Mary clambered in next to me. She looked around with a raised eyebrow, taking in the velvet stool, the gilded vanity, the hulking four-poster bed. Every covered surface was a different fabric, a different pattern. Anything that did not work in another room had been given to me. I did not know whether I was dizzy because of anticipation and nerves, or because I was no longer acclimated to the chaos of Frankenstein castoffs.

“How did you manage to sleep in here?” she asked, throwing our now-useless pistols onto the bed. The door was open, fortunately, so we would not risk its loud release from its frame.

“I did not sleep much.” All the nights I had sought Victor for comfort from my nightmares trailed in my wake as I walked like a ghost through the house where we had grown up together. We passed the nursery, where I had vowed to him I would never love the baby his mother was carrying more than I loved him. Where Justine had spent most of her happy hours. Where William had grown, joyful and careless.

We passed the library, where I had soothed Victor and felt so triumphant for coaching him on how to hide his rage and hatred from others; then passed the door to the servants’ wing, where he had implicated Justine using my own technique.

Everything I had known of him, everything we had shared, rose like the dead before me, rotted through to show the horror of what festered beneath the skin.

“What about the father?” Mary whispered as I furtively checked the kitchen. It was empty. The maid and the cook must have been in their rooms, though they had not yet readied the house for the night. Or perhaps Victor, in his pursuit of privacy for his studies, had dismissed them.

I prayed that they had actually been dismissed, and not dismissed, as unfortunate Gerta had been.

“At this time of night, Judge Frankenstein will have already retired to his bedroom. If Victor raises an alarm before…” I paused, knowing what had to be done but loath to admit it aloud. “If his father finds us, I will speak to him. He has a financial interest in keeping me alive.”

“Then I will be certain to stand behind you.” Mary smiled grimly.

I pointed to the double doors leading to the dining room. I had to guess that that was where Victor was, based on the location of his metal device. He certainly would not be sleeping—not when there was work to be done.