Her Dark Curiosity. Megan Shepherd

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      9

      The fire stopped crackling. The steam froze in the air. Everything had drifted into a far-off place, shifting into a colorless world like a fading photograph.

      Everything but Edward.

      Jakyll, I thought. Another false name, just like the other name he’d created – Edward Prince, or rather Prince Edward, a name borrowed from the pages of Shakespeare. Edward didn’t have a given name since he’d never truly been born, but made in a laboratory out of a handful of animal parts. Fox. Heron. Jackal. Of course – that was the source of his false name, a testament to his darker animal side.

      The jackal side.

      He had changed in the months since I’d seen him. Though the scar under his left eye still marred his face, his features had sharpened in a way that gave him a dramatic, brooding look. His eyes seemed a darker shade of brown – very nearly black – as did his hair. The most shocking change, however, was his size. Never a large young man, he now stood several inches above me and seemed to have put on a stone of muscle.

      No wonder Lucy was so taken with him.

      I gradually became aware that the room had gone silent and that Aunt Edith and Lucy stared at me expectantly. Edward’s outstretched hand, no longer skeletal but strong, powerful, hiding six-inch-long claws, awaited my own.

      I had to make a choice. I could scream. I could tell Lucy and her aunt everything, accuse Edward of being the Wolf of Whitechapel, throw the boiling tea in his face to blind him, and run him through with the poker.

      But the hand extended to me wasn’t that of a monster. Edward was split into two selves that shared the same body: one a sharp-clawed monster, the other a tortured young man who wanted nothing more than to be free from his curse. I thought of the little white flower tinged with blood I’d pressed into my journal. A gift from this young man before me, who had once loved me madly.

      Well, whatever Edward had felt, it didn’t matter. Everything had changed when I walked into this parlor to discover Edward had involved Lucy in this. He might not intend to harm her, but the Beast could have other plans.

      Edward’s throat constricted as he swallowed. I wondered, fleetingly, if he was as thrown off balance by seeing me as I was seeing him.

      ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr Jakyll,’ I said at last.

      Lucy flopped onto the sofa and reached for her tea. Aunt Edith might have greeted me; I wasn’t sure. If she had, it had been brief and normal, just as though today was any other day and this was any other tea. But it wasn’t any other day. And this wasn’t any young man.

      Clara bustled in with a tray of gingerbread cakes. ‘Pardon me, miss,’ she said with a grin, shuffling around me.

      I slowly sank onto the sofa next to Lucy, feeling it first with my hands to make sure I wouldn’t miss the seat. Edward sat directly across from me in a dark green velvet chair. My head couldn’t reconcile his presence with Clara’s smile, Lucy’s carefree posture, the sunlight pouring in from the window.

      None of them knew they were having tea with the Wolf of Whitechapel.

      ‘Juliet’s traveled the world as well,’ Lucy said to Edward, throwing her arm casually on the sofa back. ‘Henry’s been all over, knows about practically every country in the world, but you’ll have to forgive him if his customs are strange. He’s from Finland, you know.’

      I raised an eyebrow. ‘Finland.’

      ‘Oh, I couldn’t bear it,’ Aunt Edith said, brushing a crumb off her dress. ‘All that cold year-round.’

      I stared at them as though they spoke a foreign language. Lucy reached for another gingerbread cake and Aunt Edith made a disapproving cough in her throat.

      My eyes trailed back to Edward. The last time I’d seen him, blood was pooling beneath his head into fresh straw. Why had I stopped Montgomery from slicing his throat? I wasn’t sure, but it might have had something to do with the look on his face now, somehow innocent despite all his hands had done.