Her Dark Curiosity

by Megan Shepherd

  I gave the sleeping cat a small pat and tiptoed back to my room, where I pulled on a coat borrowed from Elizabeth. It would be another sleepless night for me. But as I slid open the window and climbed outside, I thought about how at least I wasn’t alone anymore. Edward would be waiting for me in that attic workshop, with Sharkey and the roses and a warm little fire going—and together we’d fix my father’s wrongs.

  FIFTEEN

  EVERY NIGHT THAT WEEK, Edward and I worked on developing a serum amid the twisted rosebushes and howling wind outside my workshop, and every night we progressed a little more. On the fifth night, the compound held for nearly twenty seconds before splitting apart. On the sixth, it held long enough for me to prepare an injection, but separated only moments before I slid the needle into his skin. Without the missing ingredient, there was little we could do. I felt helpless, and frustrated, and mired in guilt. The Beast had stopped killing others—but he was still killing Edward from the inside.

  On our seventh night together, eyes bleary with lack of sleep as I climbed out of the professor’s window, I hurried through the streets with a new type of burner that would produce more even heat distribution. I raced up the lodging house stairs and threw open the door, the weight of the burner heavy in my satchel. Sharkey trotted over, tail thumping in his usual greeting, and I pushed my hood back and knelt to pick him up. He squirmed as he tried to lick my face, and I laughed and buried my face in his fur.

  “Edward, I’ve a new piece of equipment,” I said. Being here eased the tension from my bones in a wonderful way. “Edward, did you hear me?”

  When there was no answer, I set Sharkey down. The attic was a small chamber, with only the worktable and bed and cabinet as furniture, and the alcove tucked away behind the woodstove, which was so dark that I only ever used it for storing grafting supplies. Now, though, I noticed one of Edward’s thick iron chains running from the woodstove into the deep of the alcove. My breath caught.

  Was the Beast there, chained in the shadows?

  I’d seen the Beast only once, when Edward transformed on the island just moments before the fire started. I remembered his gleaming animal eyes, and how his whole body had seemed larger and hairier. The joints of his feet and hands had twisted together so he appeared to have only three fingers and three toes. Six-inch razor claws had emerged between his knuckles.

  I remembered the Beast’s voice, too, so shockingly human, and yet so different from Edward’s.

  We belong together, he had said.

  “Edward?” I called. Sharkey darted into the alcove and I shrieked, bracing myself for a snarl as the Beast ripped him apart, but no sounds came except the thumping of Sharkey’s tail.

  I pulled on the chain, which rattled toward me—not attached to anything but air, which was a small relief. But where was Edward? He’d promised not to leave.

  Behind me, the workshop door suddenly swung open hard enough to slam against the inside wall. I gasped and whirled, the chain falling from my hands with a terrible clatter that made Sharkey huddle behind my skirt.

  “Edward!” I said.

  He stood in the doorway, gold-flecked eyes heavy with surprise that I was there. His shirt was torn at the collar and sleeves, soaked with blood all the way to his elbows. His shoes were split at the seams, with jagged holes pushed through the top.

  Holes for claws.

  My hand went to my mouth, as Edward quickly shut the door and then rushed over, trying to calm me. “It’s all right. I’ve control of myself now. It’s me.”

  But as he came forward, all I could see was the blood on his shirt and arms that still smelled so fresh and ironlike. This wasn’t supposed to happen. I’d planned everything to keep him contained. I stepped back with a strangled sound, bumping into the worktable hard enough to knock over one of the vials, which overturned and filled the room with the spicy smell of hibiscus extract.

  “Don’t come any closer!” I cried.

  “I won’t hurt you, I promise.”

  “You’ve killed someone.”

  He paused, eyes going to the stains on his clothes. He could hardly deny it—the evidence was soaked into the seams of his shirt. “Not me,” he entreated. “The Beast.”

  “The padlock… the chains… my god, Edward, how did this happen? We took precautions!”

