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they’re hiding something. I can smell it.”
    â€œDoes it smell like musty old clothes?” I tried to lighten the mood again. “Because that’s just the carpets.”
    He tensed, not in the mood for joking.
    â€œThis isn’t London,” I said, more seriously this time. “Elizabeth clearly lets them run wild, and they’ve no idea what to do with us. You saw the disdainful look Valentina gave Lucy, like we’d die without our tea and crumpets.” I laid a hand on his chest, toying with his top button. “I suspect she’s just jealous of our nice clothes and fancy address in the city.”
    For a moment we stood mirrored on either side of the door while the wind whistled outside. His jaw tensed, and he stepped back so my hand fell. “We don’t have a fancy address anymore. We can never return to London, not since you murdered three men.”
    I blinked. The fire crackled, heat trying to push us even farther apart, and my heartbeat sped up. “You know I had no choice. I didn’t want to do it.”
    â€œThat isn’t what you said at the time. I could see in your eyes how badly you wanted to kill Inspector Newcastle. You burned him alive .” He paused, breathing heavily, arms braced on either side of the door. I could only gape, wanting to deny the accusation but not quite able to. “Sometimes you remind me so much of your father, it’s frightening.”
    The sting in his words settled into the curtains andbedspread like the smell of chimney smoke, and just as impossible to get rid of. “It was better than letting them use Father’s research,” I said in my defense. “They would have hurt so many more people. Father would have helped them, not stopped them.”
    He cursed under his breath. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”
    I placed my hand on my forehead, trying to calm the blood searing in my veins. “No. Don’t apologize. We said we’d always be honest with each other. And if I’m being honest with you, I think you should be thankful we have a roof over our heads and walls around us, and stop questioning Elizabeth’s generosity. There’s nothing wrong with these people, and there’s nothing wrong with me.”
    I closed the door in his face, twisted the key, and leaned my back against it. He knocked and called to me, but I didn’t answer. I crawled into bed and thought about Montgomery’s words. It was true that I’d been obsessed with bringing the water-tank creatures to life, even knowing the bloodshed that would follow. Maybe the fortune-teller was right. Reading the future was nonsense, but there was a grain of truth in how his predictions had made me feel—as though escaping Father was impossible, even in death. Maybe, just maybe, I should stop trying so hard to fight it.

FIVE
    T HAT NIGHT , I DREAMED I was in the professor’s house on Dumbarton Street, in the cellar where we’d kept the Beast locked away. I descended the stairs slowly, listening for the tap-tap-tap of claws on the stone floor. When I faced the barred cellar door, though, no yellow eyes met mine. Tropical warmth and the smell of the sea came instead. I was back on Father’s island, ankle deep in the surf, watching the volcano’s plume ascend into a cloudless sky.
    â€œYou’re engaged to him,” a voice said from behind me. “Yet you know so little about him.”
    The Beast emerged from among the palms. I’d only ever seen the Beast at night, or cast in shadows. In sunlight he looked more like Edward. Just an ordinary young man—except for his golden yellow eyes.
    â€œMontgomery and I grew up together,” I said. “I know him better than anyone.”
    â€œAnd yet he’s keeping secrets from you.” The Beast stopped a few feet away from me, smelling both sweet andbitter, like the blood-soaked plumeria flowers he’d left for me in