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Page 33

 

  I fall back against the mattress, gather up the blankets, and turn away from him.

  “Rhine . . . ” He touches my shoulder, but the way I tense up makes him withdraw. He’s so quiet that I think he must have left the room, so frustrated with my secrecy and lack of answers that he had to be away from me.

  Then I hear him say, very softly, “Vaughn. ”

  “Maybe,” I admit. “But I can’t imagine how. ”

  Gabriel touches my shoulder again, settles behind me on the mattress. “I won’t let him hurt you,” he says.

  “How will you stop him?” I say, more wryly than I mean to.

  He kisses the back of my neck, and a surge of electricity runs up my spine.

  “You let me worry about that,” he says. He reaches overhead and turns off the light again.

  As I lie there, trying to fall asleep, I think of Gabriel’s words after he fought Greg off me.

  I won’t let anyone touch you like that ever again.

  But if he’s right, and Vaughn is somehow the cause of this, what can be done? How can he protect me from something that is already deep within my tissues and blood, ruining me from the inside?

  Still, as exhaustion clouds my reason, I begin to feel something bizarrely like peace.

  I won’t, he promised, enveloping me in his warmth, much like he does now. Not ever again.

  The following morning I’m awoken by a thud. I open my eyes, grumbling unkind things as the stack of books comes into focus. My head feels full of shattered glass, and all I can manage to get out is “What?”

  “Medical journals,” Gabriel says, sitting on the edge of my mattress.

  “We found them in a box in the shed,” Silas says. He’s leaning against the door frame, holding a pancake like it’s a sandwich and taking a bite that reduces it by half. “Claire used to be a nurse. ”

  With effort I sit upright, my hair spilling into my face. Gabriel hands me the glass of water that’s gone warm sitting beside me all night. I take a painful sip and ask, “What are we going to do with them?”

  “We’re going to figure this out,” Gabriel says.

  “Well, have fun, kids,” Silas says around the last mouthful of pancake. He stretches his arms over his head, hitting the top of the door frame as he goes. “Some of us have real chores to do. ”

  Gabriel and I spend a good hour going through the books, looking up everything from influenza to scurvy. There are so many ailments. Things I never could have imagined. Tumors that can more than double a person’s bodyweight. Diseases that cause gums to bleed, and toenails to turn yellow. Nervous disorders that can produce auditory hallucinations.

  As for my symptoms, every source seems to agree that what I have is the flu. Coughing, fever, light-headedness. There’s no category for the feeling of dread, the sense that something is amiss. There are no chapters about sinister fathers-in-law or what types of things might be done in a labyrinthine basement.

  The pages are spread out between us on the blanket, and I can feel Gabriel’s desperation the further we get from finding an answer. His eyes are still on the page when he speaks, and at first I think he’s going to read a passage aloud, but he says, “We have to confront him. We have to go back to the mansion. ”

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “Have you lost your mind?”

  “He followed you to Madame’s, didn’t he? Maybe there was some truth to the things he was saying. Maybe he wanted to tell you about what’s happening to you. ”

  “Or maybe he was trying to lure me back to him so that he could split me in half and devote a chapter of his sick experiments to the vital organs of a subject with two different-color eyes and a defiance toward his son,” I snap. “I’m not going back there, and neither are you. He’ll kill us both. ”

  Gabriel looks up from the page. The ferocity in his eyes startles me. “Take a look at yourself,” he says. “He is killing you. I think that when he followed you to the scarlet district, he meant to undo whatever this is that’s happening to you. ”

  “That makes absolutely no sense,” I say, ignoring the small bit of me that agrees.

  “Who’s to say?” Gabriel says. “Maybe when you ran away it interrupted an experiment. ”

  “Well, I think that if I go back, he’ll kill me for sure,” I say.

  Gabriel looks back into the book, muttering something about Jenna being right.

  “What was that about my sister wife?” I say.

  “She knew you so well. She was right—you don’t get it. Vaughn doesn’t want you dead. What use would you be to him dead? He wants to see what makes you breathe, and why your eyes are that way. There’s something in you that gives him hope. ”

  I think of how eager Jenna was to help me escape. How she disappeared that one afternoon to the basement and slammed the door on me when I asked what it was all about. It wounds me that she would share these things with Gabriel. I held her head in my lap as she died, and she never trusted me with a word of her secrets, though it seems a lot of them had to do with me.

  “Don’t talk to me about Jenna,” I spit back. “You’re so sure she knew everything. Do you know where she is now? Dead. Under a sheet on a gurney, just like Rose. And even if Vaughn’s plans don’t involve killing me, I won’t go back to that place to find out what they are. ”

  The page is shaking between my fingers, and I slam the book just in time to see it drown in the blur of fresh tears. “I won’t go back,” I repeat.

