There was a narrowing of the eyes, a cloud of suspicion in his terrible judge’s face. I kept my head lifted, my face clear of any guilt. But he did not look at me. He looked only at Victor. “Is this true?”

Victor did not glance up from his book. “Elizabeth did a marvelous job with the stitches. If she were not a girl, she would have a bright future as a surgeon, I think.”

His father ripped the book out of Victor’s hands with an explosively violent gesture. “This is garbage,” he said, sneering at the book and tossing it on the floor. “Surely you can do better things with your mind. And surely you can afford to give this current crisis more of your attention.”

Victor looked up at his father looming over him, something going vacant behind his eyes. I rushed to his side. “Come, Victor,” I said. “I have blood on my hands. Help me wash them while your father sorts out the situation with the nursemaid.”

“Thank you for your quick thinking and action,” Judge Frankenstein said. “You saved my son.”

I could not tell which son he spoke of, and I suspected I was not intended to. Victor stood, picking his book up off the floor, and followed me upstairs. I made him read aloud to me to calm himself as I washed the afternoon from my skin.

That night, when I snuck into his room, unable to sleep, I found him still reading. “I like this book very much,” he said. “The ideas are fascinating. Did you know you can turn lead into gold? And that there are elixirs that can extend and even restore life?”

I hmmed as I crawled into bed next to him.

“Elizabeth,” he said. “You never asked me what actually happened this afternoon.”

“It is fixed now. It does not matter and I do not care. Read me some more of your book,” I said, closing my eyes and falling asleep.

—

Justine and Mary pounded on the door just as Henry had those years ago on holiday.

I would demand that Victor take me on holiday after this.

Bracing myself, I shuffled through the dark entry of Victor’s residence and pushed the inner door open. The smell here was not so bad. Stale and sour, but not noxious. Windows along the back of the building were filmed over so that I could barely see. Above me, water dripped incessantly against the ceiling—probably on the upper-story floor from the two windows on the roof left open.

Once my eyes adjusted to the dimness, I made out a long room. A table with two chairs was pushed against a wall, stacked with papers and dirty dishes. A sink had been artlessly installed; a bucket beneath caught excess water. There was a stove next to me, but it was unlit, the room frigid with undertones of creeping river-damp.