Victor and I greeted Henry wearing all white, our hands clasped as a united front. Henry’s smile was shy, but it hid nothing. His round face was open and utterly incapable of deception. Where Victor was cold and removed from the world, and I was as deceptive as a sour strawberry, Henry was exactly as he appeared to be: the most pleasant boy in existence. Even his blue eyes were as clear as the lake on a summer day.
Part of me scorned him for his inability to hide his desperation to be our friend. He would have crawled on the floor and barked like a dog if we had declared that the game we wanted to play. He watched Victor with a hunger that made my teeth ache, it was so sweet. If my love of Victor was entirely selfish, Henry’s was the opposite.
And I, accustomed to viewing other people only in terms of what they meant to me, felt my heart crack open with the gap-toothed grin that split his face when he saw our discarded chest of play clothes. “Do you have any swords?” he asked, digging through them. “We can put on a play!”
His parents might have brought him here in hopes of securing further social advantage, and Victor’s parents might have brought him here in hopes of securing further socialization for their own troubled son. But Henry?
Henry was here to have fun.
“I like him,” I whispered to Victor. “He is silly. We should keep him.”
Henry held up a length of tattered purple velvet and squinted as though imagining Victor wearing it as a cape. “Victor should be king. He has that regal quality about him. He is far handsomer than I, and looks smarter, too.”
“And he likes you,” I whispered, nudging Victor with my elbow. He had gone silent and still as soon as I said I liked Henry. “So he is at least a little bit intelligent.”
Victor gave me a half smile, apparently mollified. I let Henry dress me as a queen, and Victor deigned to be king. That afternoon, we put on a short play for our delighted parents. I stood between the two boys, resplendent in fake finery, ebullient with real joy.
If I could not go to school, Victor’s going was the next best thing.
* * *
—
Professor Waldman, our next stop, had a bland but perfectly symmetrical face and clothes with the precise tailoring of a man who cared about appearances. He had been far more highly regarded than Professor Krempke by Victor in his letter, but he had a similar report. After a flurry of demands on his time and his studies, he had not heard from Victor in more than a year. He did not remember whether another young man had come looking for Victor because he had neither the time nor the patience for such a thing—nor, clearly, did he have the time or the patience for two silly girls asking about a promising student who had so deeply disappointed him by disappearing.
“Perhaps you should check the gambling dens, the tavern back rooms, or the bottom of the river,” Professor Waldman said meanly. “We seem to lose quite a lot of men to those.” He shut the door without ceremony in our faces. An ugly and tarnished brass knocker sneered at me, mocking my failure.
I vowed that if we were not locked in that night, I would return and throw a rock through his window.
Justine trembled, lifting a hand to her forehead and ducking so her hat would hide some of her expression. “Elizabeth, I am so sorry. We tried. I know how you have worried, but I do not think we should stay here. We have no more information to go on. If Victor—when Victor—wants to be found, he will write. You said yourself he is unpredictable and can descend into moods that last for months.”
I shook my head, clenching my jaw. I had worked too hard, too long, to give up now. I had spent my entire life being what Victor needed.
Now I needed him, and he would be found.
“We know Henry found him,” Justine continued, gaining confidence as she steadily talked herself into leaving. “Perhaps they went abroad, or pursued studies elsewhere. Naturally, a gap in communication could be expected then. Letters get lost, or delayed. I am certain if we go home, something will be waiting.” She finally tipped her head back up, beaming in anticipation. “Ernest will be so relieved to have us home. He will run up with the letter! And with little William on my lap, we will laugh and laugh at the poor timing that would have saved us this whole miserable trip!”
Justine’s imaginative theory was plausible. But her scenario held no comfort for me. I refused to believe that Victor had gone on from this city. Not yet. Victor had promised that one day we would tour the continent together. Return to Lake Como. Trek through the ominous and wild Carpathians. Explore ruins in Greece. All the places we had read about.
And
besides, with the last letter Henry sent me, I could not imagine any scenario in which they had reconciled.
I leaned forward and kissed her cheek. “I have one more place to look. Please?”
She sighed, already letting go of her true desires for my sake. She wanted nothing more than to be back at the Frankensteins’ isolated manor, tucked away in the nursery with little William. And I was keeping her from it. “What if he forgets me?” she had asked on the way here, as though a five-year-old would forget the woman he knew better than his mother. The woman who had taken over entirely when his mother died. A few days in the care of the daft maid would not replace Justine.
“Where else can we look?” she asked.
“The place you always go when you need answers.” I grinned, taking her hand and leading her back to the street. “The library.”
RICH DARK WOOD, POLISHED by both time and careful hands, grew from the floor to the ceiling in perfect straight lines. In place of branches, shelves. In place of leaves, books.
Oh, the books.
I was light-headed from breathing in as deeply as possible, trying to absorb the knowledge here by sheer force of will. I trailed my hands along a row of spines, their worn leather bindings labeled with gold because of the treasure contained inside.
“Can I help you young ladies?” A man glared at us. His face was pinched around a pair of spectacles, having slowly grown to fit them rather than finding a pair that fit his face. His skin was as pale and stretched as the parchment he guarded.