  “He came too fast; I didn’t have time to lock the chains. The transformations are getting harder to control.” He dragged a bloodstained hand through his hair, looking like that desperate castaway I’d met so many months ago. “You always knew this about me, Juliet. This is my curse—this is why we’re here, what we’re trying to stop.” He took another step toward me, but I jerked away again. “You never come here before ten o’clock,” he said. “I hadn’t wanted you to ever see this—”

  “Who did you kill this time?” I demanded.

  His chest fell again in a deep exhale, and I saw how exhausted he was, how his muscles twitched and jumped, but I couldn’t bring myself to feel sorry for him. He collapsed onto the bed, staining the sheets crimson, bracing his head in his hands like he was on the verge of fracturing. “You know I can’t remember what he does. There are only hazy memories… following a doctor, but he let him live. And then I remember dark alleyways and the smell of blood. Whitechapel, most likely, which means another ruffian who would have died soon enough anyway, frozen to death drunk in some alleyway.”

  “And that makes it right?”

  His eyes flashed with indignation. “Of course not!”

  His outburst made Sharkey whine and hide behind my skirts again. A doctor, he had said. Could the Beast have been following Dr. Hastings? Hastings had wronged me… so why hadn’t the Beast killed him yet?

  He certainly deserves it, that awful man, I thought, and then caught myself. Judging who should live and die sounded too much like Father’s arrogance.

  Edward started tearing at his broken shoelaces until he could get kick both shoes off. His feet were knobby and caked in blood from where the claws had emerged between his joints. The claws were gone now, hidden once more between his bones. My own feet creaked with pain at the sight of them.

  “Nothing’s changed, Juliet. It’s still me.”

  He looked at me with eyes that were all too innocent. A boy with a monster trapped inside, and nowhere to go but this dark attic, and no one to trust but me.

  “I know.” The crimson red spilled across his shirt was a terrible distraction, one I could scarcely look away from. “Although to see it so plainly…”

  My left hand started shaking, and I clutched it to my chest before he could see the bones shifting on their own accord. He set his torn coat aside, looking so battered and beaten and hopeless that a small part of my heart twisted with sympathy for him.

  “I know you aren’t a monster, Edward. You aren’t the one who wants to kill. It’s just so difficult to understand where the line is between you and the Beast.” I knit my fingers together and sat down next to him on the bed. “Before I knew about the Beast, I admired you greatly. You saved my life. You defended me against my father. I know that’s still you… and yet he’s in there as well.”

  Edward picked at his own fingernails, caked in blood. “If it wasn’t for the Beast,” he asked quietly, “would you have ever loved me?”

  The bluntness of his question left me shocked. I didn’t answer, because I didn’t know how. Something had been stirring between him and me, feelings I had thought only belonged to Montgomery. But Montgomery had left me. For all I knew, I’d never see him again. Was I to live my whole life alone, then?

  Edward reached over cautiously and took my hand. His hand was strong, so much larger than when I’d first known him—a testament to his beastly nature encroaching. Blood caked the beds of his fingernails and the lines of his palm, and it stained my own, too. That was fitting, in a way. His victim’s blood was as much on my hands—my conscience—as his. If it hadn’t been for me, Father would have never known the science to make him into the monster he
was.

  I felt hot tears on my cheeks, and then Edward wiped them away with the one clean patch of fabric on his cuff.

  “It’s my fault,” I choked. “If only I was smarter, if I could have already cured you.”

  “You’ve done everything you can.”

  “Father would have figured it out by now.”

  He pushed back his shirt cuff and brushed my cheek with his thumb instead. “Your father had a lifetime of knowledge. You’re only starting. And we’re getting closer.”

  “But how many people must die first?”

  “I’m trying,” he murmured, smoothing my loose hair back with both hands as the fire in the woodstove cracked and sparked. “Don’t you think that I would have stopped him if I could? I told you, I’ve tried to take his life by taking my own. He won’t let me.”

