I wasn’t certain why the serum was failing now. Perhaps I was growing immune, or the raw ingredients had altered, or perhaps now that I was growing from child to woman, my body’s composition was changing, too. I’d outgrown his serum just as I had my childish respect for him. His serum had only ever been temporary anyway, lasting a day or two at most. Now I was determined to create something even better: a permanent cure.
The pancreas’s puckered flesh yielded under the sharpened blade, separating like butter. It required but three simple incisions. One down the length. One to expose the glycogen sac. Another to slice the sac free and extract it.
I slid over the tray clinking with glass vials, along with the crushed herbs I’d already mixed with powders from the chemists’. This work had a way of absorbing me, and I scarcely realized how the afternoon was passing, nor how cold the air seeping through the window was growing. At last I finished this latest batch of serum and waited patiently to see if the various ingredients would hold. In order to be effective, the disparate parts would need to maintain cohesion for at least a full minute. I waited, and waited, and yet after only ten seconds the serum split apart like a bloated eel left too long in the sun.
Blast.
It had failed, just like all the times before.
Frustrated, I pushed my chair back and paced in front of the twisted rosebushes that were witnesses to my failure. How much longer could I go on like this, getting worse, without a cure? A few more months? Weeks? A log cracked in the woodstove, sending hot light licking at the stove’s iron door. The flames flickered like those of another fire long ago, the last night on the island. I had been desperate then, too.
Montgomery stood on the dock, the laboratory where he’d helped Father with his gruesome work blazing behind him. Waves lapped at the dinghy I crouched in, waiting for him to join me. We’d sail to London, put the island behind us, start a new life together. And yet Montgomery remained on the dock, let go of the rope, and pushed me out to sea.
But we belong together, I had said.
I belong with the island, he’d replied.
A church bell rang outside, six chimes, and a glance at the window told me night had settled quickly. Blast—late again, reliving memories I’d sooner forget. I grabbed my coat and threw open the door, dashing down four rickety flights of stairs until I was outside with the wind pushing at my face and the cold night open before me.
I stuck to the well-traveled, gaslit thoroughfares. That path wasn’t the fastest route to Highbury, but I didn’t dare take the shortcuts through the alleyways. Men lurked there, men so much larger than a slip of a girl.
I turned north on Chancery Lane, which was busy at all hours with people loitering between pubs, and I hugged my coat tighter, keeping my eyes low and my fur-lined hood pulled high. Even so, I still got plenty of stares. Not many well-dressed young ladies went out alone after dark.
In such chaos, London felt much like Father’s island. The beasts that lurked here just had less fur and walked more upright. The towering buildings seemed taller each day, as though they’d taken root in the oil and muck beneath the street’s surface. The noise and the smoke and the thousand different smells felt suffocating. Too closely packed. Ragged little children reached out like thorny vines. It felt as if eyes were always watching, and they were—from upstairs windows, from dark alleys, from beneath the low brims of wool caps hiding all manner of dark thoughts.
As soon as I could, I escaped the crowd onto a street that took me to the north section of Highbury. From there it wasn’t too far to Dumbarton Street, where the lanes were wide and paved with granite blocks, swept clean of all the refuse found in the lesser neighborhoods. The houses grew from stately to palatial as my boots echoed on the sidewalk. Twelve-foot-high Christmas trees studded with tiny candles shone behind tall windows, and heavy fir garlands framed every doorway.
I paused to lift the latch of the low iron gate surrounding the last house on the corner. The townhouse was three stories of limestone facade with a sloping mansard roof that gave it a stately air, as though it had quietly withstood regime changes and plague outbreaks without blinking an eye. It was on the quiet end of Dumbarton, not the grandest house by far, despite the fact that its owner was one of London’s wealthiest academics. I dusted off my coat and ran my fingers through my hair before ringing the doorbell.
The door was opened by an old man dressed in a three-piece black suit who might be stern looking if not for the deep wrinkles around the corners of his eyes, which betrayed his inclination to smile in a charmingly crooked way—a habit he gave into now.
“Juliet,” he said, “I was starting to worry. How was your visit with Lucy?”
I smiled, the only way I knew to hide my guilt, and pulled off my gloves. “You know Lucy, she could chatter away for hours. Sorry I’m a bit late.” I kissed his cheek as if that would make up for the lie, and he kindly helped me out of my coat.
“Welcome home, my dear,” he said.
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TWO