  My head is pounding. I hear whispers in my blood, and I know—I know—that there is something lethal inside of me that cannot be explained by these books. When Gabriel crawls across the mattress to be next to me, I lean my head against his shoulder even though I’m furious with him. I crave the safety he provides, even if it’s temporary.

  “Okay,” he says into my ear. “Okay. We’ll find another way to fix this. ”

  I don’t believe it, but I nod. The nausea turns a tide, becoming something more profound. My nerves come alive, raising their heads like flowers come to bloom. I look at him, and his thumb is just swiping a tear from my cheek when I push forward and kiss him.

  He kisses back, all the pages spread out around us like riddles waiting to be solved. Let them wait. Let my genes unravel, my hinges come loose. If my fate rests in the hands of a madman, let death come and bring its worst. I’ll take the ruined craters of laboratories, the dead trees, this city with ashes in the oxygen, if it means freedom. I’d sooner die here than live a hundred years with wires in my veins.

  I sink back against the mattress, and when he moves his mouth from mine, I find that I’m trembling, flushed, my hands going hot, cold, hot. But I pull him back down to me before the concern can overtake him.

  A book slides down the mattress with my weight, tapping my ankle as though to remind me. I kick it away, see it hit the floor like a bug I’ve just squashed.

  Chapter 22

  IN THE AFTERNOON I conjure the strength to perform menial tasks. I wipe sticky messes from the piano keys and countertops. Silas washes dishes, and I dry them to spotlessness.

  “How’re you feeling, princess?” he asks, handing me a plastic sippy cup.

  “Great,” I answer with authority. I used to find him irritatingly superior, but now I think we aren’t so different.

  He has meaningless trysts with young girls, little affairs that have nothing to do with love. The girls come willingly, even eagerly, and I’ve decided that they’re nothing like those in the scarlet district, enduring men for profit. Rather, Silas and his adoring female cavalcade have decided that they will seize whatever thrills they can find in their short lives. And how can I fault them for that? Aren’t I doing the same thing? Living with the promise of death, thinking only of today.

  Silas bumps my shoulder, and I nearly drop the plate I’m drying. “What are you smiling about?”

  “What do you mean?” I say. “It’s a be
autiful day; that’s all. ”

  Silas cants his chin at the window, beyond which gray clouds are hovering. “Right. ” He thinks I’ve gone mad. Maybe I have. Maybe I’m lost in the realms of my own head like Maddie, who is so immersed that she doesn’t grant this world the privilege of her voice. Sometimes I wish I could see what she sees. I’d like to try it.

  “Hey,” Silas calls. Water is sloshing between his fingers. “Where are you going?”

  “The heart of the song,” I say, leaving him behind as I head for the sound of piano chords in the next room.

  Nina plays like an angel. Her left arm, bearing only the shriveled idea of a hand, rests at her side, while her right flies over the keys, evoking a fluttery sound like gasps or bullets.

  Maddie is under the piano on all fours, her hair in her face, her shoulders hunched, eyes wild. She’s a beast without its herd, as brave as she is small. I lie on the rug, and we watch each other, blinking curiously.

  “Do you know what my father used to say?” I ask her. “He used to say that songs had a heart. A crescendo that can make all your blood rush from your head to your toes. ”

  She crawls toward me and then rests on her haunches. She seems like a small thing looking into a deep pool of water, and I’m sinking far below. My eyelids feel heavy. I watch her blur and then disappear, taking with her the song and its heart.

  “—ine? Rhine!”

  Something acidic bubbles up in my throat, and I feel sick. An arm reaches behind my shoulders and pulls me up from the depths just in time for me to vomit into my lap, gasping and choking on the burn of it.

  “There it is,” Claire coos, mopping my face with a wet cloth. “Let it all out. ”

  This is what I get for forcing down breakfast, I suppose. When I open my eyes, it’s as though someone has smeared ointment across them. I splutter again, and when it finally stops, I’m laid on my side. Claire is saying, “Let the girl breathe. Give her room. ”

  Silas and Gabriel are talking, but I can’t understand the words. Small, cold fingers trace my forehead. Maddie. How could Madame show violence to this harmless little creature?

  Nina leans close. “You scared her,” she whispers, giving Maddie a voice. “She thinks she broke you. ”

  “She didn’t,” I murmur. My voice is small, and I worry it won’t come through. “She didn’t. Someone else did. ”

  I can’t hang on to what happens next. Someone carries me up the stairs, and then there’s the vague knowledge of soaking in a cool tub, and then a soft towel, and a firm mattress. Something cold covers my forehead. An icepack; I can hear the ice moving like rocks. The frozen smell of it is a shock to my nostrils, but a relief overall. “Rest now,” someone whispers, and I do.