The Collectors' Society 01 (22 page)

“There is no such thing as coincidence,” the Caterpillar used to tell me. “Only truth.”

“Is it normal to have so many cameras in a bookshop?”

He shakes his head. “For a used bookshop, it’s suspicious, right?”

Why did you kiss me?
is on the tip of my tongue. What I actually say is, “We’ll need to disable the cameras when we sneak in next.”

A small grin curves his mouth. “Listen to you and your Twenty-First-Century talk.
Disable the cameras
. Wendy would weep in joy if she could hear you now.”

Like an addict, I want to keep up the banter between us, so I ask, “What’s her story, anyway? She’s obsessed with all her gadgets.”

When his lower lip sucks in between his teeth, I’m spellbound. “You ought to ask her that.”

“Is it a secret?”

He rubs his chin alongside his shoulder. “No. Of course not. It’s just, some people in the Society are touchy when it comes to their origins. Wendy is one of them.”

“Is her story bad?”

“She’s not from a story, and that’s the problem.”

I’m confused.

“A Timeline, yes. But she was never a character in a book. Her great-great-great grandmother was.” He kicks at a plastic cup on the ground. “Her name is actually Gwendolyn, and I’m told that, growing up, everyone called her Gwen.”

“Why the change?”

“To make a long story short, she’s been obsessed with her family history for as long as she can remember.”

“Which is?”

I can’t tell if he’s amused or mildly disgusted when he says, “There was this . . . guy, for lack of a better word, who used to show up and take the women in her family to a magical island for like an extended vacation. Wendy’s family died when she was five, though, and I guess because she moved into an orphanage, he never came for her.”

“So she was recruited instead?”

He shakes his head. “Not like a lot of us, no. 1911BAR-PW’s catalyst was a family heirloom of hers, and she busted the team that was sent in to collect it. Somehow, she weaseled the truth out of them and then insisted on coming back to New York. She was young then, maybe ten? Already great with technology, thanks to one of the nuns at the orphanage she lived at.”

“So, if she’s Gwendolyn, how’d she become Wendy?”

“Wendy was her great-great-great grandmother’s name.”

“Why is she resentful about not being from a book? Personally, I find it appalling there are storybooks out there that spill my secrets.”

He shrugs. “You’d have to ask her about that one.”

“Van Brunt didn’t adopt her?”

“No. She didn’t want to be adopted. Said Peter would never find her if her name was different—even though she technically bears her father’s surname, not her mother’s. She even insisted everyone call her Darling. It’s kind of weird, to be honest. But it makes her happy, so we do.”

“Who is Peter?”

“The guy who—”

Right. I finish up for him. “Kidnaps the ladies of her family.”

Goose pimples explode up and down my arms when he laughs quietly at this. “Well, if you put it
that
way . . .”

A smile of my own eases across my face. Why is Finn Van Brunt so difficult to resist?

I take a deep breath and say something I told myself I wasn’t going to let myself do again. I tell him, “I want to trust you.”

He takes it the wrong way, though. “But you don’t.”

“But I want to.” I take a step closer, my heart upon my sleeve. “And I want you to trust me.”

He squints into the fading sunlight. Straightens from his position against the wall. There’s a vulnerability there that he hasn’t let me see before, one that tugs at strings I’d thought I’d clipped.

“Besides,” I murmur, “aren’t you all telling me that it’s the intent that counts?”

A
DOOR SLAMS, ONLY to be followed by a string of curse words and stomping feet.

“God, these walls are thin. Popcorn?”

I stare at Mary as she passes over a bright-red bowl filled with white, popped kernels fresh from the microwave. “I thought Finn was out tonight.”

“Finn doesn’t slam doors or typically shout like a drunk sailor. That’s Victor.” She grabs a handful of the treat she’s fixed us. “Door slamming is par for the course when he knows he’s in the doghouse.”

Mary and Victor arrived ahead of schedule, just hours after Finn and I returned from our visit to the Ex Libris Bookstore. Since then, she’s declared the next pair of days
girl time
and has instructed our male counterparts to stay away unless they’re prepared to binge watch what she calls rom-coms, go dancing at something called eighties clubs, and imbibe in terrifying sounding concoctions that go by
frou-frou
drinks.

This announcement came as we all stood outside our respective flat doors in the hallway, each ready to either head inside or leave. Congregations like this are becoming increasingly common, leaving me feeling as if our living arrangements are more akin to boarding school than anything else. “Alice needs to know that there’s more to life than work. You’re doing a piss-poor job of that, Finn.”

Not that he needed my help, but I tried to defend my partner. “He—”

Mary wasn’t listening, though. She’d already wheeled around to Victor, snapping, “It’ll be the perfect time for you to think about your actions.”

The poor doctor looked like a startled yet mournful puppy dog. “But—”

She was already back to Finn, a hint of a sneer twisting her lips. “Don’t you have somewhere to be already?”

Finn, for his part, looked utterly bored and unwilling to engage in her verbal sparring match.

“Mary,” Victor protested, “this is between us. Finn hasn’t done anything, and you know it. You don’t need to—”

She took hold of my doorknob. “Like he’s innocent.” And then, before another thing could be said, she flung herself through my door, slamming it so hard behind her that the ground beneath our feet trembled.

Um . . .

“What the hell happened this time?” Finn asked his brother.

Victor kicked at the rug below our feet. “Nothing. She’s blowing things out of proportion.”

“Nothing?” My partner was incredulous. “Mary doesn’t lose her shit like that over
nothing.”

