three glasses.
âLes Ãtoiles,â she said, holding up the bottle wryly. âItâs French for âthe stars.â I told you they always put me to sleep.â
Montgomery sat on a wooden stool, and I settled into a leather chair and looked out at the setting sun beyond the observation window. Elizabeth sat across from me, sipping her gin. Sheâd removed her apron and gloves, but sheâd missed a small streak of dried blood on her chin.
âYou lied to us,â Montgomery said, âabout Frankensteinâs science being lost.â
Elizabeth shifted. âI swore an oath never to tell, and I didnât see any reason why you should need to find out, at least not right away. If your friend Mr. Prince had never poisoned himself, my familyâs history never would have come up in that carriage ride from London. Raising the dead? Who in their right minds would ever think it possible?â
âDid the professor know?â I asked.
âYes. All the von Steins have known. The third lord of Ballentyne had a daughter who gave birth to Victor Frankensteinâs bastard child in 1786. She helped him with his research and understood how to replicate the procedures, but after he died, she knew it had to be kept secret.â She tapped a finger against the gin glass. âWhen I told you earlier that Frankensteinâs journals had been lost, that wasnât exactly the truth. I have them, and I keep them well hidden. Theyâre called the Origin Journals.â
âAnd what do they contain?â
âEverything one would need to re-create Frankensteinâs work. Instructions on the reanimation procedure detailed enough that even the most basic surgeon would be able to follow them. The knowledge has been passed down to all our family as guardians.â
âFor what purpose?â Montgomery said.
âThe power to defeat death isnât something that one stumbles upon every day. There might come a time when itâs needed. An epidemic in which so many lives are lost that itâs necessary to keep the population stable, or a great leader struck down before his time. We have strict rules for when the science may be used. A code. Itâs called the Oath of Perpetual Anatomy. In one hundred eleven years weâve never met the criteria.â
My voice felt hoarse. âBut you broke the rules when you brought back Hensley.â
She laughed, dry and brittle, and picked up her glass. âI thought you might have figured it out by now, Juliet.â She took a sip. âHensley isnât my son. He was the professorâs little boy.â
A gasp caught in my throat. Memories of the professorâs dust-covered nursery came to me: the old toys, the child-sized bed, the portrait on the wall. âThomas?â
Elizabeth nodded. âHensley was his middle name. I told you, when we were leaving London, that the professor had strayed dangerously close to the line into immoral science. In fact, he crossed it. Thomas took ill and died so suddenly, and the professorâs wife not a week later. The professor went a bit mad with grief. He brought his sonâs body here to Ballentyne and reanimated him.â
The feeling had drained from my feet, and yet my heart kept beating faster and faster. They had truly achieved it. Defeated death. Not even my father had dreamed of such lofty achievements.
âHe knew it was a mistake right away,â Elizabeth continued. âBut he could hardly undo it and kill his son all over again. Nor could he bring a dead little boy back to London.â
âSo he left Hensley in your care?â
She gave me an odd look. âIâm merely the most recent mistress of Ballentyne to care for him. Hensley was born six years before I was. Heâs forty-one years old, though neither his mind nor his body have aged.â
I slumped in the chair, stunned. The things it meant for the world . . . A cure for plagues. Eternal
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