by Jon Skovron
“S-S-S-Sophie?” I turned slowly. She was there, small and gentle, her pale, heart-shaped face framed in long, curly auburn hair as she looked up at me with her bright blue-green eyes. She reached out her delicate hand and placed it on my cheek. It felt real like nothing else in that moment did.
“Come back to us, Boy,” she said.
“Sophie . . . I—I—I . . . I didn’t . . . I couldn’t . . .” I turned back to the maenads, now covered in their own blood as well as the blood of the humans they’d killed. They lay unmoving, barely alive. “Oh, god . . .”
She gently pulled me down to her and I just started sobbing into her chest, like all the rage and anger that had been coiled up in me had melted into tears.
“It’s okay,” she whispered, and kissed my forehead. “It’s over. I’ve got you now.”
LIEL AND SOPHIE suggested that I go back to the theater, but I wanted to help with the cleanup. I needed to. Henri was just starting to regain consciousness when the other seven dryads showed up dressed as maids with cleaning supplies, clothes, and a first aid kit. They surveyed the carnage, their faces grim.
“Take a good look, sisters,” said Hazel. She was the eldest and leader of the dryads. She looked the same as the rest, except her skin had a slightly rough-looking texture, almost like bark. “This is what it looks like when you give in to the dark, selfish impulse and ignore the good of the group. Be grateful that there was one who could stop them. Otherwise, the consequences would have been even worse.” She turned to me. “Thank you, Boy. You do your father much honor.”
I didn’t know how to respond, so I just nodded and got to work cleaning up the mess. I didn’t think I’d done anybody any honors.
When we were finished cleaning up, the dryads took their injured sisters back to the theater. Hazel loaded up on glamour and went to smooth things over with the hotel manager.
That left Liel, Sophie, and me to explain it all to Henri.
“But wait . . .” he said as we guided him to the bed with new clean sheets. “What happened?” He was still pretty out of it, but he wasn’t injured. “The last thing I remember . . .” He frowned, and looked around. “How did I get here?”
Sophie, Liel, and I exchanged looks.
“Some dryads brought you home last night,” said Liel. “You don’t remember that?”
He tried to give her his grin, but in his current state it was more of a leer. “I’m sorry, I don’t believe we’ve met before. I know I would have remembered so lovely a face.”
“Actually, Henri, we have met. It’s Liel.”
“Wait.” He squinted at her. “This is Liel?”
She gave him a polished human smile. “Might want to pick that jaw up off the ground there. It’s only a temporary illusion, anyway. Just a pinch of glamour, or what you might call faerie dust, courtesy of Laurellen.”
“Amazing!” said Henri. Then he turned his unfocused gaze on Sophie. “And who is this rare creature? I know we have not met.”
“Not officially, no,” she said. “I’m Sophie.”
“The Sophie Jekyll? At last! Boy is one lucky man. Or monster. You, my dear, give new meaning to the phrase ‘breathtaking beauty.’”
Sophie patted his head and looked at me. “Isn’t he adorable? Let’s keep him.”
“I think he could stand to be a little less adorable,” said Liel. “Since that’s what got him into this mess in the first place.”
“Mess?” asked Henri, looking around in confusion. “What mess?”
“You really don’t remember any of it?” I asked. “The dryads. They brought you back. And then at some point . . . they started killing and eating people.”
“They . . .” His eyes started to rove around the room, growing wider and wider. “I think I . . . oh, god . . .” He turned wildly around, trying to climb out of the bed.
“It’s over now.” I gently brought him back down. “You’re okay.”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” he said as he settled back in the bed. He clutched one of the pillows. “They were . . . tearing people apart. I could not . . . they kept forcing wine down my throat. And other things. I don’t even know . . .” He shuddered.
“I’m so sorry this happened,” I said.
“You said it would be dangerous,” he said quietly, his eyes staring out the window at the fading afternoon light. “You warned me. I just . . . you know, thought it was big, scary monsters I needed to watch out for.” He shuddered again.
There was a knock at the newly reattached door. I opened it and Hazel came in.
“Everything is settled,” she said. “I apologized to the hotel management about the broken furniture and gave them money to replace it all.” She looked at Henri. “In the meantime, I’m afraid you’ll have to do without a television.”
He nodded absently, his eyes still staring out the window.
“What about the missing employees?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I’m sorry for the loss of those humans, but I’m afraid all we can do is make sure there is nothing that links back to The Show. We must take care of our own, after all. Now, I suggest that we let Henri get some sleep, and that the rest of us return to the theater where we belong.”
I put my hand on Henri’s shoulder. “You okay?”
“I am alive,” he said. “Thank god for that at least.”
“All right, we’ll see you tomorrow. Get some sleep.”
“Eh, do you . . . think I could keep Vi here with me?” he asked. “It’s just, you know, I would rather not be alone right now.”
I took Vi out of my pocket.
“Hi, Boy!” She was back together in her anime form.
“Are you cool with keeping Henri company tonight?”
An exclamation point appeared over her head, and her cheeks went bright red. “You bet!”
