My father had written of finding Dr. Jekel through simple genealogical research. And reading between the lines, I could see that Dad had then used a potent combination of guilt and the promise of fame and fortune to convince Jill’s father to help him find a cure for his looming madness. Judging from some of the passages, I found that my father had not only expected to save himself; he’d sold Dr. Jekel on grandiose dreams of potentially using their findings to revolutionize the treatment of everyone with criminal impulses.
Jekel and Hyde’s magic formula for a safer society!
How ironic was that fantasy?
I locked myself inside the chemistry room and thumped my bag onto my lab table, not hesitating for fear that the slightest falter would cause me to rethink the whole doomed adventure. For I was all but certain that the formula would never work. The odds were too long—and the potion itself too toxic.
Dad, though, had believed that he and Dr. Jekel were drawing close to an answer. My collaborator feels confident that a breakthrough . . . that SUCCESS . . . is imminent . . .
And then, abruptly, the proposed journal article had been abandoned. The last saved date was close to the previous Christmas. Not long before the murder of Dr. Jekel.
Glass clinking against glass, I assembled the implements and ingredients that I needed and moved quickly to mix the chemicals, unable to push away the question that gnawed at my mind: should I kill my father before I risked killing myself?
If I did so, I would almost certainly be avenging Jill’s father’s death and probably gain retribution for my own mother’s murder, not to mention saving future victims. Because the beast that had overtaken Dad would kill again.
But, god forgive me, I kept working alone in the school.
Perhaps a small part of me clung to the faint, faint hope that the formula which I hurriedly mixed, which bubbled and seethed in the Erhlenmeyer flask, might actually save me and enable me to bring my father back, too.
Or perhaps I was a coward, unable to murder, along with the beast, the man who had given me life. The stern, demanding, undemonstrative egomaniac who had nevertheless written, at the very start of his most important work, a draft dedication: For my son, Tristen—that I may save him, too.
I worked hurriedly but with precision, checking my notes and mixing the chemicals. Addition half litre filtered water . . . Messerschmidt would have been in awe had he witnessed my efforts.
And finally, as the modern Dr. Jekel’s document indicated, I added the strychnine to the already dangerous potassium dichromate and poured that lethal mix into the flask.
Strychnine. An alkaloid mistakenly believed medicinal back in the nineteenth century. A chemical that would have been commonly found in pharmacies, and which, in the amount that I held, would indeed shake the drinker to his very core.
Refusing to think further, to consider the future, the way the solution might feel as it seared my throat, paralyzed my lungs, I raised the flask before my eyes, toasting my own fate, and was actually about to say “cheers” when I heard my name screamed from the doorway.
“Tristen! Stop!”
Chapter 42
Jill
“TRISTEN, DON’T,” I begged when I saw his hand hesitate. My backpack slid from my shoulder, thumping to the floor, and I stepped closer. “Please. Let’s talk first.”
“How did you even get in here?” he asked, confused, fingers wrapped around the throat of a flask that was filled to the brim. He looked to the door. “I locked that . . .”
“I just picked it,” I said, opening my hand to show him the paper clip. “Like you taught me.”
“Oh, hell,” Tristen groaned. “I should never have shown you—”
“What’s in there, Tristen?” I edged even nearer, terrified that he would tilt the flask to his mouth and drain it dry before I could reach him. “What’s in the formula? How is the salt altered?”
He didn’t answer the question. “I think you should go now, Jill.”
A cold knot formed in the pit of my stomach. “Tristen . . . what is in there?”
He still didn’t answer but set down the flask and came around the table, stopping me with two firm hands around my upper arms. “Jill,” he said, boring into my eyes, “you really need to go.”
I knew then that whatever Tristen Hyde was about to drink, it wasn’t just dangerous; it was probably deadly. He didn’t look scared. He looked resigned and determined, and that expression tipped me off more than raw terror would have. I’d seen that look on Tristen’s face the day he’d first asked me to help him with the experiment. The day he’d promised to commit suicide if he couldn’t cure himself.
“Tristen, you don’t really believe this will help you, do you?” I asked, fighting back emotions that were about to overwhelm me and make me irrational. Fear at the prospect of seeing somebody actually die. And something more. Terror at the prospect of losing Tristen. Forever. I wouldn’t be able to bear it. Because even if he didn’t love me back, I loved him.
Loving him was stupid and pointless and maybe wrong. He was dangerous and arrogant, and he broke every rule that I followed, and lured me to break them, too. But I knew in that moment that it was true: I had somehow fallen in love with a guy who was about to take his own life. “You’re killing yourself, aren’t you?” I asked, hating that my voice broke.
“Perhaps,” Tristen admitted. “Of course, I hope that the formula will save me. But there is a strong chance that I might not survive drinking it.”
Although I’d suspected that, hearing him say it made my blood run cold.
“Why now?”
