Author: Megan Shepherd

“The only problem,” Edward whispered, once she was gone, “is navigation.”

“Montgomery knows the way,” I said. “He said there’s a shipping lane not far.”

A shadow passed over Edward’s face and I knew, in that look, that he didn’t want to take Montgomery with us. “You were awfully quick to forgive him after what you saw in the laboratory,” he said.

“He didn’t have a choice,” I said defensively. “He was just a boy when he came here. You’d have done the same thing in his place.”

“No. I wouldn’t have. I’d never choose to hurt anyone.” His voice didn’t hold a trace of doubt. He tilted his head, his face suddenly tender. Goose bumps rippled over my arms at the memory of the night behind the waterfall. “We’ll leave this island. You and I. Go wherever you want. You’ll forget about him. . . .” He swallowed, unable to finish.

I sat straighter. The whalebone corset dug into my ribs, stifling my breath. What could I say? The night behind the waterfall with Edward had been disconcertingly intense, yet there’d been a distance between us since coming back. Nothing I could put my finger on, exactly. More like our connection existed out there, in the wild. It dulled among the books and fine china and lace curtains.

I pulled a worn throw pillow into my lap. I couldn’t tell him what he wanted to hear. Montgomery meant too much to me, despite everything. “We’re taking Montgomery and everyone else who has a human heart beating in their chest,” I said, and left it at that.

He didn’t press. “And your father?”

“He can stay here and rot with the rest of the animals.”

EDWARD AND I WHISPERED about escape whenever we could steal a moment alone. As the days passed, those times became scarcer. More islanders went missing. Edward was needed with the search party while I was left alone to think about the murders.

ABOUT JAGUAR.

One afternoon after the men returned and we’d finished eating a sullen meal, I found Mother’s crystal earring among the trinkets in the salon and held it to the light of the window, where it sent a spray of dancing rainbows over the walls. That was my mother—color and light and delicate as glass. She would have been repulsed by Father’s creations. Not drawn to them.

Balthasar passed on the portico outside, stealing my attention. Puck followed him, and then the rest of the servants, one by one, in their blue canvas shirts and pants. I pressed my face to the window. They gathered under a thatched sunscreen outside the bunkhouse. I put the earring back and pushed open the salon doors.

The islanders formed a loose line, chattering and shuffling their twisted feet. They looked at me curiously as I squeezed to the front between two hoglike men whose bristly hair made me cringe.

Montgomery stood on the other side of a worktable that held his medical bag and a half dozen cloudy glass bottles. He’d smoothed back his hair and put on a fresh shirt. He might have looked like a gentleman if it hadn’t been for the open button at his chest and the casual way he stood, as though he’d spent more of his life climbing trees and racing wild horses than walking.

“Come forward,” he said to one of the hog-men. The creature shuffled to the table, holding out his fat arm like a piece of meat. Montgomery filled a syringe with the cloudy liquid and tapped the man’s vein before inserting the needle. The man must have been twice my size, but he cringed like a little girl.

“You’re all done,” Montgomery said, drawing out the needle. “Next.”

I wandered to the other side of the table, watching over Montgomery’s shoulder. Another islander slipped to the front of the line. The python-woman from the village. She grinned at me, flashing the tips of thin fangs. Montgomery gave her an injection and checked her name off a roster. She waved as she left. Four fingers.

I picked up one of the vials, studying the cloudy liquid. “What are you giving them?” I asked.

“Something to restore the tissue’s balance.”

He waved a gangly-limbed man forward. “Come,” he ordered. The man shuffled to the table and extended his arm, covering his eyes while Montgomery found a vein.

The next, a man with a folded nose like a goat, approached with his sleeve already carefully rolled up.

I watched Montgomery administer the treatments. The islanders all walked away proudly rubbing their arms, like a child’s first trip to the physician. My hand drifted to the skin on the inside of my own elbow. I drew my thumb in a circle around the red mark from this morning’s injection, studying the vial in my other hand. The slight tint, the cloudiness of the compound—it looked remarkably similar to the treatment Father had designed for me. I sneaked a glance at the sheep-woman next to me, at her too-human eyes and the casual way she scratched an insect bite on her neck. I wondered how similar their treatment’s chemical makeup was to my own.

Montgomery watched me from the corner of his eye while he gave the next injection.

“What’s in it?” I asked.

“Mostly rabbit blood with hormones added.”

“How often do they need it?”

“Once a week for the villagers. Twice a week for Balthasar and the more advanced ones. Ajax used to need it daily.” He finished with Cymbeline, who squeezed his eyes shut during the entire injection.

“There now. That’s very good,” Montgomery said.

Cymbeline gave him a smile and took off like a wildcat. Montgomery cleaned the needle and repacked his medical bag, then reached for the vial in my hand, but I held it back.

He shook his head. “I know what you’re thinking. And it’s nonsense.”

“What am I thinking?” I said, clutching the vial. It was a pale yellow color, like the pancreatic extracts I took, but thicker. He snatched it out of my hand.

“You’re wondering if your treatment is similar.”

“Is it?”

My bluntness caught him off guard. He clicked his bag shut. “No. It’s nothing at all the same.”

