“What, Jill?” he prompted, mischief in his eyes. “What are you thinking, in that formidable, lovely mind of yours?”
“Um . . .” I noticed that Tristen’s smile was slowly vanishing. He was growing serious again. But a different kind of serious. His eyes still gleamed but with a gentle curiosity, a softer amusement.
I flushed under his attention. Could a mind be “lovely”? Attractive? But, no, Tristen didn’t think of me that way.
Yet the look in his eyes . . . I didn’t have any experience with boys, but I almost thought . . .
“Tell me, Jill,” he urged, and we were so close—had he leaned closer?—that I could feel his warm breath on my cheeks. I inhaled the scent of him, which was slowly growing familiar as our lives became more entangled. Tristen always smelled like he’d just showered. Clean and masculine. And his eyes . . .
“What’s going on in that beautiful brain?” he asked again.
Lovely. Beautiful. Not me but my mind.
What would a truly beautiful girl, like Becca, think of such a strange compliment? Would she laugh at it?
Probably.
Suddenly it was like Becca was standing with us again, tossing her shiny, auburn hair. Becca, who definitely intrigued guys. Who probably intrigued Tristen . . .
“Nothing,” I said, breaking our gaze and needlessly shuffling the papers piled in front of me. “I’m just thinking we should get to work. I shouldn’t stay out too late. My mom might wake up and wonder where I am.”
“Yes,” Tristen agreed, clearing his throat and edging his stool away from mine, just an inch or so. And he sounded aloof, almost like we were business partners—which we sort of were—when he added, “And how is your mother?”
“Pretty sedated most of the time,” I said, tapping the papers back into order. I dared to look at him. “Is that normal for most of your father’s patients?”
“I don’t know too much about Dad’s methods,” he said. “But, yes, I understand that the initial phase—‘stabilization,’ as he calls it—involves heavy sedation. It’s meant to keep patients from doing themselves harm while the brilliant Dr. Hyde probes their psyches looking for more practical, lasting solutions.”
I had planned to ask Tristen just how long “stabilization” lasted, but the sarcasm I heard when he assessed his father’s work surprised me. “Don’t you think he’s really brilliant? You said he’s the best.”
Tristen smiled wryly, resuming writing. “Yes, Jill. I suppose he is brilliant. He certainly thinks so.”
I decided to let the subject go, just happy for the reassurance that my mother was getting care from a top psychiatrist. One whose methods enabled me to come to the lab at night—and who didn’t seem in any hurry to add to the growing pile of bills that I kept arranged by order of urgency in a box in our kitchen.
Tristen and I worked in silence for a while, the only sound in the room the scratch of his pen and the crackle of stiff paper when I turned the pages, checking his work.
Addition 5 ml hydrochloric acid to . . .
I swallowed hard, imagining how the acid would feel going down someone’s throat. Had one of my old relations actually drunk that? Would Tristen?
I kept reading. Increased HCl to 10 ml . . .
Yes, the first Dr. Jekyll had used a lot of common pantry ingredients. But there was dangerous stuff in there, too.
“Does your mother ever say those things anymore?” Tristen eventually broke the silence, interrupting my worried thoughts: images of him drinking a deadly concoction, writhing in agony . . . I shook the pictures out of my head.
“Things?” I asked. “What things?”
“About the ‘bloody list.’ In the ‘compartment.’ The things she mumbled as I lifted her.”
“No,” I said. “For a while it was like a mantra . . . the whole thing about the ‘altered salts.’ But I guess the medicine kicked in—”
“Jill?”
I looked up to see him staring at me, a strange look on his face like I’d startled him. “What?”
“What did you just say?”
“The medicine kicked in—”
“Before that. About the salts.”
“Mom kept mumbling about ‘altered salts.’ You remember.”
“No.” Tristen shook his head. “I couldn’t hear everything she said.”
“She kept talking about a list of altered salts in a compartment,” I said, not sure why he found Mom’s delusional ramblings so interesting. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“The book, Jill. The book . . .”
“What book?” He was losing me completely.
“Oh, hell,” he muttered, rising from the stool and reaching for his messenger bag, rummaging deep inside. “Oh, hell.”
“Tristen, what book?”
“Jekyll and Hyde,” he said with impatience, pulling an object from his bag. I recognized the first edition novel that his grandfather had given him. Tristen sat on the stool again and grew distant, talking to himself, clearly agitated. His face was pale. “How could I have forgotten the ‘altered salt’? Grandfather told me—read the novel. ‘If there is a chance for salvation, the clues are in the novel.’”
But Tristen didn’t open the book he’d retrieved. He slammed it onto the table like he was punishing it and buried his face in his hands. “Oh, hell. Bloody, fucking hell!”
I didn’t scold him for swearing that time. His despair was so raw that I rested a tentative hand on his shoulder. His muscle was hard, tense under my fingers. “Tristen? What’s wrong?”
He looked up, misery in his eyes, and I wished I had the courage to be even bolder, maybe take his hand. He was scaring me.
“Oh, Jill,” he groaned. “It’s all pointless. The experiment can’t cure me.”
My heart jumped at the unexpected announcement. He said he’d kill himself . . . Whether or not I believed in the “beast” we had to at least try . . . “Why not?” I asked, mouth dry.
Tristen picked up the book again, leafing through, fingers tearing at the pages until he was almost at the end of the novel. “Listen,” he said, reading. “‘My provision of the salt, which had never been renewed since the date of the first experiment, began to run low. I sent out for a fresh supply, and mixed