  There was so much pain in his voice, so much self-hatred and guilt.

  “That isn’t what I want,” I said, letting my fingers intertwine with his soaked fabric, holding him close so that he couldn’t slip the chains of my hands. “I don’t want you to die, Edward.” My voice had a breathlessness I hadn’t intended. His eyes found mine, asking a question, and I blinked.

  “I mean…”

  I started to clarify that I only meant he shouldn’t die for Father’s sins. Not that I wanted him to live because I cared for him, because I felt a strange sort of kinship to this boy torn apart by my father, just like me, just trying to find a place in the world between the dark shadows and the too-bright sunlight.

  “I mean…” I started again, but my words faded. With the smell of roses around us, and his strong hands around my own, I wasn’t sure what I meant. My life with the professor was so fortunate, so fragile, and half of it was a lie. I could only be that proper young lady during the day. But at night…

  I let my fingertips trail over the folds and valleys of his shirt, coming away with another man’s blood.

  “In a way, I envy your other half,” I whispered. “At least he’s free to do what he wants.”

  Edward watched me staring at my fingertips. “No, he isn’t. He’s as much a prisoner as I am, beholden to his own sick desires. The sooner he’s gone from me, the better. I want to be just a man, that’s all, who isn’t marked with bruises, who can walk the streets without worry that he’ll kill someone.” He swallowed, as his hands again closed over mine. “Who can love you as you deserve to be loved.”

  My breath stilled. He’d made no secret of his feelings for me. Even on the island, behind the waterfall, he’d intimated that he’d loved me. I’d never given him any indication—not in words, at least—that I returned those feelings. Still, I couldn’t deny that someplace deep, my thoughts had often wandered to him. Even in death, Edward Prince had been a difficult young man to forget about.

  “Edward, don’t talk like that,” I whispered.

  But he touched my cheek gently, turning my face back around to look at him. The blood on his shirt mingled with the smell of roses, making me dizzy in a way that had nothing to do with my illness. He was so close that his warm breath dusted my cold neck. It stirred something inside me, as though the animal within now sensed another creature like itself and was waking.

  “I haven’t been entirely honest with you,” he whispered. “I told you I came back to London to find Moreau’s colleague so I could cure myself, but that’s not the only reason. Nor is it the only reason I befriended Lucy. I had to see you again. I had to hear news of you, even if only bits of gossip from your best friend. I tried to stay away from you—to keep you safe from the Beast—but I couldn’t bear it. All I thought about was you.” He leaned his forehead against my own, and this close to the window his breath fogged in the space between us, but I didn’t feel cold.

  “I came back to London for you, Juliet,” he whispered.

  Words I’d once wished to hear while staring at my bedroom ceiling, murmuring he-loves-me, he-loves-me-not into the silent air, but from someone else. In the small space of my workshop, tucked away amid the roses, it didn’t seem to matter as much who said them, as long as they were said. Edward loved me. Edward had risked everything to come here, to be with me. Life in London had always been lacking some critical piece, like a piano missing a single key. And here was Edward, who knew my secrets and didn’t judge me for them, desperate to fill that void in my life.

  And I was desperate for him, too.

  I tilted my head to look up at him, and our eyes met as my fingers coiled in his bloodstained clothing. I wasn’t certain who moved first, after that. We were already so close, with his arms around me. Not a far change to press our lips together, to slide my hands around his neck and tangle them in his dark hair. He responded instantly, breath ragged as he kissed me.

  He tasted of blood and bitter tea, and his kiss felt like something I had long wanted and only now realized.

  Heart pounding, I slipped my fingers between the buttons of his shirt to pull away the bloody reminder of his recent crimes, but he held my hand. “Slowly, Juliet. I’ve wanted this a long time. We don’t have to rush.”

