bit. I’ll tell Mum and Father I’m going to see about a job with Morand—”

  “Just because you don’t scream out loud doesn’t mean I still can’t hear you screaming.” He turned suddenly away from me and leaned forward, forehead to the wall. His silhouette against the firelight was so strange and twisted, like a too-sharp skeleton sewn into empty skin.

  I sank backward into the chaise and blew a long breath out through my nose. The goggles around my neck fogged. “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I’m not going to Ingolstadt, and I’m not letting you out. It’s horrible out there for people like you.”

  “No one is like me,” he replied.

  “For clockwork men,” I corrected. “Especially in Geneva. Oliver, people would rip you apart out there. They’d dissect you.”

  “I know.” He jammed his pipe between his teeth and slumped down on the chaise beside me. We sat for a while without speaking. A log in the fireplace collapsed into embers, sending a spray of popping sparks up the chimney.

  Then I remembered why I’d come today.

  “I got you something.” I retrieved my bag from under the desk and pulled out one of the books. “Happy birthday.”

  “Is that today?”

  “December first, same as every year.” I meant it as a joke, but Oliver didn’t laugh. He took the book from me and stared at the cover like it was a portrait of someone he almost recognized. “Coleridge,” I prompted. “You used to like him. You and . . .” I stopped and swallowed hard. I’d never mentioned Mary,
mostly for the sake of my own broken heart, and I didn’t know if Oliver remembered her.

  He glanced sideways at me. “Me and who?”

  “Just you,” I said. “You liked Coleridge.”

  “What does he write?”

  “Words.”

  He elbowed me sharply with his mechanical arm, and I yelped. It hurt more than I hoped he meant it to. “What sort of things, you ninny?”

  “Poetry. He’s a poet, I think. I don’t really know.” I reached for the next book on the stack.

  “Like one, that on a lonesome road . . .”

  I stopped. “What?”

  “That’s . . .” He screwed up his face, eyes closed in tight concentration. “Like one, that on a lonesome road / Doth walk in fear and dread, / And having once turned round walks on, / And turns no more his head; / Because he knows, a frightful fiend / Doth close behind him tread.”

  Behind us, another log snapped in the fireplace. “That’s pretty grim,” I said.

  “I think that’s Coleridge. I remember it.”

  “Oh.” My stomach jolted at the word remember. I dumped the rest of the books onto the floor without looking at them and reached for my coat. “Well, you can read it in your spare time, when you’re not tearing the furniture apart.”

  Oliver looked up as I stood. “Are you going already?”

  “I’ve got somewhere to be.”

  I didn’t say home, but I knew Oliver heard it anyway. He tossed the Coleridge book onto the floor next to Paradise Lost and pulled his feet up onto the spot I’d just vacated. “Tell your parents I said hello.”

  It was a jab wrapped up as a joke, which aggravated me more than if he’d just been mean. “They’re your parents too.”

  “I thought that was your honor now. Or do you prefer creator?”

  “Hell’s teeth, Oliver.” I snatched up my bag and my scarf—I didn’t even bother to put it on, I just wanted away from him so badly. It felt like I was suffocating. “I won’t be by much this week,” I called as I headed for the door. “We’ve got the Christmas market and Father’s going mental over it.”

  “Just like every year.”

  “Just like every year.”

  “I remember that.”

  I turned in the doorway and looked back. Oliver was cross-legged on the chaise with his shoulders slumped. He had picked up another book from my pile, and as he turned the pages, he reached up and ran his fingers over his bottom lip—an absent, deep-in-thought gesture I remembered from when we were boys.

  I watched his fingers cross his lip, and thought, I miss you.

  He was right there in front of me, close enough to touch. And all I could do was miss him.

  I turned the knob behind my back and offered what I hoped was at least close to a smile. “I’ll see you soon,” I said, and retreated into the castle darkness, back toward the setting winter sun, before he could say good-bye.

  I was six minutes late for supper.

  When I let myself into our flat above the shop, both my parents were already at the table, Father staring at his pocket watch, Mum looking rather sheepishly at me as though apologizing for the whole show of waiting. I knew it hadn’t been her idea. The table between them was laid with a roast goose, flanked by a dish of leek-and-potato papet vaudois and a whipped meringue. It was a far cry from most of our suppers, which were usually cold and stale and eaten standing up in the workshop between appointments.

  Father snapped his pocket watch shut and glared at me over the top of his spectacles. “You’re late, Alasdair.”

  Oliver had worn me out, and I was in no mood to joust with my father, so I sank into my place at the table without a word. Mum had put out embroidered napkins, and a bouquet of snowdrop flowers was nestled in a teacup between the candlesticks.

  For a long moment, none of us said anything. Mum stared down at her empty plate, Father glared at the goose, and I looked between them, wondering which of us would speak first.

  It was Father who finally raised his glass. I thought he would make a speech, because he was always one for lectures, but he simply said, “Happy birthday, Oliver.” His features sat in their practiced scowl, but I saw the tremor in his jaw as he finished, “You are missed.”

  Mum nodded, her thumb pressed against her lips.

  Father looked over at me, and I dropped my eyes to my own glass. “Would you like to say something about your brother, Alasdair?” he asked. “Something you remember.”

