The rat suddenly scrambled to its stomach, eyes blinking, nose twitching, both panic and lethargy present in its jerky movements. I reached out to touch the soft fur. Beneath my fingers I could feel its heart fluttering out of control, the warm blood flowing through stiff capillaries. We could give Hensley back the rat and he’d never know the difference. Or maybe I’d ask Elizabeth if I could keep it as a pet. A reminder of the awe-inspiring possibilities of science and a promise to myself that I would be bringing such creatures back to life—not like those medical students.
I pressed my hand over Jack Serra’s charm. He had told me to know my demons, and now I did, in the form of a white rat with a twitching pink nose. I knew reanimation was possible. The science behind the procedure was sophisticated, its execution simple. With time and research, I felt confident I could replicate it. Lucy’s plan to bring Edward back didn’t seem so mad anymore. In fact, it was starting to feel heartless not to do it.
Just as the Beast had said, science was in my blood. For all of my mother’s goodness, my father’s love of science pulsed harder in my veins. In London I’d feared I’d crossed that line and become too much like him. Now, looking at the rat, I knew. The Beast was right, just as Jack Serra was right. The river always flowed downhill. There was no point in trying to escape from the inevitable.
Elizabeth gently took the rat from me and placed it in a glass tank along with a cotton ball that smelled of alcohol and something bitter. Anesthesia. She closed the lid on the tank, and it hit me.
“Chloroform?” I said. “That will kill it!”
“I know,” she said calmly.
“But you just brought it back to life.”
“To teach you.” Her hand remained firmly on the lid. “I did this procedure for you, not the rat. Let this be your second lesson tonight. Nothing comes back from the dead unchanged. You’ve seen the effect it has had on Hensley. This rat would have been stronger than other rats, its behavior unpredictable. If I’d returned it to the cage with the others, it might have killed them all without even meaning to.”
I shook my head. This information was unwelcome. We could cure Edward of the Beast, but would there be other, more dangerous, side effects?
“You don’t know that. I could have kept it on its own in a cage and fed it myself.”
Her cold eyes didn’t waver, and more doubt sank into me.
“We don’t do this to make pets,” she said. “We don’t do it to bring those we love back. There are rules, Juliet. A code. Until you promise to me that you would never use this science for anything other than the rules, you will only watch me do it. When I’m certain your ethics are above reproach, then I’ll let you be the one to pull the lever.”
I swallowed, watching the rat twitch inside the glass cage once, twice, and then stop. I closed my eyes.
“You’re right. I’m sorry. I promise.”
I wasn’t sure if it was a lie or not. I wasn’t sure of anything anymore.
I took off the apron and walked down the tower’s spiral stairs in a daze. I needed fresh air and time to think. I went outside into the dark night and walked the gardens beneath a moonless sky. At night, everything took on a different appearance. I had explored Ballentyne’s gardens in the daylight and found them to be an overgrown tangle of vines, but now the shapes loomed like ghosts.
If Edward died, bringing him back was possible—but at what risk?
The Beast had claimed to love me at the same time his claws had dug into my shoulder deeply enough to draw blood. A deranged, twisted obsession. Would it be any different after the procedure? A terrible image flickered in my mind of Edward, brought back from the dead, hugging Lucy with such unnatural strength that he suffocated her just as Hensley did with his beloved rats.
While my wandering feet took me through the gardens back toward Ballentyne, I noticed a light blazing on the front steps, moving back and forth. It was McKenna, dressed in a man’s sweater, holding a torch and pacing from one end to the other. She must have realized I’d slipped out of the house and was looking for me.
I hurried back toward the house.
“McKenna,” I said, breathing hard as I climbed the steps. “I’m sorry I wandered off. It was selfish of me.”
To my surprise, her worry didn’t fade. She barely glanced at me.
“Wandered off? Hush, little mouse. You’d hardly be the first. Half of my girls here spend hours wandering the grounds.” Her voice was soft, but her eyes were troubled as they scanned the moors, her fingers working anxiously.
I pulled my sweater closer. “Who are you looking for, then?”
“It’s Valentina. She was supposed to wake me at midnight; we do the week’s baking in the wee hours of Saturday mornings. But she didn’t. There’s no sign of her, not since yesterday. Her bedroom door is locked and she has the only key.”
“Why would she run off?”
McKenna sighed with worry. “The mistress trusts Valentina, but if you ask me, there’s always been something off about that girl. Don’t get me wrong; she cares about this place. But there’s a darkness in her she’s never been able to shake. I worry that darkness has come to haunt her.”
A shiver ran through me, and McKenna hugged her arms as well.
“Perhaps it’s come to haunt all of us,” she whispered.
FOURTEEN