He grew very still. “You never asked to be what?”
“What you have made me.”
He cocked his head at me, pinning me down with that eerie, backlit stare, the same stare with which he regarded a specimen flayed open upon his laboratory table.
“I am responsible,” he said slowly. “That is your argument.”
“More a statement of fact,” I countered.
“For all of it, that is what you are saying. The Russians. The Italians. Kearns. For every action you have taken since you came to me.”
“And for every action I have not taken, yes. Even Meister Abram. That too, Warthrop, that too.”
He folded his arms across his chest and turned away. I went on, “There is no room for pity or love or any silly sentimental thing—I didn’t kill Competello to avenge Meister Abram. Revenge was Competello’s motive, not mine. The message contained in the box had to be answered, you know it as well as I, but Dr. Kearns was right about one thing: There is something missing in you, a blind spot that prevents you from seeing all the way down to the inescapable conclusion of your philosophy—”
“Enough!” he cried. “It is galling—it is grotesque—it is obscene!”
“It is the truth,” I said calmly. “The thing you claim to love above all else. You asked what I am, but you know already: I am the thing that waits for you at the bottom of those stairs.”
He lunged forward, seized me by the lapels, and hauled me upright, bringing our faces inches apart. “I will give you up to them. I will tell them what you’ve done, and then you may debate with them ‘inescapable conclusions’!”
I laughed in his face. He flung me away and I staggered toward the door. I remained upright; I did not fall.
“I have made a terrible mistake,” he said. “I never should have taken you in—and in that one respect you are right: I am a hypocrite. There is no room for pity, and I took pity. No room for mercy, and I was merciful—”
“Mercy? Is that what you call it?”
“I sacrificed everything for you!” he roared. “And at every turn you have hindered me, burdened me, betrayed me! Everything was perfect, down to this latest instance, until you butted your head where it didn’t belong.”
I threw open the door. He shouted for me to close it, and I, ever the faithful servant, started to—then stopped.
“I said close that door.”
“I am leaving you, Dr. Warthrop,” I said, facing the open door and the hall outside and the elevator that would take me down a final descent and out the lobby and into a world without monstrumology and murder and the things that claw helplessly in glass jars and the inarticulate horrifying beauty that dwells in the chrysalis. I was light-headed, extremities tingling, heart buzzing with adrenaline. Freedom.
He barked out a laugh. “And where will you go? And what will you do when you get there?”
“To the other side of the world!” I shouted. “Where I will labor to forget you and everything you represent, though it takes me a thousand years.”
Man has a right to defend himself.
That is the issue. The only one that matters.
I left.
TWO
By the time I reached Riverside Drive, I was running.
How absurdly simple, I thought, and how simply absurd—the chain that bound me was made of air! The prison that housed me had walls insubstantial as water; I only needed to kick hard to break the surface and be free. Free! I was hurtling along at a hundred times the speed of light, flying to the ticket office first, unbound and unhindered, the past receding to a point infinitesimally small behind me. Free! I heard their cries from the flames no longer, nor his voice, desperate and shrill, calling me, Will Henreeeeee! and to hell with those who dance in flames and to things that swim in jars and the prison of the amber eye, the cruel mockery of monstrous things, the godlessness of nature perfected, and to him, to him, to hell with him, too: the little boy in the tattered hat who having lost God made god of the one who found him. To hell with all of it and all of him and all the blood that serving him extracted. Blood, blood, blood, rivers of blood, drenching, soaking, suffocating blood; kick, kick, kick hard and you will break the surface and breathe again.
Breathe.
“Where is she?” I demanded, breathless at the door.
“Miss Lilly? She is lying down and wishes not to—”
I shoved my way inside and raced up the stairs two at a time, ascending finally, rising at last, to burst into her room, hitting my foot hard against the side of the open steamer-trunk and toppling forward to arrive flat on my face, sprawled out upon the floor.
I heard the door close. Then her voice: “Don’t you have the nerve . . .”
I rolled onto my back and pulled the paper from my jacket pocket. “I do—and better! I’ve got this.”
“What have you got?”
I sat up, waving the slip. “My ticket on tomorrow’s passage. I am sailing with you, Miss Bates—to England!”
She frowned. “I do not think that you are.”
“Well, I most definitely am.” I leapt up, laughing. “Steerage, though; I’m no child of Riverside Drive, after all!”
She crossed her arms and frowned at me. “I don’t understand.”
“I’m free, Lilly! Done with it and done with him.”
I pulled on her wrists, forcing her arms apart. She yanked free. “You’re drunk.”
“I am, but not with drink. I don’t know why I never saw it before—but you did, from the beginning you saw. My doctor, you called him. I wasn’t his; he was mine. And what belongs to me I may keep or discard as I wish. As I wish!”
“But why now? What has he done this time?”
I shook my head. “It isn’t about him.” I reached for her again, and she tried to pull away again, but I was too quick: The hunter snared his prey. I pulled her close and said, “I love you, Lilly.”
She turned her head away. “No.”
“I do. I love you. I have loved you since I was twelve years old. And I would do anything for you. Name it. Name it and it’s yours.”
She looked at me. And her eyes were blue and clear all the way down, like the lake high in the Socotran mountains into which I had plunged to wash away my contagion. I was nasu, unclean, and the icy water purified me. Yes! I thought. And herein lies our salvation.