Not that I was staring or anything, but it seemed like her breasts were a little larger and bouncier than they had been the last time I’d seen her. In fact, she seemed to have adopted the same physique as the dryads.
9
Untrust Us
THAT EVENING, SOPHIE and I sat up on the roof of the theater, sharing a blanket and looking out over Manhattan. Night was falling and a few stars peeked out through trails of purple clouds.
“This was a good idea,” I said.
“Naturally,” she said. “Because it was my idea.”
“Are you cold?” I asked.
“Not while I’m sharing a blanket with my boyfriend, the living furnace.”
“Am I really that hot?”
She pressed her hand flat against my chest. “You have no idea.”
I smiled. “I missed you.”
“You’d be an idiot not to.”
“I’m sorry your first day out had to be . . . this one.”
She shrugged and her smiled faded. “I’m just glad I could be there when you needed me.”
“I did need you.”
“I know.”
She looked up at me, brushing my hair to one side.
“There’s nothing wrong with that, you know,” she said. “Needing me.”
“It’s just . . . if you hadn’t been there . . . if you hadn’t stopped me . . .” I struggled to push out words that didn’t seem to want to come. “I think I would have killed them.”
Sophie said nothing for a moment, just stared up at me with her bright eyes. “We’re all a lot closer to the darkness than we want to admit.”
“Still,” I said. “I know Claire has saved my life, but today, you saved my soul.”
“Do you think we have those?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes I think that’s all we really are. My body parts can be replaced. They don’t change who I am as a person. Vi doesn’t even have a body yet, but she’s a person.”
“What about us?”
“What do you mean?”
“Claire and I. Are we two souls? Or one split in half?”
“Two souls. Definitely.”
“Why are you so sure?”
“Because neither of you is half of anything.”
We were silent for a moment. The drone of endless traffic hummed on below us. Then she slipped her small hand in mine.
“I missed you, too,” she said.
“I know.” I drew her closer. “But it’s still nice to hear.”
I don’t know how long we sat there, but the sky had gone black and the skyline lit up with a thousand lights by the time my father came up to get us.
“Hiya, Papa Monster!” said Sophie, jumping up and giving him a big hug.
He smiled and carefully stroked her hair with his massive hand.
“Sophie, it is good to see you.” Then he turned to me. “We found you a bed. I need you to help me move it into your room.”
Sophie headed to our room to clear up some space, while I followed Dad. The hallways were too narrow for us to fit side by side, so I walked behind him.
“I heard what you did today,” he said as we walked.
“Yeah. From Hazel?”
“No, from Liel.”
“Oh.”
We walked on for a little while. Then, still not looking back at me, he said, “I still remember the first time I lost control. It terrified me.”
“I almost killed people today, Dad.”
“I did kill people,” he said.
“I know. But it’s not like I’ve got more self-control or anything. It was Sophie who stopped me.”
“That is my point. You have kind, caring people in your life. Be grateful for them. Protect them, and they will protect you.”
“Protect me from what?”
“Yourself.”
We got the spare bed from the trowe dens. For a moment I wondered if this was Liel’s bed and she didn’t need it now that she was hooking up with Bakru. But I decided that line of thought would just make me crazy, and I didn’t need any more drama right now. So as my dad and I slowly maneuvered the bed up the winding staircase to ground level, I tried to distract myself with something else.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you,” I said. “Did you ever know a dwarf in Geneva?”
“Why do you ask?”
“I met one while I was up in the Jura Mountains. He said he taught you how to survive up there.”
“Yes. He did. I’m glad to know he’s still alive.”
“He said a bunch of gloom-and-doom stuff about the future to me.”
He stopped and turned his head to look at me over the top of the bed. “What did he say exactly?”
“I can’t remember word for word. Something about the truth being revealed and war coming after. And he said he’d be there to help me when my need was ‘most dire.’ Whatever that meant. Clearly, almost getting eaten by a freshwater mermaid wasn’t dire enough.”
He stared down at me for a moment. “I see.” Then he turned and started moving the bed again.
“So . . . does that mean anything to you?” I asked.
“It’s nothing you need to concern yourself with right now.”
“That doesn’t exactly answer my question.”
But he didn’t say anything else for the rest of the climb. Maybe I was getting a little paranoid, but between him and Ruthven, I was starting to get the feeling they were keeping something from me—something big. It wouldn’t be the first time. After all, it wasn’t until I was seventeen that I found out that Dad was planning to send me to live with the Frankensteins.
Once we reached ground level and got out of the stairwell, we were able to get the bed parallel to the ground, making it a lot easier to carry. We were most of the way across the lobby when I saw someone enter through the main doors wearing an overcoat and a fedora. The figure glanced quickly around and for a split second I saw a beige latex mask and dark, wrap-around sunglasses. He stood there for a moment, then moved quickly toward Ruthven’s office door.
“Is that Kemp?” I asked.
My dad stopped abruptly and put his end of the bed down. “You can take it the rest of the way. I must go.” Then he headed over to Ruthven’s office, following after Kemp. The door closed behind them, and a moment later I heard it lock.
