“Of course not. I had work here.”
“But you could have. You could have saved her.”
He waved his hand. “Didn’t you hear me, girl? I had work to do. Typical flawed reasoning of a woman, to place mortal needs above timeless research.” He straightened his jacket. “I’m going to the village. He’s either there or torn into pieces on the jungle floor.” He left the laboratory, leaving me alone.
He’s mad, I told myself. He isn’t well. And yet I didn’t feel any pity. He could have saved my mother but he didn’t. My fingers curled into fists. I looked at the monkey clutching the block, and knew I was about to do something terrible.
Maybe I was a little mad, too.
Forty
MY CHEST WAS THUMPING, but not with fear. With a dark thrill that snaked up my skin, pouring into my nose and mouth like smoke. Consuming me. Controlling me.
I wove my fingers between the bars of the monkey’s cage. Father said he wasn’t going to operate on this one. He had a new technique—cellular replacement. He intended to change the monkey from the inside out. But you couldn’t destroy the animal spirit. The monkey would always be an animal.
Would always be in pain.
My thumb slipped to the cage’s latch, a modified version of the door latches Father had designed. The monkey had five fingers, but too small to operate the special mechanism. Anger swelled inside me, building and growing until I thought I would split. My fingernails clicked on the cool metal. The monkey cocked his head.
I threw open the cage.
The monkey exploded out, shoving the cage door with a squeal of hinges that made my pulse race. It dashed over the table, sending the blocks and Father’s tablet crashing onto the floor, and out the laboratory door before the papers had even settled.
I gasped. My body felt so alive, demanding more.
I tore open the parrot’s cage next. The bird cocked its head. I threw blocks at the bars, scaring it into taking flight. Then I set free the pig and the sloth, shaking the cages to make the sloth hurry.
“Get out!” I yelled. It was as though the bits and pieces of animal flesh inside my body had taken hold of me. “Get out of here!” I chased the sloth outside, where it latched on to a post and climbed to the roof. I turned back to open more cages, but my hand paused.
They were all empty. I’d set all the animals free. But my hunger for destruction hadn’t subsided. If anything, it had grown, wanting to free more animals, to do anything to ensure my father would never work again.
I paced the wall of glass cabinets slowly, shaking, savoring my secret thoughts. The glass was so delicate, I could smash through it, let it all rain to the ground. My heart leapt with the thought, hungry for destruction. Sunlight reflected off the glass canisters. The living specimen—the jellyfish-like monster with its gaping mouth—lunged for me inside its glass cage.
I smiled grimly. Before I could stop myself, I threw open the glass cabinet and grabbed the jar with both hands, struggling to unscrew the lid. The squirming thing snapped at me ravenously. I hugged the jar to my chest and tipped the contents onto the floor. The glutinous liquid splashed against my feet as it puddled in the center of the room. The thing caught in the jar’s neck and I shook it loose. It fell to the floor with a squish.
I ground the heel of my boot into the fleshy center of the flopping thing. Something crunched. I dug deeper until I cut the unholy thing in half.
Madness overcame me like a whirlwind. I threw the jar to the ground with all my strength, letting it shatter into hundreds of sharp pieces. I pulled out another jar, this one with a graying heart floating in blood-tinted liquid. The liquid poured out like a torrent, puddling on the floor, the heart coming last, like a heavy and dead afterthought. The smell of the chemical preservative made me light-headed. My lungs burned for air, but I smashed the empty jar to the floor anyway. Dozens more jars of all sizes shone in the light of the lantern, each containing gray, twisted bits of organ. Nearly a decade’s worth of work.
My hands were slick with the viscous fluid. It soaked through my dress. Remnants of animal tissue tangled in the lace hem. I unscrewed the next jar, my fingers leaving wet streaks on the glass. Inside, the aged tissue came off in gossamer sheets like a spider’s web. It was almost beautiful. I recognized what half the jars contained—spleen, large intestine, brain. But then there were ones I didn’t know. Those both disturbed and fascinated me the most.
The floor pooled with fetid organs and slick preservatives as I emptied another jar. I drew the back of my hand across my forehead, leaving a slimy trail. The chemical smell choked my pores. I smiled, reaching for the next preserved organ. Ready to smash its glass case to the ground.
“Juliet, stop!”
Edward appeared at the door, rushing toward me. He grabbed the jar before I could drop it. My liquid-covered hands left dark stains on his shirt as he tried to wrench the jar away.
“Let go!” I yelled. My vision was black with rage. “I have to destroy it!”
“Juliet, calm down! Stop! It’s done.”
The jar slipped from my hands, shattering on the ground. One final act of destruction.
Edward didn’t flinch at the crash. “It’s done now,” he said, breathing hard.
I swallowed, suddenly aware of the slime on my face, the bits of graying organ clinging to my skin. I’d laid waste to the laboratory in a whirlwind of insanity. A trembling panic clutched the back of my brain.
“He could have saved her,” I said. “He thought his work was more important.”
Edward brushed his knuckles against my cheek, wiping away grit and slime, his eyes deep and strong. “You don’t have to explain,” he said.
I swallowed, searching his eyes. Of course I didn’t. Edward was scarred, too. Whatever he had done, whatever he was running from, we weren’t so different. Edward didn’t care that I was a little mad, that I could slip and slide away from reason. Just as I didn’t care what he had done that made him flee England. We both had ghosts in our pasts that let us understand each other on a deep level—a level Montgomery never could. Montgomery might have been capable of wicked things, but he wasn’t wicked, not at the core. No matter how much Father had twisted him, he would always be that hardworking, kindhearted boy who couldn’t tell a believable lie if his life depended on it. Edward and I were cut from different cloth. Maybe we weren’t wicked, but there was something stained, something torn, in the fabric of our beings.
Something warm and wet seeped into my boots—fluid from the specimen jars. Edward’s hand tenderly brushed along my cheekbones. There was something not right about a boy who could survive twenty days at sea and didn’t blink when a half-mad girl covered herself in broken glass and rotting organs.