“After so long in the carriage yesterday, a walk will be just the thing.” Two years previous, when Victor was preparing to leave, I had copied a map of Ingolstadt. I took care to add all the flourishes and artistic details he seemed to admire when I did them. He used to laugh at how useless my art was, but he always showed it off proudly when the rare visitor came to the house.

I had the map I had used as the original. There were no flourishes because it was for me, and what was the point?

Tracing the lines of streets like a fortune-teller reading a future in a palm, I tapped my finger in time to my heartbeat. “Here,” I said. “Here we will find Victor.” Justine and I linked elbows and stepped carefully across the muddy borders of the cobblestone street, letting the currents of ink on my map draw us to our destination.

—

“Victor Frankenstein?” a man with a mustache as wiry and anemic as his frame asked, speaking French. “What do you want him for?”

“I am his cousin,” I said. I was not, but it was the term we had been told to use for each other. His father and mother were always careful not to let us call each other brother or sister. Though they fed and clothed and educated me alongside him until he left for the city school and then university, they made me keep my own surname and never formally adopted me.

I lived with the Frankensteins. I was not one. And I never forgot it.

The man let out a wheezing sort of grunt, tugging on the ends of his mustache. “I have not seen him in more than a year. He said he needed more space. Arrogant bastard he was, too. Claimed I was spying on him, as if I would be interested in the lunatic scribblings of a student. I am a doctor, you know!”

“Oh?” Justine said, upset by his agitation and seeking to soothe him. “Of what?”

He rubbed the back of his neck, squinting up and to the side as though something had caught his eye. “Eastern languages. Poetry, specifically. Chinese and Japanese, but I know some Korean as well.”

“I am certain that is ever so useful to you here, running a student boardinghouse.” I offered my cutting words with a dagger of a smile. How dare he insult my Victor.

He narrowed his eyes. “Yes, I can see the family resemblance now.”

Realizing I was playing this wrong, I shifted my face. Let my eyelids hang just a bit heavier, tilted my chin, smiled as if I had never had a secret. “Poetry is so beautiful! Your boarders truly are fortunate. Imagine how oppressive being aided through school by a mathematician would be! Everything cold numbers. Your rooms must be highly in demand. I can only assume Victor needed more space for some practical reason.”