“I have nothing on me.”
“Have you checked?”
“I would’ve noticed, Victor, when I undress at night!”
“You should check right now,” I said. “Under the sun. It’s easiest to detect that way!”
“Honestly, Victor, you’ve got cheek!”
“ I did it on the boat!” I reminded her. “Look, we’ll turn away!”
“I have no intention of undressing in this field, thank you very much!”
Henry looked at me like I was a lunatic.
“You,” she said to me, “have definitely been spending too much time in the spirit world. You’ve moved beyond megalomania and are well into paranoia now!”
And she walked on without saying another word to me, all the way back to the chateau.
CHAPTER 15
I read at my desk, waiting for the church bells to toll midnight before I entered the spirit world. With scant nights until Konrad’s return and our departure for Italy, it was all the more urgent to collect as many spirits as I could. I’d need them for the winter. But right now I was feverishly absorbed in my reading, looking up only to scrawl things in my notebook.
Suddenly, from within the house, came a staccato burst of quick screams and then a keening wail, all the more horrifying because I knew it was my mother’s.
I was up and out my door in a second, rushing down the hallway toward my parents’ chambers. Elizabeth burst from her own room as I passed, and then, as we rounded the corner to the east wing, Father came hurrying toward us.
“Is Mother all right?” I panted.
He seized me by the shoulders, the intensity of his gaze terrible to behold. “Where were you just now?”
“In my room, reading,” I said, feeling cold all over. What did he know?
He stared at me hard. “You weren’t out on the dock?”
I shook my head. “No.”
For a moment he held my eyes with his, and then his shoulders sagged and he released me. He closed his eyes, shook his head.
“I thought not. Your mother… she woke and went to the window and began screaming. She said she saw Konrad standing. I looked and saw nothing at all. It’s not the first time she’s had such nightmares, but she seemed so certain that I felt I had to check, to make sure it wasn’t you.”
“Poor Aunt Caroline,” said Elizabeth, her eyes glinting with tears.
“She’s badly off,” Father said. “But she’s strong; she’ll rally. I just wish I’d taken her away earlier, all of us.”
Impatiently I waited for the house to settle, for the last of the servants to leave the hallways and take to their own beds.
Unlocking my desk drawer, I noticed that my hand shook slightly. I took out the spirit clock and the elixir, and as my candle backlit the tall green flask, I was startled to see how little liquid remained. I peered inside, tilting the container, trying to guess how many more drops it might yield. Why hadn’t I considered this earlier? When the elixir ran out, I’d be cut off from the butterfly spirits forever, unless-I found the recipe.
It was surely of Wilhelm Frankenstein’s making, or if not, he’d learned it from some tome contained somewhere within the chateau.
The Dark Library was, as always, the obvious place to start.
Furious, I shove yet another pile of books onto the floor, to make room for the next.
I’ve lost track of how long I’ve been here, hunched over the table, scouring tome after tome, searching for the recipe. Damn Wilhelm Frankenstein and his mysterious ways! Why hadn’t he written it down in his notebook with the other instructions? Or left it in the metal book with the spirit board pendulum? How many secret hiding places did the man need?
Even with three butterflies upon me, I’ll never be able to read every single book in here in a single visit.
Maybe he liked to keep it close at hand.
The thought makes me look up, and a forgotten image flares in my mind.
When Elizabeth and I were leaving the spirit world together for the first time, my room revealed its former self as Wilhelm’s very bedchamber, from three hundred years ago. His initials on the sumptuous pillows. And in the wall, a small cupboard in which had rested a single book.
As if the house had been trying to show me something.
At once I am running up the stairs, through the library, and along the hallway to my own bedchamber. Inside I fix my eyes on the wall.
Show me!
The walls pulse, the floor ripples, and my gaze burns through centuries of lathe and plaster and brick until I see a small secret recess. I reach out and seize hold of the shimmering book, which solidifies at my touch.
On the very first page is the recipe, written in a hand I recognize as Wilhelm Frankenstein’s. I pass my fingers over it, committing all its ingredients to memory. It is simple, easy to replicate. I will transcribe it the moment I return to the real world. I turn the page to make sure I’ve not missed anything, and frown.
Across two pages are drawn various diagrams of some kind of hooded gown or robe. The fabric bears an intricate butterfly pattern. But when I turn the page, I see yet more drawings of the garment, closer and more detailed, and it appears that it’s actually made of butterflies. Hundreds upon hundreds, sutured together by their wings into a tight dark weave.
As though sharing my strange repulsion at the image, the three butterflies that have ridden with me now soar from my body, brilliant with color.
“Wait!” I say, for I want to bring them all back with me.
But they flutter across my bedchamber with such purpose that, for the first time, I wonder where it is they go. I hurry after them into the hallway.
They fly back into the deserted library, cross the room, and slip through the seam of the secret door. I follow, down the stairs, and then down the shaft to the caverns.
As I jog through the vaulted galleries, the ancient paintings are more luminescent than I’ve ever seen them. Several times I turn quickly, for it seems a bison has just pawed the ground or tossed its head. Every surface of my body is alive: My fingertips taste the air, my nostrils inhale color. A strange sense of inevitability builds within me.
I’m curiously unsurprised when I’m led to the cave with the image of the giant man. He towers above me, his stick arm outstretched, generating such power that I can feel the small hairs on the back of my head lift, as though anticipating lightning.
I follow the butterflies as they descend the steep passage to the burial chamber. They fly directly to the pit and then spiral down, as if drawn by a powerful current. I rush to the edge and stare, stunned by what I see.
The strange, vast form at the pit’s bottom is no longer encased in stone or swathed in a cocoon but is now contained in a fleshy womb-shaped sac.
My three butterflies land upon it, and instantly all the color drains from their wings and bodies and they become black once more. And at that very same moment the membranous sac trembles and becomes momentarily translucent. I see a quick, dark swirl of movement-limbs, a torso, and a glimpse of an enormous skull turning, as though looking up at me. Then the membrane is opaque once again and convulses violently as though pummeled
