“Tell me your symptoms,” he said. “And how they’ve gotten worse.”
As I explained the problem with the serum, he opened the medical bag, every bit the doctor. This was easier, more natural for the both of us, to talk of such tangible things as bones and flesh, instead of matters of the heart.
He removed a corked glass vial filled with a cloudy-colored liquid. I expected him to draw it into a syringe, but to my surprise he handed it to me and said, “Drink this.”
I took the small glass vial, but hesitated. “What is it?”
“A concoction I designed for Balthazar. It dulls the effects of his affliction between injections. It won’t cure you, but it’ll ease your symptoms long enough for us to get you to the professor’s, where I can treat you properly.”
“You’re coming to the professor’s too?”
“If you think I’m leaving you alone after what we heard tonight, you’re mad. The King’s Men run this city; if they’re targeting you, you need me. I knew the professor, and with luck he’ll recall me favorably as well. Now drink.”
I uncorked the liquid and sniffed it tentatively. Astringent, with a hint of sulfur. “Valerian,” I said, somewhat surprised. It was the same drug I’d given Edward to ease his affliction.
“That, and other ingredients,” Montgomery said.
I swallowed it down and very nearly gagged. The taste was even worse than the smell.
“I would have flavored it with peppermint,” he said. “But Balthazar never complains. Can you walk now without those tremors?”
He pulled the chair back for me as he used to when he was a servant, and I braced myself on the table and stood shakily. “I’ll manage.”
The door opened behind me, and I heard Balthazar’s distinctive shuffle. Montgomery patted him on the shoulder and said, “Balthazar here wouldn’t mind carrying you all the way to Highbury, but I doubt the professor would enjoy seeing his ward in a torn dress in the arms of a man like him.”
I glanced at Balthazar. “I daresay not.”
Montgomery gave me one final look. “You’re quite certain the professor can be trusted?”
“With my life.”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. Balthazar, throw some clothes into a bag for us. I’ll have to devise some reason for why the professor should let Balthazar and me stay in his home to keep an eye on you.”
Once he was quite certain I could walk, and Balthazar had packed a small bag for them, we descended the stairs. The moon was already sinking, meaning it was well past midnight. I hated to think of how frantic the professor and Elizabeth would be over my disappearance.
“How was your voyage?” I asked Balthazar, partly as a distraction and partly because seeing him again made me realize how much I had missed him. “Did you see much of the world?”
“Yes, miss. I rode a camel.”
Montgomery leaned close and whispered playfully, “Nearly broke the poor thing’s back.”
We chatted on the way, and as much as it warmed my heart to see Balthazar, his presence in London unsettled me. Father’s creatures were never meant to exist at all. On a forgotten island in the South Pacific they had been dangerous enough, but here, in the capital of the western world, where the most powerful organization in the world’s greatest city was after my father’s science . . .
But Montgomery loved Balthazar, and I didn’t blame him for sparing his life and continuing to give him treatments. It wasn’t so different from how I was risking so much to help Edward. But what fate was there for an ungodly creation like Balthazar, kind though he was?
At last we turned onto Dumbarton Street. The moon cast light over the wide street and sidewalks. My feet moved faster the nearer to the door—and safety—that we grew. How strange it felt to have Montgomery real by my side, when for months he’d been nothing but a daydream.
I glanced at him sidelong. His body was here, but where was his heart?
My feet slowed when the brownstone came into sight. Every light was blazing, which made it stand out unnaturally from its neighbors. I scanned the ground, looking for Sharkey, hoping he’d returned after I’d lost him, but he was nowhere to be found. My muscles still felt weak, but Montgomery’s serum had helped, and I ran the rest of the way and pounded on the brass horsehead knocker.
The door flew open, with Elizabeth’s worried face filling the space. At the sight of me she let out a strangled cry of relief and pulled me into her arms. I heard shuffling footsteps on the stairs and saw the professor descending, a dark red dressing gown over his pajamas.
“Thank god you’re home,” he said. “Elizabeth told me what happened at the Radcliffes’. We feared you’d disappeared in the panic and we’d never find you again.”
His big hands kneaded my shoulder, as his eyes searched mine behind his wire-rim spectacles.