Judge Frankenstein led me from the barn and back to the house.

“You cannot blame yourself,” he said, his voice hollow and without any force.

“I can.” I did not care about disagreeing with him. I could not tell him the full truth, though the weight of my guilt threatened to drag me beneath the sodden ground. Because I was certain it had been the charnel house devil. Somehow, he had followed me here. Motivated by greed or revenge, he had murdered that innocent child and taken the gold lure.

But I could not say! I was sealed in most damnable silence! If I gave them a description of the man, I would have to say why I thought it was him. Judge Frankenstein did not know about my trip to Ingolstadt. But I would admit it, if that was all the trouble I would bring down on my own head.

It was Victor I worried about. Always. Because if I led them to the vile charnel house man, they would discover why I had met him. They would follow the connection to Victor. And all my work to protect his reputation would be undone. His madness revealed. His own brilliant future aborted as cruelly as William’s young life. And, if he was committed to an asylum, my future aborted, as well.

I could only pray they found the man and killed him before he could talk.

Judge Frankenstein interrupted my thoughts. “You did not murder the boy.”

“I might as well have hung a target around his neck. You know the greed of men.”

He sighed, hanging his head. I had never thought him an old man, but his years dragged him down and showed in every movement as though the night had robbed him of twenty years of his life. He escorted me to my room, then patted my hand. “I will write to Victor. You need not recount the horror to him. Get dry and try to sleep.”

He shuffled away. He tried to close my door quietly, but it hung askew. The wood scraped and groaned against the frame until finally it shut.

And then I realized my punishment was only beginning. Because I had not yet told Justine that her William—her precious charge, whom she loved more than his own mother had—was gone. I could not bear the thought, but the idea that she should find out that she had slept peacefully when her William had been taken away was too awful. She had to be told.

Scarcely able to catch my breath, I went to the servants’ wing of the house. There was no answer when I knocked on her door. I eased it open to find her bed made and unslept in. But it was night now, and raining. Where was she?