  There were so many things I remembered about Oliver, but the harder I tried to cling to them the faster they seemed to slip away. The images of our vagabond youth—children of the Shadow Boys, back when we were knotted so tight together—had been washed away by my latest memories of him in Château de Sang, raging and snarling and tearing apart the furniture. The fight in him that I had once admired had been transformed from glowing and bright into something you could fall and cut yourself on, and that was what was left of him—a man I didn’t know who wore his ill-fitting skin and spoke in his voice. My brother, obliterated by himself.

  All at once I felt like crying, and I stared hard at my fingers around my glass to stop my eyes from burning. The scars on my hand from the loose gears and wires on resurrection night flickered from red to white. The flesh memories of the nights I had killed my brother, and brought him back to life.

  “To Oliver,” I said, and I drained my glass in one swallow.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  Morand came by the shop the next afternoon to collect his arm.

  He was a short, stocky fellow about my father’s age with a head of thick graying hair that he wore long and loose. We saw him twice a year, consistent as clockwork, when he left his boardinghouse in Ornex for Geneva to pick up false identification papers for the clockwork men and women he harbored. The forgeries left mechanical parts unlisted, which made it easier to get a job and travel.

  Morand liked a good catch-up when he came, so it was usually Father who did the installation, but today he let me take Morand back into the workshop on my own. I thought that meant he was beginning to let out my lead, until he murmured, “We’ll see about your half-inch stock” as I passed him behind the counter.

  Inside the workshop, I did a quick lap around to light the lamps. Morand shifted my breakfast dishes off the chair and settled down, already rolling up his sleeve over the tarnished socket fused to his elbow.

  “So how’s Geneva treating the Finches?” he asked as I tugged my magnifying goggles over my eyes and hefted the clockwork arm up from the workbench.

  “Good. Fine.” I fit the arm into the socket, twisting until the bolts lined up, then started to tighten them. The gears settled with a soft groan.

  Morand laughed. “I forgot, you aren’t the chatty one, are you? Your brother used to—” He stopped and looked down at the floor.

  I kept my eyes on my work. “You can talk about him. I don’t mind.”

  He grunted, then rolled back his shoulder as I finished with the bolts. “He was always one for a good conversation, Oliver Finch. You look just like him, you know.”

  I mustered a smile and reached behind me for the pulse gloves. As I moved, the lamplight caught a bronze badge in the shape of a cog pinned to the lapel of Morand’s coat, same as the old man on the omnibus had been wearing the day before.

  Morand caught me staring at it and grinned. “Are you admiring my Frankenstein badge?”

  I nearly dropped the gloves. “What did you call it?” I asked, though I’d heard him clearly. I could see the word spelled out in gold leaf on the spine of the book Mary had sent.

  “Frankenstein badge. Haven’t you heard that? It’s what my boarders coming out of Geneva call them. All the clockworks here have to wear them now.”

  “I know,” I said quickly. “I just hadn’t heard them called that before.”

  “Have you read it—Frank
enstein?” he asked as I strapped on the pulse gloves and started to get a charge building between them. “Nobody knows who wrote it, not even the newspapers. I heard it’s about Geisler, though. Your family doesn’t speak to him anymore, do you?”

  “No.” The electric current gathering between my hands snapped like an affirmation. “Why would someone write a book about Geisler? He’s still a wanted man in most places.”

  Morand shrugged. “It might not be about him, but it’s a definitely about a Shadow Boy. I don’t know, I haven’t read it, I just hear about it from my boarders. Something about clockwork men and whether or not we’re actually human. And then there’s a doctor in it who makes a mechanical monster from a corpse and it turns on him.”

  “Hell’s teeth.”

  “Sounds like Geisler’s work, doesn’t it? It’s set here in Geneva as well. I sort of expected the whole city to be in an uproar over it. It’s quieter than I expected.”

  “Well, we’ve got to behave for Christmas.”

  He laughed as he stretched out his legs. “I had a man come from Geneva a few weeks ago called Emile Brien. Got his leg blown off at Waterloo and walks on cogs now. You know him?” I shook my head. “He said he was enlisted by a group of clockworks here who are trying to get some trouble started. Know anything about that?”

  “No.” I suddenly realized the plates on my hands were crackling with current—I’d been so intent on what he was saying I’d forgotten them. I touched my palms to the conducting plates on Morand’s arm and a bolt tore from the gloves into the machinery.

  I knew I was right about the half-inch stock, but I still held my breath as the gears leapt to life and interlaced, smooth and soundless as the summer Rhone. No sparks or broken teeth. No sticky ratchet. And no strain on the center wheel. Morand bent his arm a few times, then worked the silver fingers in and out of a fist.

  “Feel all right?” I asked.

  “Outstanding,” he replied. “Well done, Alasdair.”

  I nodded like it was all business, but I was pleased. Father would have to admit I’d been right about the half-inch stock. He was brilliant in matters of flesh and blood—back in Scotland, before he’d been recruited by Geisler for his fleet of Shadow Boys, he’d been a navy surgeon—but only passable at machinery. He’d never admit that cogs and gears spoke to me in a way they never had to him. Father was a doctor, same way I was a mechanic. Some things you just are, deep and true inside your bones.