The middle triplet’s face was a blank canvas. Thin membrane stretched across the plane where eyes should have been. Its skin was mottled with a network of purple veins.
The baby on the right had no mouth and stared out at the world through a single engorged eye, directly in the center of its face. The pupil was oblong, like a goat or sheep. Its upper appendages ended in stumps, more flipper than arm.
I knew these babies, these things, were dead, but a trick of the light played over the cyclops’s eye and I could have sworn it focused upon me.
Wordlessly, I backed away from the jar, from the monsters it contained, and stumbled into Viktor’s armchair. Mid-sip, the pungent alcohol sloshed down his chest, staining his shirt the same sickly hue as the pickled babies.
“Ver—”
His protest ended as I sank my fingers into his shoulder, nodding toward the shelves.
“You might be mad about being exiled away to Marchioly House,” I said, drawing Julien’s attention from the dossiers. “But at least you didn’t end up in a glass jar.”
Viktor sprang from his seat, eyes narrowed as he approached the bookcase.
There were dozens of those jars on the shelves, some nestled in sets of three, other larger ones tucked between leather-bound volumes, and while I had no desire to examine them further, I would have staked my life each contained the remains of an experiment.
Like moths to a flame, the boys were drawn in, turning jar after jar round as they looked through their cursed half siblings. I found my remaining absinthe and downed the tumbler in one hasty, trembling gulp. It was a poor choice. My bloodstream boiled and every time I shut my eyes, I saw the gaping mouth, the sightless face, those rounded limbs.
“Versia’s stars,” Viktor whispered, hoisting a specimen up. “Are those…fronds?”
“Fronds?” I whispered. “Like…like a fern?”
Viktor held the jar out and my stomach flipped over as I caught sight of the figure within.
“I’ve seen that baby before,” I admitted, my voice cracking as hot bile threatened to slosh up my throat. “That’s one of Constance’s.”
I gnawed at the inside of my cheek, struggling to put together the bits and pieces of everything I’d guessed at and weighing them against what I actually knew.
And it didn’t make sense.
Constance had been viciously murdered. Such an attack wasn’t something that could have been easily cleared away. It was laughable to imagine Dauphine in the secret tunnel, on her hands and knees, cleaning up the bloody aftermath, dragging Constance’s body out of the manor to toss within a grave she’d dug herself.
And the babies.
If Dauphine had killed Constance, she would have undoubtedly gone after the children as well, wanting to make it appear as if Gerard’s mistress had simply taken her children and fled.
But the babies were here.
In Gerard’s study.
Here, preserved for further study and speculation. To be analyzed and puzzled over.
By Gerard.
“Ver?” Viktor asked. “Are you all right?”
Slowly, I shook my head. “Gerard killed her,” I murmured, my mouth feeling impossibly dry. “Constance. He killed her and them.” I gestured to the jars lining the bottom shelf. “Those babies weren’t like the others… Look how big their jars are. They’d been born. They were alive. Until…” My throat caught and the words wouldn’t come.
Viktor paled, looking up at all of the other jars. “Where do you suppose all the other mothers are now?”
“The gardens,” I guessed. “Buried somewhere in those rose mounds.”
“He needs to pay,” Julien murmured quietly, tracing his fingers along the lip of a jar. The formaldehyde within was blessedly too murky to see through. “We have enough evidence, more than enough evidence. The diary…these babies…whatever is buried out in the mounds…We need to go to the authorities and let them deal with it all. Deal with him.”
Viktor nodded, uncharacteristically subdued.
“But…” I stopped, my head roiling. “But you can’t…”
Both brothers’ eyes fell upon me.
“You’re not about to justify all this, are you, Ver?” Viktor asked sharply, at my side in a flash. He held up Constance’s baby. The little tendrilled arms swayed in the sloshing liquid.
“No, of course not! Gerard absolutely needs to be held accountable—he needs to be stopped—but…but before you do that, before you tell anyone else, we need to tell Alex,” I decided firmly, blinking hard to keep the room from spinning. “He needs to know this. To know about you and Julien. To know everything Gerard has done. Alex deserves to hear it from us first.”
The boys studied each other and I had the uncomfortably distinct impression they were speaking to one another without words.
“Fine,” Viktor spoke first. “But somewhere outside the house. You never know who could be listening in.”
“Of course…What do we do with all this?” I asked, glancing at the papers, the diary, the shards of glass in the fireplace.
“I’m taking the documents with us,” Julien decided, crossing back to the desk. “I want to make sure we’ve not missed anything.”
I pushed the false bookcase over, blessedly covering the specimens, then looked around, trying to decide the best way to help. I felt adrift, like a forgotten fishing net, tossed about on waves and gathering up sea debris until the weight of everything pulled me under to a silty burial. I longed to crash into bed but knew sleep was unlikely to come.
I feared I’d never be able to sleep again.
Before Viktor put the absinthe bottle back into the hidden cache, he spit into it with sullen spite. “Gods, why did I drink so much?”
“I’ve been wondering the same thing myself, brother,” Julien said, straightening the papers in an ordered pile. “You’ve no idea how it feels to be living with either of your thoughts right now. It’s like wading through waist-high shit.”
Viktor’s lips stretched into a deeply amused, wicked smile. “Hearing you say that will be worth tomorrow’s hangover, I’m sure.”
Their easy banter made me think of my own sisters and I was struck by a sudden longing for them.
Mercy, Honor, Annaleigh.
Even Camille.
Especially Camille.
My throat swelled and I realized I was very close to tears. Julien noticed immediately and I caught the pained look he shot Viktor, clearly beseeching for an intervention. I wiped my face, quickly trying to push the overwhelming thoughts aside. “Gerard said he had messages from my sisters here.” I sniffed. “Since we’re taking everything else, could I get those as well?”
The desk was bare, save for the fountain pens lined up at the side, a trio of fanatical tidiness. Julien pulled open the middle drawer and rummaged for a moment. “Here,” he said, foisting a stack of correspondence toward me.
I took it, puzzled. There were far more than the three RSVPs Gerard had mentioned.
“He’s been keeping mail from me,” I realized, flipping through the stack. There were envelopes written out in Mercy’s swirling cursive, Honor’s blocky lettering, Annaleigh’s careful printing, and even Camille’s copperplate.