“No one’s ever heard of my treatment. The chemists look at me like I’m mad.”

“Your father designed it specifically for you. He tried to produce it for the public, but the medical board shut him down.” He picked up the bag and leaned closer. A strand of hair worked its way loose and fell in his eyes. Nothing about him could be tamed for long. “Your mind is racing,” he said softly, his voice caressing my worries. “You’re looking for problems where there are none. I’ve known you from the time you could barely walk. I’d know if there was something . . . unnatural.” His gaze shifted to something behind me in the courtyard. His jaw tensed.

Father strode toward us from the main building. I knew that anger on his face. But it was Montgomery he was after, not me. Still furious that Montgomery had lied about Ajax being alive.

My hand twisted into a fist. I leaned in to Montgomery and whispered before Father could hear. “Come to my room tonight. I need you to see something.” I slipped around the worktable just as my father stormed up with all the cold rage of a coiled snake.

NIGHT HAD SETTLED WHEN Montgomery finally came to my room. The air hung with the promise of overdue rain. He’d spent all afternoon beyond the compound walls digging graves for the deceased. Shadows stretched over his face, handsome still after such grim work.

He stopped in the doorway. His blue eyes glowed in the soft light, lashing my heart like a string. But warning was written in them, too.

“Why am I here, Juliet?” he asked. We both knew there would be trouble if he was caught alone in my room, especially while Father was in a rage.

“Just come in for a moment,” I said. My nervous hands drifted to my dress’s tight bodice.

His lips were sunburned. He glanced around to make sure no one watched from the courtyard. But there were always eyes, somewhere.

He shook his head, reluctant to cross Father. I grabbed a fistful of his shirt, hard buttons and crisp linen, and pulled him gently inside. His eyes still held warning, but there was something else there now. Desire. Seeing it stilled the breath in my lungs. I closed the door behind him.

The oil lamp cast a warm glow over the whitewashed walls. In the semidarkness, his presence blazed even more.

“You’ve been digging graves,” I said.

A spot of sandy dirt clung to his right ear, missed in his bath. “Eight dead so far. That we know of.”

“Did Jaguar really kill them?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. A year ago I’d have said you were crazy. But things are different now.” He stepped closer. His hair was still damp from the bath. Lye soap mixed with the smell of coming rain. “Don’t worry. You’re safe here.”

He thought I wanted reassurance that whatever killed them wouldn’t kill me. But no one could make that promise. “That’s not why I asked you here. I need you to look at something.”

He brushed his hair behind one ear, just missing the patch of sand. An urge overcame me to wipe it off with my thumb. But my hand would have shaken, knowing what I was about to ask him to do. I tangled my hands in the folds of my skirt instead.

“What is it?” he asked.

I took his hand and led him into the corner where we couldn’t be seen from the window. His tired feet dragged, but his eyes were alert.

“I want to know why my medication is so similar to theirs.”

He let out a pent-up breath. “Is that what has you worried? I told you, it isn’t the same.”

“Close enough to make me need more proof.”

He touched my shoulder tenderly, like he’d done to Alice. “It’s impossible. You look too much like your mother to have been created in a laboratory.”

I tried to read the unspoken words in the lines of his face. His concern was deep and genuine and honest. He didn’t believe I was anything like the creatures. But he could be wrong.

“It’s more than that,” I said. “I feel odd sometimes. Like there’s something not entirely right about me, as if I’ve inherited some of Father’s madness. Only now I wonder if it’s something more. . . .”

His thumb rubbed small circles against my shoulder. “Everyone feels like that at some point or another. A little mad. Besides, your mother would know if you came from her own womb. She wouldn’t have lied to you about that.”

Thunder rumbled outside. The sky was on the verge of spilling open. I twisted a lock of hair, unused to having it long and loose. His fingers tightened, pulling me almost imperceptibly closer. He was right about Mother. She may have believed in denial, but her strict morals wouldn’t have let her lie outright.

“And you’re forgetting,” Montgomery continued. “That was sixteen years ago. He’s only recently been able to make anything close to the human form. And you’ve seen them. They look abnormal.” His eyes glowed. “You look . . . perfect.”

I tried hard not to confuse the reason we were alone in my bedroom. “But there are anomalies,” I said. My hands drifted to the row of buttons at the back of my dress that hid the puckered scar. “Like Jaguar. You said Father did something to his brain that he hasn’t been able to replicate. Couldn’t the same thing have happened to me? A fluke?”

Montgomery touched a calloused hand to my cheek. Outside, lightning cracked. The smell of coming rain swelled. “This is nonsense, Juliet. You’d at least have scars. But you’re beautiful.”

His thumb brushed my burning skin. The tops of my breasts rose and fell quickly beneath the dress’s tight bodice.

“That’s just it.” I swallowed, trying to keep my reason. “I do have scars.”

The wind blew in the first drops of rain, and I pulled him deeper into the corner away from the window. “You know his work better than anyone,” I said, breathless. My fingers drifted to the fabric covering the base of my spine. “I have a scar on my back from surgery. He says I was born with a spinal deformity. I can’t help but think . . .”