The Frankenstein siblings worked most of the night, and the following day.
Angelika, skilled from years of needlepoint lessons, was able to make the tiny sutures that Victor insisted on. She remembered his joke in the morgue: Other women order lace and hat trimmings. Arteries were like the fine satin cord on a hat brim; muscle fascia was a textile suited to a cheap petticoat. Everything was silky with blood, but she was used to it. All night, all day, she sat in a seamstress pose, while the tailor watched over her shoulder, intolerant of one incorrect stitch.
Now her midday mutton stew was long digested, and the sunlight was fading from the room. She could not feel her thumbs. “I need to rest my hands.”
“With your project fully stitched and complete, and my own in a hundred pieces.” Victor gave her a mean look as he jumped up to grab the iron bar spanning the top of the door. Pulling his chin up to the bar with muscle-shuddering effort, he grunted: “Typical—Angelika.”
She wasn’t in the mood. “Look at all I’ve done, you ungrateful lout.”
Another chin-up. “You—sad—little—spinster.”
The locals said similar things to her turned back. Unmarried. Unwanted, unusual, ungodly. Her hurt must have showed, because Victor dangled and added on a heavy sigh, “Sorry. I’m tired, too.” He continued his chin-ups. Angelika knew he was expecting her to count his repetitions, but she never did.
“Nothing is stopping you from learning to sew, Vic.”
“I’ve—already—tried.” Many years ago, a handkerchief was ruined by his attempt, and his dots of blood. Victor had no tolerance for tasks that he wasn’t immediately excellent at. Dangling and huffing, he added, “Anyway, I don’t need to learn. I’ve got you. How many’s that?”
“Just ten more,” Angelika said cruelly, and picked at her cuticles as he performed many, many more of his groaning, trembling chin-ups. When he looked half-dead, she said, “Done.”
Victor dropped to the floor, and through gasps he said, “I can’t wait for Lizzie to see all my hard work.”
“I do hope you’re not referring to yourself.” Angelika grimaced.
“I’ve noticed that ladies like muscles. He could have posed for Michelangelo.” He gestured to Angelika’s project.
The siblings sat on windowsills near each other. Fresh air was vital. “How long will you rest?” The strain was evident in Victor’s voice as he leaned out to check the weather. “I can smell the storm. And they’re starting to smell worse, too.”
“I’ll just take five minutes,” she said, and her brother nodded, drinking from a flask of liquor. She put her hand out for it, sipped, and winced at the taste.
“You did such a good line of stitches there,” he admitted in grudging admiration, getting to his feet again to study the neckline of Angelika’s project. It was roughly as long as he ever sat still. “If he always wears his cravat, no one would know.”
“Thank you, he turned out nicely.” She looked at Victor’s workspace. His scientific hopes and dreams were currently facedown in a metal bowl. She took another sip from the flask and handed it back. “I’ll do yours as neat.”
“Mine only needs to be functional.” He produced an apple from his pocket, taking a huge bite. “Did you see your elegant stranger had a gold ring on? How Helsaw missed that, I have no idea. I took the hands for my project.” Angelika put out her flat palm. Victor flicked it.
“The fingers have swelled; it’s stuck. Remind me to get the tin cutters from the garden to get it off,” Victor said, sitting back down, eating ravenously. “I think it is a type of betrothal ring. We’ll look at it later.”
Is anybody unwed? Voice rich with despair, she said, “How marvelous.”
Victor cackled and got to his feet again, stretching. “You never had this jealous green look when working on your earlier three husbands.” He nodded at the worktable and continued to rile her. “He might compare you to his beloved when he wakes.”
“None of Schneider’s men woke with memories.”
“I am better than him.” Victor was instantly crackling with annoyance. “I mean, I will be if these don’t burn to a crisp. You are always asking me about what will happen when they wake up. I cannot answer you.” He threw his apple core out the window with force. “It’s an experiment. A single heartbeat will be a success.”
“Where will they sleep? What will they wear? Do we keep them forever, or do they go home again?” She shrank under her brother’s poisonous glare. “One of us has to think of the future.”
“You live your life almost exclusively in daydreams about the future. We are doing this right now, in wild new territory. There are no rules that I can explain to you, because I do not know.” Victor’s composure faltered, revealing a rare glimpse of self-doubt. “You are probably worrying for nothing. I haven’t succeeded before.” He crossed to the completed man and looked down at him. “I’ve never tried harder than this, knowing how much you want him, Jelly. You deserve somebody to love you.”
Her throat felt tight, and she returned with equal vulnerability, “Thanks, Vic. But I don’t expect him to love me. He probably won’t even like me. But if he stays, and convalesces here, maybe he will . . . get to know me.”
Victor was uncomfortably earnest now, with his hand on the man’s shoulder. “He will learn that you’re stubborn, and ridiculously extravagant, and that you spend more money than humanly possible.”
“Now say something nice.”
Victor patted her creation. “He will see your world-famous beauty—”
“Stop,” Angelika protested, smiling. “Keep going.”
“And after he knows you, he will see your heart of gold. You surely have an expensive heart, just as he now has the strongest heart I’ve ever handled. Nothing spared,” Victor said to the man. “Everything is of the best quality. She made sure of it.”
Angelika felt her brother deserved some encouragement in return. “When you succeed, and the news travels the world, Lizzie’s father will be boasting about his son-in-law. And yes, it pains me to admit it, but she will love your muscles.”
“Oh, I know she will,” Victor replied, before becoming so invigorated by joyful energy that he completed another set of chin-ups. He now lived like he’d learned a secret, and Angelika yearned to know it, too. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be in love?
She covered her sudden melancholy with a tease. “If she won’t have you, Belladonna waits patiently in the wings.”
“Belladonna is the one female I should never have encouraged.” Victor snorted with laughter, dropping back to the floor and wiping his hands on his trousers. “When Lizzie arrives, there may be a murder at Blackthorne Manor. Rested enough?”
It was very late at night when Angelika laid down her needle and thread.
“It’s time,” Victor said, and he was right.
It was time.
*
Angelika’s work was done, and she was not overly interested in the reanimation process. Victor directed. She sewed. He dealt with obtaining the afterbirth, the weather forecast, and the wire cabling attached to the spire on the roof. She took off her soiled apron while her brother dashed about, aligning the bodies in their individual chambers.
Rinsing her arms and hands, she said to Victor, “Something about tonight feels different. I should go and put on a nice dress.” And a little cheek rouge, perfume, and a hairpin. Whilst she could not find anything overly objectionable in her reflection, and she had indeed been described many times as a beauty, there was something about her personality that was untenable. Unnatural. Unlovable.
“What if he convulses and burns like the last one? That’s what you should focus on, not your appearance. Besides, you always wear trousers at home. He’ll have to get used to it.”
Victor poured the barrel of afterbirth into the first chamber, submerging his creation. Their sheep-herding neighbors no longer asked what they used it for, and laughingly referred to it as liquid gold. With a grunt of exertion, Victor diverted the barrel to Angelika’s creation, and she watched as the translucent, smelly substance began to coat him. Then the flow weakened to drips. Victor banged the side. This triggered a new splattering, but not much.
“I thought there was more,” he began defensively, but Angelika was beside the chamber in a blink.
“It barely reaches an inch up his side, and yours is completely covered.” Her tone was plain: It’s unfair. “How is mine to have an even chance?”
Victor pondered this. “We’ll animate mine first, then put yours in. Don’t fret, it will work out.” Above, a rumble of thunder caught his attention. “The storm’s almost here. We must hurry.”