  He kissed me again, achingly slow. But his breath was as ragged as mine, and his loneliness and desperation as deep as mine, and it wasn’t hard to make him forget about childish desires like chaste little kisses. Once I whispered his name and pressed my body flush with his, he was broken.

  We found our way to the wooden bed beside the woodstove, where warm flames splashed on both our faces. Our limbs tangled together, our lips found each other feverishly. The smell of blood was choking my lungs, and I helped Edward out of the stained clothes and threw them on the floor, and then my own, never wanting to think of the blood on them again. My bare skin slipped against his under the patchwork quilt, and without the barrier of my corset and skirts and chemise I felt a million miles away from London and all the propriety the city required, and I gave myself to Edward.

  We fell asleep like that, tangled together, lips bruised, the worn old quilt thrown around my waist. I dreamed of a sea of blood, and Edward in a bobbing dinghy, and an island made of bones.

  SIXTEEN

  WHEN I WOKE, I was alone in the workshop’s single bed. Edward was gone, though Sharkey was curled in a tight ball atop the quilt, stirring when I did, and blinking contentedly a few times.

  I sat up, breathing hard, trying to sort through last night. What had been real, and what had been imaginary? The bedsheets were stained with blood from Edward’s victim, as was my dress crumpled on the floor. I’d have to burn it, just like the coat.

  My knuckles twitched, and I grasped my hands together as if it could hold off my illness, but the stiffness was already spreading to my arms. Soon all my joints would ache, and vertigo would set in. Already my head felt strangely light as I looked to the window. Traces of sunlight were coming through. Dawn. The professor would be up in another hour, and if I showed up drenched in blood with a wrinkled dress and bruised lips…

  The doorknob twisted. For a brief instant a memory from last night flashed in my head, Edward standing in the open doorway dressed in his victim’s blood. It was Edward again this time, but he’d changed clothes and smoothed his hair back, and now he held a cone of newsprint in one hand that smelled of roasted chestnuts.

  “I heard the vendor outside this morning,” he said. “Dickens wrote about hot chestnuts so often that I’ve always wanted to try them. And I thought you might be hungry after…” He couldn’t hide his smile. “Well, you know.”

  I stared at him as my mind still struggled to piece everything together. Edward and I had embraced last night with a wild recklessness I’d never known. But now, in the first rays of daylight, everything looked bleaker. I threw the covers back so hard that Sharkey yipped and jumped on the floor, and then I started stripping the bed of its sheets.

  “I have to wash these,” I said, then froze as the cold air bit my bare skin. Naked, not a stitch of clothing. I grabbed a sheet and pulled it around me as Edward set the chestnuts on the worktable and hurried over t
o stop my frantic movements.

  “Juliet, wait. Calm down. What’s the matter?”

  “The matter?” I asked, wrapping the sheet tighter around me. “The matter? Edward, there’s blood everywhere!”

  “I’ll handle it,” he said. “Come here, to the fire. Sit down.” He pulled me over to the chair by the woodstove and guided me into it. He took my hands in his, which were now washed clean of the evidence from last night.

  Of the murder he committed.

  I started to breathe faster. What was I doing, protecting him? I didn’t even know who he had killed last night, and neither did he. He rubbed my shoulder, then touched my hair, trying to soothe me. “What we did last night was only improper if you think it is. I’ll make it right. I’ve read about how these things happen. I need only find a minister, and we’ll pay a fee for a license, and then once we’re wed—”

  “Wed?” My fingers dug into the wooden arm railings. “Wed?”

  “Well, yes. I assumed that’s what you would want. Isn’t that what men and women do, after what happened last night? You could get… with child.”

  I pushed my way out of the chair, eyes wild, pacing a little in the strangling bedsheet. “No, I can’t. I haven’t had my cycles in months, not since Father’s serum stopped working. And you… you…” I wanted to remind him he wasn’t even human, he was a collection of animal parts made to speak and look and kiss like a boy. Oh god, what had we done?