There was definitely something going on that they weren’t telling me.
I sighed, and hoisted the bed up so it was balanced across my back, then trudged down the hallway alone.
“IT DOESN’T SURPRISE me that Ruthven would be sneaky,” said Sophie. “Or your dad, honestly. But Kemp? I thought he was cool.”
“Sorry, who is Kemp again?” asked Henri.
Sophie and I had gone over to the hotel first thing in the morning so we could discuss the suspicious activities of our community elders with Henri and Vi. The room had already been fixed up with new furniture and a TV.
“Kemp is the Invisible Man,” I said.
“He’s also the leader of a monster community out in LA called The Studio,” said Sophie.
“The Studio? Is that like the Hollywood version of The Show?”
“Pretty much,” I said. “He and Ruthven have always had this rivalry.”
“Like American rap groups?”
“What?”
“You know. East Coast versus West Coast.”
“Uh, yeah, I guess. . . .”
“So whatever brought those two together must be serious!” said Vi. Her phone sat on the bed next to Henri. He’d thoughtfully propped her up on his knee so we could see each other.
“Maybe they’re just finally planning that big international monster summit or whatever they’ve been talking about since last summer,” I said.
“Then why all the secrecy?” asked Sophie. “No, I think it has something to do with Robert.”
“But they would tell you, of all people,” said Henri. “Yes?”
“You’d think so,” I said. “But Ruthven was kind of cagey both times I asked him about it. This could totally be about Robert.”
“Then you have a right to know, Sophie,” said Henri.
“That’s right!” said Vi. “He’s your brother!”
“Nobody’s arguing with that,” I said. “But we can’t make Ruthven tell us.”
“Maybe if I talk to Kemp when Ruthven isn’t around,” said Sophie. “He might open up.”
“It’s worth a shot,” I said. “We’ll need a distraction then. Something to draw Ruthven’s attention so we can get Kemp alone.”
“I could get kidnapped by dryads again,” said Henri.
“Preferably something that doesn’t involve a body count,” I said.
“I could trigger the fire alarms,” said Vi.
“Or a general panic.”
“Okay, you’re not going to like this idea, but I think it’ll work,” said Sophie. “Your mum has been avoiding you since we got here.”
“I noticed,” I said. “It’s because I brought Henri.”
“Your mom is not a fan?” he asked.
“Of the Frankensteins, or humans in general,” I said.
“But everybody loves Henri!” said Vi.
“Of course, Vi,” said Sophie. “I’m sure the Bride just needs to give him a chance. She hasn’t even met him yet.” She turned to me. “Which is why you, love, should ask Ruthven to take Henri to her and formally introduce them. She won’t be able to avoid that.”
“And while Ruthven, Henri, and I are having that awkward moment with my mom,” I said, “you can use your wiles to get the info out of Kemp.”
“Wiles?” She pressed a finger to the dimple on her freckled cheek. “I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”
WHEN WE ENTERED the lobby, Sophie went over to “chat up” the
goblin twins at the box office while Henri and I went to Ruthven’s office. Sophie and Henri agreed it would look less suspicious that way.
As I knocked on Ruthven’s door, I took a deep breath to calm my nerves. I’d never tried to purposefully deceive Ruthven like this before. Partly because I was a terrible liar and he knew it.
“Yes?” came Ruthven’s voice.
“It’s Boy. And, uh, Henri, too.”
“Perfect. Come in.”
When I opened the door, Ruthven was at his desk as usual. There was a chair next to his desk with what appeared to be an empty suit in it.
“Ah, Boy, so good to see you!” said Kemp in his polished British dialect. He stood up as we entered.
“Good to have you here.” I shook his invisible hand. “This is Henri Frankenstein.”
“A pleasure, Henri,” said Kemp, extending his sleeve. “I’ve heard so much about you!”
Up to this point, I’d been pretty impressed with how cool Henri had been around people who didn’t look human. Trowe, goblins, ogres, creatures with fangs, scales, claws, the works: none of it had rattled him. But this, I could tell, was his limit. He stared at Kemp, or I guess stared at the seemingly empty space that Kemp occupied. His eyes got wider and wider and his mouth started to sag open.
I nudged him and he came out of it enough to force a smile, extend his hand, and say, “Great to meet you.”
But then when he felt Kemp’s invisible hand, his face went white and I thought he might actually faint.
“Steady on, there’s a good lad,” Kemp said, his voice amused. Then he sat back down.
“How is everyone at The Studio?” I asked.
“Oh, fine, fine,” said Kemp. “In fact, we’re on hiatus.”
“I didn’t know that,” said Ruthven. “For how long?”
“At least until the New Year. Possibly until the spring. Most of the company are traveling abroad now, either visiting friends or returning to their homelands.”
“And you can afford this extended break?” asked Ruthven, his eyebrow raised.
Kemp’s suit shoulders shrugged. “I’m loath to rub it in, old chap, but television makes quite a bit more money than theater.”
