You choose your own fate.
At the top of the stairs, Radcliffe kicked open the laboratory door. The smell of roses met me, and my stomach clenched to think of Elizabeth’s and Hensley’s ashes on the wind.
“Put Lucy there,” Radcliffe ordered his mercenary, nodding toward the surgical table.
He released me, knowing there was nowhere I could run. He started to pull out the books on the laboratory shelves.
“You won’t find Frankenstein’s journals in here,” I said. “Elizabeth hid them. The staff doesn’t know where.”
He steadied me with a cold look. “I shall make you tell me, Miss Moreau, but you have more important work at the moment.” He brushed a hand gently over Lucy’s hair. His eyes scanned the tools, the metal trays and utensils. “I trust you have everything you need.”
I glanced toward the window desperately, wanting to buy time. “Lightning. I can only perform the procedure if there’s a strong enough electric shock.”
He pushed back the curtains. “The rain hasn’t stopped. It’ll only be a matter of time before a storm strikes. That should give you time to ready the body and prepare for the procedure. I’ll return soon.”
“Wait! I can’t do it on my own. I need Montgomery. He’s a surgeon.”
Radcliffe gave me a withering look. “And so are you.”
He slammed the door shut.
I tore a strip of cloth from my dress and plugged the keyhole so the prying eyes of the officer standing guard couldn’t see.
A steady drip drip drip started behind me, but I didn’t dare turn around.
I only stared at that door. Radcliffe wouldn’t open it again until he heard Lucy’s voice. But if I brought her back, he would know Frankenstein’s science was possible. He would tear the house apart until he found the Origin Journals, and he’d sell the research to unscrupulous men who would bring back countless dead bodies, perhaps even Henri Moreau’s. And yet this was Lucy. I couldn’t imagine life without her. With the exception of Montgomery, she’d been the only person in my life who had stood by me through the scandal. She’d defied her own parents to sneak to the park with me and sip stolen gin and giggle over boys, as though I was just a regular girl. She was my tether to the real world. She was my best friend.
How could I not bring her back?
Slowly, dread tiptoeing up my spine, I turned toward the surgical table. The drip drip drip continued. It was blood running off the side of the table, pooling on the stone floor and rolling toward a metal drainage grate. With trembling fingers I peeled back her blood-soaked coat.
The bullet had struck her in the center of the chest, just below the two little freckles she used to think looked like a constellation. It must have grazed the right ventricle of her heart, explaining the profuse bleeding. It would require removing the bullet, stitching up the torn ventricle, setting the broken ribs, and sealing the wound.
All within my skill. It wouldn’t take but an hour of careful attention. My fingers already twitched to pick up a scalpel and begin the work that came so naturally.
My feet felt warm, and I looked down to find her blood had seeped into my slippers. I shrieked and kicked off my shoes, throwing them across the room, scrambling back into the corner of the laboratory.
I watched the line of blood slowly weaving among the flagstones toward me.
This wasn’t a patient. This wasn’t a specimen.
This was Lucy.
I pulled my knees in tight, trying to calm my breath, looking at the pale curve of Lucy’s dead hand hanging off the table. Henri Moreau wouldn’t have hesitated to reanimate her. If Montgomery hadn’t told me the truth, I’d be reaching for the scalpel even now.
But my father wasn’t in my blood. He wasn’t even my father. He was just a stranger’s skeleton on a faraway island. Which left me alone with the body of my best friend and a thousand unanswered questions, but only one mattered:
What should I do?
I glanced again at the scalpel on the floor. A wild idea entered my head. There was one way to spare me this terrible decision. I could take the scalpel, make two quick slits, and let my blood pool on the floor with Lucy’s. I could join her in whatever dark place of peace she was in now.
I crawled toward the scalpel slowly, picked it up, and pressed it lightly against my wrist, just to test the feel of it. A person would bleed dry in ten minutes, but lose consciousness in two. Two minutes and it could all be over. Radcliffe wouldn’t find the Origin Journals in Elizabeth’s secret hiding place. Frankenstein’s science would end. Lucy would still be dead, but I’d be with her, at least.
I bit my lip so hard I tasted blood, tart and salty.
Was I ready to die?