Chapter One
Salisbury, England, 1814
Angelika Frankenstein knew what physical qualities her ideal man should have; unfortunately, she had to find those attributes at the morgue. She and her brother were in the doorway of the basement, like two customers about to stroll into a fruit market. Laid out on tables were around thirty corpses.
“I never get used to the stench,” Victor Frankenstein remarked through his shirt cuff. “Be quick and choose.”
“I’m always quick,” Angelika replied into her perfume-soaked handkerchief. “Why would I want to linger?”
“Because you want to make sure you choose the best-looking.”
Angelika was aghast. “I do not.”
“What’s the price tonight, Helsaw?” Victor asked the morgue attendant in a raised voice.
Helsaw sat outside the doorway on an upturned pail, biting his thumbnail in loud snips. “A shilling each,” he said to Victor, then spat on the ground.
Victor considered it. “Any room for negotiation? Two corpses for a shilling?”
Helsaw nodded in the direction of their tied horses. “You both jingled when you hit the ground. Don’t like it, go elsewhere.”
Victor grinned. “All right. I’ll pay anything.”
“You’re such a good negotiator, Vic,” Angelika praised sweetly.
His smile turned evil. “Quiet, Jelly, or I’ll send you to an orphan house.”
“I’m twenty-four. They’ll never take me.” What would their parents have thought of these late-night activities?
Helsaw provided the siblings with a lantern each and heaved a sigh. “Bickering already. It’s a long wait tonight, lads,” he told the growing queue of medical students. They muttered and lit their pipes.
Inside, Angelika addressed her brother again. “I am only doing this to put my name in medical history, alongside yours.”
“You are so terribly noble,” Victor scoffed, picking up a corpse’s arm to bend and straighten it. “You help me because you’re bored out of your wits.”
“You can’t do this without me, and you know it.” She waited for his nod. “I wish we were traveling again.”
Victor gave her a narrowed glance. “Give up. I hate living out of luggage, with no laboratory. When Lizzie arrives, I’m home forever.”
“Forever?” Angelika picked up a dead man’s cold hand, and interlaced her fingers with his. Then, she rotated the wrist joint. She might be living without love, forever? She’d be a white-haired old lady, still living as her brother’s ward? “If you had done your duty as older brother and guardian, I wouldn’t be here right now.”
Victor replied, “I’ve introduced you to every unmarried man I’ve ever met. I’ve struck up conversations in theaters with men you thought were your destiny. I’ve sat through fortune-teller visits. I’ve delivered anonymous love notes and objected at a wedding. I once helped you perform a spell under the full moon. It was absolutely unscientific, but I did it.”
He did sound very close to tearing his hair out.
Angelika forged on. “My point is, you haven’t helped me for a long while. The moment you saw Lizzie, you forgot about my goals. I think you forgot how to spell your own name.”
“This, from a girl whose name is spelled with a k instead of a c. Here’s a little suggestion for you,” Victor said as he pressed around on a man’s rib cage. “Men do not like being asked questions from a preprepared list. My friend from school, Joseph, said meeting you was like being interviewed for the position of junior footman.”
“You praise my organization in the laboratory.” Oh, dear. Victor had a point. Somewhere around the questions about favorite color and happiest childhood memory, men abruptly spoke of the late hour and the long road home. “Sometimes, I had the length of a cup of tea to make my choice. I need to know everything about a man, as quickly as possible.”
Bending a corpse’s knee up toward the ceiling, Victor replied, “For matters of the heart, you must go by feeling and instinct. Lizzie taught me that.”
He had the smug glow of new love, and it sparked Angelika’s temper.
“I would take this advice if I had anyone left to meet. I once had so many suitors, they were in a queue like that.” Angelika nodded toward the doorway, where the medical students stood smoking. “I thought I had forever to find true love, the kind Mama and Papa had.”
“You do have forever. There’s no rush.”
“Spoken as a man. I want to travel. I want my own house. Especially as you are soon to be married, and you’ll both want Blackthorne Manor all to yourselves. I’m quite sure I would be a bother.”
