Edward shrugged. “Call it whatever you like. The truth is, I’m not so different from him. Created from bits and pieces of man and animal. Brought to life by a madman. Like him, I know what death feels like. How many people can say that?” He looked off to the horizon, where the first buildings of Quick were just visible. “I think with Hensley gone, there must only be me and him in the entire world.”
He stopped and wiped his forehead, though there was no sweat on the cold night. I heard a dog barking—the rest of the world was just a few steps away, but I felt caught here on the road between my old life and my future one.
“I’m going to go after him,” Edward said. “To the Arctic. He went there because he didn’t belong in the realm of men. I feel it, too. I wanted to be human for so long, but that’s not what I am. I never have been. It’s time I accepted that. It occurs to me that Frankenstein’s creation and I, well, we could each use a companion.”
I tore my eyes away from the lights of Quick. “That was over a hundred years ago. He might not still exist.”
Edward shrugged. “I’d like an adventure.”
The dog barked again, closer now, amid the sounds of a door slamming and a couple arguing and the realities of the real world. Edward gave me a smile. “Come on. Montgomery’s waiting for us.”
MONTGOMERY DIDN’T WAKE UNTIL the morning. I’d spent the night slumped in a chair by his bedside. There was something strange about watching him sleeping. When I still suffered from my illness, it had been me so many times in bed for days with a raging fever. Our roles were reversed now—Montgomery ill and me sitting by his bedside, praying for him to wake safe and sound.
“Juliet.”
I jerked awake, disoriented by the sunlight pouring through the window. Montgomery was sitting up in bed, dark circles under his eyes and deep lines in his face.
“Montgomery!” I pushed out of the stiff chair and climbed onto the bed, feeling his forehead, trying to count the pulse on his wrist, but he brushed off my attempts with a laugh.
“I’m fine,” he said, though his voice was gravelly with exhaustion.
“You’ve been asleep for a full day,” I said.
He took my hands in his, kissing the palm of each one. “You’re safe, and that’s all that matters.” He squinted around the room. “Where are we?”
“The guest rooms above the tavern in Quick.”
“What happened at Ballentyne?”
I swallowed, hating to relive all those terrible memories. “You passed out after you saved me in the passageways. Balthazar dragged you to safety, and we defeated Radcliffe and his men. They’re all dead, even Radcliffe, buried in the bog. Edward and Balthazar are fine. And Jack and his troupe . . .” I looked at the lines in my palm. “We wouldn’t have made it without them, but they left. Disappeared. They didn’t say good-bye.”
Montgomery reached past me to the bedside table, picking up a small piece of paper. A card. Bright colors flashed on it.
“That’s one of Jack’s fortune-telling cards!” I recognized the same bright blue paint, the same lettering. I’d only seen a few cards of his deck before: the Fool, the Emperor. This one was the Lovers, a man and a woman embracing. Someone had taken an ink pen to the woman’s fair hair and colored it dark, like mine.
“This wasn’t here last night,” I said. “I haven’t left the room once.”
Montgomery’s mouth hitched back in a smile. “Well, Ajax is nothing if not clever. He probably left this while you were sleeping.”
“Then he’s still in Quick?”
Montgomery shook his head. “I doubt it. He’s probably long gone.”
I ran my finger down the edge of the card. “At least he did say good-bye, after all.”
By midday, Montgomery was well enough to dress and go downstairs to the dining room, where we ordered a feast and indulged as though we were just any travelers in any inn in the world. It was a fantasy that was starting to feel real, and I liked it.
When I looked out the dining hall window and saw a familiar figure, I grinned.
“Balthazar’s back!” We ran outside to greet him. He held his shepherd’s staff in one hand, a lead in the other tied around the neck of the little goat that was always getting away. Sharkey barked when he saw us and ran up to have his head scratched.
“The goats,” Balthazar explained, nodding toward the flock that trailed behind him on the road. “No one remembered the goats. We couldn’t just leave them.”
My smile grew.
Montgomery wrapped an arm around my back and pulled me close, pressing his lips to my hair. “Elizabeth would have been happy to see you smile, so carefree,” he said. “Lucy, too.”
I brushed back a strand of blond hair that had fallen into his eyes. “Edward’s decided to leave us and go north. I wonder if he’ll find what he’s looking for.”