A Cold Legacy (The Madman's Daughter 3)

“No questions of morality?” I pressed my hand to Jack Serra’s charm beneath my dress. I had gotten to know my demons and been tempted to bring Edward back, but that was before I’d witnessed Hensley’s horrible show of violence. “What about Hensley? You’ve seen him. He’s hardly a normal child. There’s no telling if the procedure would even work, but if it did, who’s to say Edward wouldn’t be like Hensley, his mind as simple as a child’s, but his body able to kill so easily?”

“It isn’t the same thing at all,” she argued. “Hensley died and was reanimated as a child, so of course his mind stayed the same. Edward’s an adult. And besides, the professor was distraught when he brought Hensley back, so it’s only natural that he made mistakes.”

“And you think you wouldn’t make mistakes? Lucy, you’ve never done any of this before! This is highly skilled science. Only trained surgeons could perform such a procedure.”

“I don’t know what else to do!” She collapsed on one of the benches, burying her head in her hands. “I know I don’t have the skill, but I can’t sit around giggling about your wedding while the boy I wished to marry someday is cold and dead. He could be back with us, Juliet. Cured of the Beast. How can you say you don’t want that?”

I stared at her in the flickering electric lights, afraid of the look in her eyes, and even more afraid of how much sense she was making. Had I been heartless not even to consider bringing Edward back? What a fool I’d been, planning my own wedding, acting as though everything was fine and we’d all have a grand future together, when one of us was gone.

I sank onto the bench opposite her. Edward’s body lay between us, still shrouded, with Balthazar’s paper flower resting on the center of his chest. I dared to let myself peel back the shroud to get one final look at him.

His face was so familiar it made my chest ache. He’d survived days alone at sea. He’d survived the fire in my father’s burning island compound. He’d even survived an attempt to poison himself. He’d escaped death so many times that it didn’t feel real to see him like this, cold and lifeless.

I studied the lines of his face, trying to read his fortune, just like Jack Serra had read mine. The water charm felt heavy around my neck.

Lucy would never have the skill to bring Edward back, no matter how many bodies she practiced on, but I might. I had watched Elizabeth reanimate the rat, and the procedure was well documented in Frankenstein’s Origin Journals. I’d have to practice on other creatures first of course—Lucy had been smart on that count. I could start with the dead rats, then move to one of these cadavers. I wouldn’t bring it fully back—that would be too dangerous. But I could hook it up to the machines, test it out, and make certain I understood the procedure. As to fixing Edward’s broken body—repairing his heart, swapping out the diseased part of his brain, sewing back the incision mark across his throat—I had seen the medical notations Elizabeth made on all of her transplants. I’d watched her transplant Moira’s new eye. If I could get those notes, and the Origin Journals, I could study them.

It was possible—quite possible—that I could reanimate Edward.

I stood abruptly, scared even by how far I had let my own fantasies unfurl.

Lucy looked at me with wide eyes. “You’re considering it, aren’t you?”

I grabbed the anatomy book and the scalpel, wrapped it all in a sheet and hugged the bundle to my chest. I shook my head a little too hard. “No, Lucy. I couldn’t go against Elizabeth’s wishes. This is her house.”

“But you could do it, couldn’t you?”

I recognized that feverish look in her eye because it matched my own. Just like my father’s voice, urging me to do something remarkable instead of living a quiet life.

This is how you shall be exceptional, my father’s voice said. By defeating death to save a life.

I hurried from the cellar, afraid to face Lucy any longer. Upstairs I nearly collided with Montgomery in the kitchen. He frowned at the bundle clutched in my arms.

“Is everything all right?” he asked.

I glanced at the table where our wedding cakes still rested, minus a few bites. They had tasted delicious at the time, but now all that seemed foolish.

“I think I might have caught whatever Lucy’s sick with.” It wasn’t a lie. My stomach threatened to turn at the sugary smell of the cakes. I hurried upstairs to my bedroom, where I twisted the key in the lock and let the bundle fall onto the floor.

A scalpel fell out, still caked with dried blood.

The idea had already latched into me, and it wasn’t as easy to dig it back out again. It was as addicting as a drug, beautiful and promising and so, so dangerous that I hesitated to even look at it directly. It was idea that could change everything.

Already my fingers were itching to try. Isn’t this what I’d been craving, deep down where I didn’t want to admit it? Since I first learned about Frankenstein’s science, since I first saw Hensley brought back to life. My father’s spirit was in my veins, urging me to do this. Suddenly the memory of the carnival I’d attended when I was a little girl returned to me: flashes of a man with skin like scales and a little boy with black fur covering his face. I’d gone to the freak show tent with my father. He’d given me a caramel apple and explained the monstrosities’ various afflictions.

No matter how much Montgomery pushed me to be like my mother, he was wrong. Only my father’s legacy could guide me now. Father had created man out of animal, but he’d never conquered death before. I could.

I took out Jack Serra’s water charm. Perhaps this was what his cryptic fortune meant: a stream and a river are made of the same substance, and yet the river has the potential to be so much stronger. The river always surpassed the stream—just as I would surpass my father. Only I’d use his science for good.

I closed my eyes, squeezing the charm. I felt like it was giving me permission, even pushing me, toward fulfilling my fate.

I snuck up to Lucy’s room and knocked silently. In the low light of a few flickering candles, our eyes met.

“I’ll do it,” I said. “I’ll bring him back.”

She threw her arms around me so tight I could hardly breathe. “I knew I could count on you to see reason.”

TWENTY-FIVE

THE DAY OF MY wedding approached, and yet I could think of little else but bringing Edward back. All I had needed was permission, and that’s what decoding Jack Serra’s fortune had given me. I knew what Montgomery would say if I told him—that fortunes were only a way for us to impose our heart’s own desires—but so be it. If this was my heart’s true desire, I couldn’t deny it any longer.