“You would. I am hereby reinvested in your marriage project.” Victor looked around the dark room. “Well? Does anybody here wish to belong to a selfish young lady who will keep you as a handsome pet and will refuse to compromise on anything? Make yourself known if you are indeed that fool.”
There was a long, dead silence.
Angelika glared at him. “Is that how you would have introduced me at the military academy ball?”
“Are you still angry about that? It was weeks ago.”
“Yes, I am angry that my brother refused to take me somewhere to dance with soldiers and to meet the new commander.” She put her hand on her hip. “It’s my fault I’m considered odd, and superior, and a bit witchy. It’s my fault I’m unmarried. But it’s your fault, too.”
Victor ran a hand through his famous honey-red hair; the same color as hers. “I accept that I could do more,” he conceded. “But I draw the line at country dances.”
“Lizzie will want to go to them.” Her brother’s betrothed was currently packing her belongings, in preparation for becoming Mrs. Frankenstein as soon as possible.
Victor smiled at the mention of Lizzie’s name. “Only she could drag me to one. Be proactive. Pick a chap here tonight, and if he survives, you can bring him tea trays in bed, wearing your prettiest gowns.”
“Oh, certainly, much less effort than attending a dance.” She held it in as long as she could, but then cackled at the absurdity. “All right, husband, please volunteer. I promise you do not have to tell me a single thing about yourself.”
Victor was laughing, too, and gagging, in the unventilated back corner of the room. “Other women order lace and hat trimmings. My dear sister is tailoring a suitor, right down to his cock.”
“I hate you, Victor. So very much.”
Sincerely, he replied, “I love you, too.”
Angelika found a corpse she had not checked. Her pulse throbbed in her throat, and Victor’s teasing faded into the background.
Here lay a beautiful man, frozen at the climax of the fight for his life. He appeared incredulous to have died. His brow was creased between the eyebrows, his jaw was gritted tight, and his hands were half-curled in fists. He had faced death like a gladiator, and when she rolled up one of his eyelids, there was such a direct challenge in his brown eye that she felt true fright and released him. “You fought hard, didn’t you?”
She watched for his furious inhalation, which never came. It was terribly sad.
Tousling a gentle hand through his thick bronze-brown hair was very forward of her, but she could not resist. It was soft as tabby-cat fur. She noticed his smile lines and long lashes. He had neat fingernails, and all his teeth were present. “Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful,” she whispered to him. “Would you like to be mine?”
She was inspired in a new way. She’d never been somebody’s last chance before.
“Are you alone? Are you afraid?” She took a deep breath and had to muster her courage for this next question. “Can I do this for you? Do you wish to come back?” Her lantern flickered, and a breeze blew in, banging the door against the wall. Her skirts swirled around her ankles. Even Helsaw clutched his chest and barked an obscenity.
Angelika knew, deep in her bones, this dead man’s answer was: Yes, yes, yes. Bring me back.
“That was eerie,” Victor remarked blandly from where he was tapping his hands on a chest, feeling for evidence of fluid. “Who’ve you found there?”
She cleared her throat of sudden strong emotion. “Someone perfect. I won’t change a thing about him.”
“That’s not the experiment,” Victor argued. “My nemesis, Jürgen Schneider—”
She cut over him. “I know full well who your mortal enemy is.”
“Then you know that in his exquisite German laboratory, he’s reanimating entire men left and right.” Victor could not think of the man without a tormented growl. “I must go bolder and exceed him, and do what he said is impossible. My achievement must be made of many parts, all sewn back together, to be better than Schneider’s. Is everything present and accounted for?” He nodded toward Angelika’s beau.
Angelika looked under the filthy scrap covering the handsome man’s loins and considered what she saw. She had been reading a lot of anatomy manuals; possibly too many. What she saw lying on his lap was unremarkable. And upon closer review, his chest was trim and strong, but not the heavy padded muscles she preferred. “He looks . . . fine.”
Victor came over to assess Angelika’s claim. Bending the corpse’s joints, he said, “He probably died only today. He’s an excellent candidate, and his looks are almost as refined as mine.” He searched around for a mirror, and then declared, “Keep his head, and we’ll remake the rest.”
