“I don’t care about a green stone.” Angelika was out of tears. There was little liquid left in her body, but she allowed Mary to lift her up on the pillows to take a sip from a cup. “I don’t tell people things in time. I say things in the wrong order, or assume that people know. The emerald is yours, and I was making you a cottage.”
“I know. Adam told me.”
Under the blankets, Angelika slipped her hand into Arlo’s icy palm. “How is Adam?”
“He will follow Will in a few days, I think.” The old woman was brisk, but Angelika could see a glassiness in her eyes. “We did our best, miss.”
“I didn’t.” Even as she said it, Angelika realized it wasn’t true. “No, actually, I did all I could.”
“Did you tell him, then?” Mary nodded at Arlo. “You said you don’t tell people things in time. Did you tell him everything you needed to?”
Angelika nodded. A sensation began to unfold in her chest: an easing of a tightness she had held and nurtured for days. “I did tell him, Mary. From the minute I brought him back that first time, I told him that I loved him, in different ways, and he knew it.”
“Then you have done well, and it is time to lay him down.” Mary cupped a hand on Angelika’s cheek, just like she used to do when she was a child. “You will be all right. I’m here now. There’s nothing to be afraid of.” She glanced up, and her characteristic fierce frown formed. “Get that pig out of here.”
“Mary. Jolly good, we may need a third hand for this.” Victor stumbled into the room, looking every inch as exhausted as his sister. Belladonna was indeed in the doorway behind him. He set a tray of implements on the bed, where they slid around and clanged. “Oh, holy hell,” Victor cursed, putting a hand into his hair.
Angelika’s heart squeezed in sympathy. “Vic. It’s time.”
“Yes, exactly. I’ve only just gotten this finished now.” He held up a long, strange strip of what appeared to be flesh. “I can’t sew half as well as you, and I have failed so many times, but I think this is the one.” He gave Lizzie a kiss on the cheek when she came to his side. “Hello, Lizzie. We are going to give him one more turn around the mortal maypole.”
Angelika shook her head. “Listen to me. It’s time to let him go. It’s time to just . . . pray. We will be with him as he leaves, and we will let him rest in peace.”
“You can do that,” Victor said, and then held up a thick sewing needle. “But you got me thinking, Jelly. You said you’re connected at a blood level. That’s what he needs. Not broth, not prayer. Blood. Do you want it to be me or you?”
Angelika lifted herself up onto her elbows with difficulty. “You’ve made a tube?”
“Out of a rabbit’s intestine,” Victor said. “The thinnest, most impossible thing to sew. I have gone through an absolute pile of them. So many times I almost came in here and asked you to do it. And that’s when I knew how much I have taken you for granted in everything I have ever done.” He was unbuttoning his shirt, but Angelika stopped him.
“Me.”
Victor assessed his sister. “You don’t look so good.”
“It has to be me.” The press of the needle into the bend of her elbow was so painful that she shouted, and beside her, Arlo’s body twitched. They all watched with morbid fascination as the blood began to leak, spurt, and then fill the tube. Lizzie croaked. Mary fainted onto the bed. Angelika winced. “Wait, we should have put down a muslin cloth. Blood is so hard to soak out of linen.”
But then the Frankensteins did not notice anything except the neat squiggle of red that charted a course across the bed, captured in a membrane thinner than an eyelash. One wrong stitch would undo it all, but Angelika saw that her brother had applied himself thoroughly.
“You always said you cannot sew,” she said to him. “But you have done well. Whatever happens next, thank you for trying. I will never forget it.”
“This is the only tube that I managed to completely suture, and I don’t think I can reuse it. So you are going to have to hold on tight, Jelly. I just put this into him here.” Victor plunged the other needle into Arlo’s vein with detached calm. “And we wait. And we pray.” He held his sister’s gaze and put out his hand to her. “I will pray with you, my beloved sister.”
Mary was revived, Lizzie helped her into the armchair, and they both watched the impossible.