She thought for a moment. “A child?”
I nodded a third time and rubbed my hands.
“Why would you almost kill a child, Will?”
I could not meet her gaze. I waved my hand absently in the air, as if to shoo away a fly. “There was . . . it is very hard not . . . things were happening very fast, and you have never experienced those moments, those very fast moments, when you’ve only an instant to decide, well, no time really to decide anything, because you’ve decided long beforehand or it is too late, too late to decide anything . . .”
I wasn’t looking at her, but I knew she was looking at me, studying my face carefully, for what I could not say.
“You knew you would kill the two men,” she began helpfully.
Relieved, I said, “Yes. I knew that.”
“But not the child.”
“A boy,” I clarified. “He was a boy. Around eleven—no more than twelve. He might have been small for his age, in this weathered old cap, and thin, like he hadn’t had a decent meal in weeks . . .”
She raised her voice suddenly, and I started in my chair. “Mother! Come in, Mother; I know you’re there.”
And she was: Mrs. Bates appeared in the doorway and said with a small, chagrined smile, “Oh, I thought I heard Will Henry. How are you, Will? Would you like something to eat?”
Lilly smiled at me and said, “Would you like to go to my room? Privacy is such a precious commodity in the city.” And then she turned her smile upon her mother.
Once upstairs, she closed the door and threw herself across the bed, rested her chin in her hands, and pointed toward the Queen Anne chair situated by the window.
“She spies on me all the time,” she confided.
“Is that why you went abroad to study?”
“One of the reasons.”
A small fire had been built to chase away the afternoon chill. It popped and crackled; the flames leapt and licked. My mouth was dry again; I should have brought my glass of ice.
“So there was a skinny little boy that you almost killed. Did you stop yourself or did you merely wound him?”
“Neither. Warthrop stopped me.”
“Did he? Well, there may be some hope for him after all.”
I could not be sure, but it sounded like she put a slight emphasis on the word “him.” I decided not to dwell on it. “I thought you might like to know.”
“About the boy or the fact that you killed two people or that Warthrop is alive?”
“All of those things.”
“And you are alive.”
“Yes, of course. That would go without saying.”
“And the creature was lost during the rescue?”
“Afterward.”
“But how could that be, Will?” She was swinging her legs back and forth, bare ankles crossed. “I thought the Irish had T. cerrejonensis.”
“Apparently, the Italians succeeded in wresting it from them.”
“Part of their favor to Warthrop. And then they killed it because you killed two of them.”
“Yes.”
“They must not have understood its value.”
My face was hot. I was sure it was the fire. “I’m not sure they find much value in life period.”
“Warthrop must be crushed.”
“Yes, that would be accurate.”
“And very angry with you.”
“That is a mild description.”
“He’ll get over it. He always does, doesn’t he?”
“He tries.”
“You should point out to him that you saved his life.”
“He doesn’t look at it that way.”
“Well, he wouldn’t. He is an ass. I’ve never understood why Uncle loves him so.”
I cleared my throat. “He thought of Warthrop as a son.”
“Uncle never had children. So to him practically everyone is. He has a very soft heart for a doctor of monstrumology.”
“The last of his kind.”
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing. Only . . . only it always surprised me, your uncle’s kindness, his . . . gentleness. What he was didn’t fit what he did.”
“You are speaking of him in the past tense.”
“Am I? I didn’t mean to.”
“Has something happened to Uncle Abram, Will?”
I looked into the untainted blue, clear all the way down, and said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She nodded. “I thought so.”
“What? What did you think?”
“That he’s too kind and gentle and much too trusting of people.” She wrinkled her nose. “He would have made an excellent deacon or professor or poet, or even a scientist practicing in any field but aberrant biology. I suppose that’s why your master loves him so much in return—he sees in Uncle the possibility that you don’t have to become a monster to hunt them.”
“Well,” I said with a small laugh. “You don’t have to hunt them to become that.”
She cocked her head at me, a smile playing on her lips. “I saw Samuel today.”
“Who?” For a moment my mind went blank.
“Isaacson, the mediocrity. He told me the most remarkable story—so remarkable it cannot be true. Or maybe I have that backward. So remarkable it must be true.”
“I dangled him over the Brooklyn Bridge and threatened to drop him if he didn’t confess to—”
She raised her hand. “Please, I’d rather not hear it a second time.”
“I am surprised, to be honest, Lilly. I didn’t think he had it in him to tell you.”
“I am curious about something, though. If he had said yes to your question, would you have dropped him for what he had done?”
“Does it matter?” I asked. “I didn’t drop him, in any case.”
I stood up. I felt extraordinarily large; I even flinched, expecting my head to smack into the ceiling. She did not move as I advanced. She lay still as I came on. I knelt beside the bed to bring my face level with her eyes.
“The monster is dead; the monster never dies. You may catch it; you will never catch it. Hunt it for a thousand years and it will forever exceed your grasp. Kill it, dissect it, place its parts in a jar or scatter them to the four corners of the world, but it remains forever one ten-thousandth of an inch outside your range of vision. It is the same monster; only its face changes. I might have killed him, but it doesn’t matter one way or the other. The next one I will, and the next, and the one after that, and the faces will change but not the monster, not the monster.”