She followed Victor to the next table. Then she glanced back at the handsome man.
He seemed alone, in a way the others did not.
She noticed something on the next man along, a stocky fellow in his fifties. “This one has a tattoo. ‘Bonnie.’”
It was unlikely that Bonnie would approve of tonight’s activities, and reality struck, harder than this imagined woman’s slap. Angelika began defending herself out loud. “Surely a second chance is better than being tossed into a hole in the dirt?”
She wasn’t talking to Victor, but he answered anyway. “If it’s not us, it’s them.” He nodded to the doorway. “The difference is, we have a chance to reverse this. A few years too late, I suppose.” He meant for their parents, and they both swallowed a lump of sadness. With forced humor, he continued. “Here, you’ll like this one over here. Rippling all over with muscles, and a cock like a hog’s hind leg. I think you’ve got a few options to work with here.”
The shroud was pulled down to the knees, and she assessed the body part in question. The anatomy manuals had not prepared her. “Is it . . . too big?”
“Sister, I cannot advise you on such things,” Victor replied. “Just get spares where you can.”
It was good advice. Their laboratory smelled of burning hair.
This person’s biceps did not give under her prodding finger, and his hands were black from coal, or metal. The body belonging to her handsome man had been refined and clean; this one was a brute. She faltered, looking back again. “I still like mine as he is.”
“I think this was the blacksmith. Athena threw a shoe in the village last year. Shame.” Victor slapped the man’s shoulder heartily. “He put up with her biting very well. Don’t look so worried, Jelly. We will make somebody who is ideal to you in every way.”
Helsaw was leaning through the doorway. “What’s taking so long? Heads are now an extra sixpence.”
Victor ignored him. “I think this time’s the charm, don’t you, Jelly? We learned from the last three attempts. When I present my rebuilt man at the next Cerulean Order meeting, Schneider will cry himself to sleep.” A cruel expression spread across his face. “I’ll bring Lizzie along, to remind him of all the ways he has lost to me.”
“’Urry up,” a second voice said from the doorway, putting true fear in the siblings. It was their elderly servant Mary, tired of waiting with the pony cart. “What the bloomin’ heck is the holdup? How hard is it to pick a couple of dead lads? You,” she threatened Angelika with just a word. “You.”
“I’m finished,” Angelika defended herself. “Why does everyone think I am slow?”
“I’ve told ’em,” Helsaw gossiped to Mary. “There’s twenty waiting. Any minute, the night watch might come around. Pick, pay, and get out.” Against the wall, the queue of young men huffed in unison. “But there ain’t no rushing these two.”
“You don’t know how hard my life is,” Mary replied bitterly.
“We’re done,” Victor reassured her with a smile. “I bought you a fruit bun at market today, my dear Mary, and here is an extra shilling for your time, Helsaw.”
Overcome by sudden adoration, both beamed at him.
Turning back to his sister, and instantly devoid of charm, Victor began to move the blacksmith. “Come on, Jelly. Get his ankles.”
“I will pay you to carry for me.” Angelika tried to bribe Helsaw, but he turned away with a sniff. “What is the difference between my brother and me? We both pay well, just the same.”
“Does our heart good to see you lift a finger,” Mary said. “Get a little sweat on that pretty brow, my lady.” It seemed to be true for the entire waiting queue. They laughed and heckled, egged on by Mary, as Angelika helped to lug their first pick outside. She wouldn’t lower herself to respond and kept her eyes trained skyward. It was a full moon tonight, and there was something different in her favorite constellation.
“See, I’m telling you. There’s a new star.”
Victor didn’t even look up. “Scientifically unlikely.”
“I’ve been looking at that constellation since I was a child. I know what it is supposed to look like.”
Her brother shook his head. “Not now. One, two, three—” They hoisted the man into the cart. “Let’s go back for your dream man. We can’t forget him.”
Angelika wished again on the new star for luck. “I couldn’t forget this one if I tried.”
Chapter Two
The Frankenstein siblings worked most of the night, and the following day.
Angelika, skilled from years of needlepoint lessons, was able to make the tiny sutures that Victor insisted on. She remembered his joke in the morgue: Other women order lace and hat trimmings. Arteries were like the fine satin cord on a hat brim; muscle fascia was a textile suited to a cheap petticoat. Everything was silky with blood, but she was used to it. All night, all day, she sat in a seamstress pose, while the tailor watched over her shoulder, intolerant of one incorrect stitch.
Now her midday mutton stew was long digested, and the sunlight was fading from the room. She could not feel her thumbs. “I need to rest my hands.”
“With your project fully stitched and complete, and my own in a hundred pieces.” Victor gave her a mean look as he jumped up to grab the iron bar spanning the top of the door. Pulling his chin up to the bar with muscle-shuddering effort, he grunted: “Typical—Angelika.”
She wasn’t in the mood. “Look at all I’ve done, you ungrateful lout.”
Another chin-up. “You—sad—little—spinster.”
The locals said similar things to her turned back. Unmarried. Unwanted, unusual, ungodly. Her hurt must have showed, because Victor dangled and added on a heavy sigh, “Sorry. I’m tired, too.” He continued his chin-ups. Angelika knew he was expecting her to count his repetitions, but she never did.
“Nothing is stopping you from learning to sew, Vic.”
“I’ve—already—tried.” Many years ago, a handkerchief was ruined by his attempt, and his dots of blood. Victor had no tolerance for tasks that he wasn’t immediately excellent at. Dangling and huffing, he added, “Anyway, I don’t need to learn. I’ve got you. How many’s that?”
“Just ten more,” Angelika said cruelly, and picked at her cuticles as he performed many, many more of his groaning, trembling chin-ups. When he looked half-dead, she said, “Done.”
Victor dropped to the floor, and through gasps he said, “I can’t wait for Lizzie to see all my hard work.”
“I do hope you’re not referring to yourself.” Angelika grimaced.
“I’ve noticed that ladies like muscles. He could have posed for Michelangelo.” He gestured to Angelika’s project.
The siblings sat on windowsills near each other. Fresh air was vital. “How long will you rest?” The strain was evident in Victor’s voice as he leaned out to check the weather. “I can smell the storm. And they’re starting to smell worse, too.”
“I’ll just take five minutes,” she said, and her brother nodded, drinking from a flask of liquor. She put her hand out for it, sipped, and winced at the taste.
“You did such a good line of stitches there,” he admitted in grudging admiration, getting to his feet again to study the neckline of Angelika’s project. It was roughly as long as he ever sat still. “If he always wears his cravat, no one would know.”
“Thank you, he turned out nicely.” She looked at Victor’s workspace. His scientific hopes and dreams were currently facedown in a metal bowl. She took another sip from the flask and handed it back. “I’ll do yours as neat.”
“Mine only needs to be functional.” He produced an apple from his pocket, taking a huge bite. “Did you see your elegant stranger had a gold ring on? How Helsaw missed that, I have no idea. I took the hands for my project.” Angelika put out her flat palm. Victor flicked it.
“The fingers have swelled; it’s stuck. Remind me to get the tin cutters from the garden to get it off,” Victor said, sitting back down, eating ravenously. “I think it is a type of betrothal ring. We’ll look at it later.”
Is anybody unwed? Voice rich with despair, she said, “How marvelous.”
Victor cackled and got to his feet again, stretching. “You never had this jealous green look when working on your earlier three husbands.” He nodded at the worktable and continued to rile her. “He might compare you to his beloved when he wakes.”
“None of Schneider’s men woke with memories.”
“I am better than him.” Victor was instantly crackling with annoyance. “I mean, I will be if these don’t burn to a crisp. You are always asking me about what will happen when they wake up. I cannot answer you.” He threw his apple core out the window with force. “It’s an experiment. A single heartbeat will be a success.”
“Where will they sleep? What will they wear? Do we keep them forever, or do they go home again?” She shrank under her brother’s poisonous glare. “One of us has to think of the future.”
“You live your life almost exclusively in daydreams about the future. We are doing this right now, in wild new territory. There are no rules that I can explain to you, because I do not know.” Victor’s composure faltered, revealing a rare glimpse of self-doubt. “You are probably worrying for nothing. I haven’t succeeded before.” He crossed to the completed man and looked down at him. “I’ve never tried harder than this, knowing how much you want him, Jelly. You deserve somebody to love you.”
Her throat felt tight, and she returned with equal vulnerability, “Thanks, Vic. But I don’t expect him to love me. He probably won’t even like me. But if he stays, and convalesces here, maybe he will . . . get to know me.”
Victor was uncomfortably earnest now, with his hand on the man’s shoulder. “He will learn that you’re stubborn, and ridiculously extravagant, and that you spend more money than humanly possible.”
“Now say something nice.”
Victor patted her creation. “He will see your world-famous beauty—”
“Stop,” Angelika protested, smiling. “Keep going.”
“And after he knows you, he will see your heart of gold. You surely have an expensive heart, just as he now has the strongest heart I’ve ever handled. Nothing spared,” Victor said to the man. “Everything is of the best quality. She made sure of it.”
Angelika felt her brother deserved some encouragement in return. “When you succeed, and the news travels the world, Lizzie’s father will be boasting about his son-in-law. And yes, it pains me to admit it, but she will love your muscles.”
“Oh, I know she will,” Victor replied, before becoming so invigorated by joyful energy that he completed another set of chin-ups. He now lived like he’d learned a secret, and Angelika yearned to know it, too. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be in love?
She covered her sudden melancholy with a tease. “If she won’t have you, Belladonna waits patiently in the wings.”
“Belladonna is the one female I should never have encouraged.” Victor snorted with laughter, dropping back to the floor and wiping his hands on his trousers. “When Lizzie arrives, there may be a murder at Blackthorne Manor. Rested enough?”
It was very late at night when Angelika laid down her needle and thread.
“It’s time,” Victor said, and he was right.
It was time.
* * *
Angelika’s work was done, and she was not overly interested in the reanimation process. Victor directed. She sewed. He dealt with obtaining the afterbirth, the weather forecast, and the wire cabling attached to the spire on the roof. She took off her soiled apron while her brother dashed about, aligning the bodies in their individual chambers.
Rinsing her arms and hands, she said to Victor, “Something about tonight feels different. I should go and put on a nice dress.” And a little cheek rouge, perfume, and a hairpin. Whilst she could not find anything overly objectionable in her reflection, and she had indeed been described many times as a beauty, there was something about her personality that was untenable. Unnatural. Unlovable.
“What if he convulses and burns like the last one? That’s what you should focus on, not your appearance. Besides, you always wear trousers at home. He’ll have to get used to it.”
Victor poured the barrel of afterbirth into the first chamber, submerging his creation. Their sheep-herding neighbors no longer asked what they used it for, and laughingly referred to it as liquid gold. With a grunt of exertion, Victor diverted the barrel to Angelika’s creation, and she watched as the translucent, smelly substance began to coat him. Then the flow weakened to drips. Victor banged the side. This triggered a new splattering, but not much.
“I thought there was more,” he began defensively, but Angelika was beside the chamber in a blink.
“It barely reaches an inch up his side, and yours is completely covered.” Her tone was plain: It’s unfair. “How is mine to have an even chance?”
Victor pondered this. “We’ll animate mine first, then put yours in. Don’t fret, it will work out.” Above, a rumble of thunder caught his attention. “The storm’s almost here. We must hurry.”
Maybe it would be for the best. Victor’s creation could fail, he could adjust the technique, and hers would succeed. Everyone would be happy, and these months of late nights would be over. She dropped herself heavily into a nearby armchair to wait.
Victor was now in his creative state of flow and could not be interrupted. It struck her that Lizzie should see what he looked like right now, energized by the storm’s crackle. Victor was spoken of by the village girls as terribly handsome and rich, but oh so strange, and always eating an apple, and slightly bad-smelling. It was all truth. He was up to his elbows in other men, ...
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