“She bloody well did this time, okay? And I don’t want to talk about it. Stop breathing down my neck already!” Victor then turned around and flung himself through his door, slamming it twice as hard as Mary.

I asked the only other person remaining in the hallway, “Do I even want to know?”

From inside my flat, Mary bellowed my name.

Finn rolled his eyes. “Either Victor flirted with another woman, failed to live up to some expectation she didn’t explain to him, or he did something he’d promised Mary he wasn’t going to do.”

“Like what?”

His eyes had flitted toward his brother’s door. I waited for an explanation, but none came. Instead, Finn said, “Get used to the drama. Those two . . .” He shook his head. “It’s just always like this. It’s like high school, only worse. You think after all the years they’ve been together, all this would stop. Just try to keep your head down and not get stuck in the middle.”

“Apparently,” I said dryly, “I’ll be squarely in between, in the midst of
girl time
.” I’d paused. “Whatever that is.”

Said with utter seriousness, “Good luck with that.”

He was dressed nicely, a pressed shirt and well-fitting jeans, with a pair of thick leather and metal cuffs ringing each wrist. “Are you going out?”

My question made him uneasy, suddenly so. “Yeah.”

And then I was uneasy, because uneasiness was an unfamiliar feeling between us. “Oh. Yes. Of course. I’m keeping you, naturally.”

“No—not keeping, it’s just . . .” He ran his fingers through his golden-brown hair. “I promised I’d be there at nine, and it’s already eight thirty, and . . .”

And I was fixated on his mouth, remembering how it felt pressed even for the tiniest of moments against my cheek. My face flamed. I nodded like a Rocking-horse-fly gone wild. “Of course. Right. Nobody likes being late. I mean, some, yes, but not you. Naturally. Right?”

I needed to crawl under a rock. Or at least walk away with my head held high.

“Yeah, no. I . . .” He glanced over my shoulder, a hand cupping the back of his neck. “Um, so I should . . .” A hand wove between us. “Get going. So I’m not late or anything.”

Good God, did he look handsome just then. And good God, did I sound like a mimsy nincompoop.

“ALICE!”

My back hit the flat door. “Have a good night then. I’m going to just . . .” I tapped the wood. “Go have girl time, whatever that is.”

I’d been reduced to regurgitating gibberish.

“ALICE!”

When he walked away, I wondered where the blazes all of that had just come from. And now I’m going on the second night of girl time with Mary, watching some movie about people meeting on the top of a building, and she’s throwing popcorn at the screen and yelling about the perceived idiocy of the couple.

I’ve come to like her immensely, but she’s been a bear all day. Perhaps I’m not cut out for
girl time
after all.

The moment my eyes drift shut, she grabs the remote control and turns the movie off. “That’s it. Let’s go out.”

A quick glance at a nearby clock shows it’s almost eleven o’clock in the evening. “Now?”

She claps her hands. “Now. I know the perfect place. Go get changed—no, not in those sack dresses you favor, but in something sexy.”

“I’m really rather tired, and—”

“And, you’re not in an insane asylum any longer. Let’s go out. You’re single. I’m . . .” She swallows hard. “Why shouldn’t we have fun?”

“Sleep is fun,” I assure her.

“I’m closing in on thirty!”

Girl time, I’m also learning, can be emotionally exhausting and more than a bit confusing.

She’s pacing, her bare feet slapping against the wood floor. “I’m almost thirty years old, and Victor can’t put a bloody ring on my finger!”

Now I feel like an idiot, because I really should have known this would have cycled back to Victor. I knew they were romantically attached, but had no idea marriage was on the table. “Perhaps you two ought to talk. It’s obvious—”

“Talk?” she scoffs. “No. He’s had his chance to talk. All I hear is how it would be unfair to saddle me with his, and I quote, ‘obscenely heavy baggage.’ How he loves me too much to even risk it. I mean, shit, Alice. How much can a lady take before she simply lets go?”

I scratch my head, unsure as what to do. When I was younger, my sister and I weren’t particularly close and all of my playmates tended to be boys. After my first pair of go arounds in Wonderland, I was ostracized by many for my fanciful tales. And then, in my subsequent years in Wonderland, I was too wrapped up in all of my own personal drama to cultivate the kind of relationships that I think Mary is seeking from me.

My confidants were few. My secret holder was singular. And these are not the sort of conversations we ever indulged in. Plus, as I’ve discovered, a lady can take a whole lot before she must let go.

“Baggage?”

Mary points at me. “How much do you know about Victor?”

Is she sincere in her request? I’m not so sure until she prompts me with an impatient wave of her hand. So I recite, “He’s a doctor, was adopted by Van Brunt when he was young, has a surname that is recognizable.” I shrug. “That’s it, to be honest.”

She nods grimly. “Exactly.”

I sigh and settle back onto the couch. “Mary, I really don’t understand where you’re going with this.”

“His original name. Frankenstein. This is what I’m talking about! It’s always about that bloody name.” She tugs at her hair and lets out a tiny, muted scream. “Like I judge him on it. Like any of us judge him. He thinks we do, you know. You don’t, do you?”

“I can safely say I don’t, as I have no clue what you’re talking about.”

She sinks onto the couch next to me as I pour us both cups of tea. “I know. I’m sorry. Victor’s biological father was a mad scientist.” She spins a finger around her ear. “A total crazy person.” A wince follows this. “Sorry.”

I shrug. I’m not offended.

“He . . .” She glances toward the hallway that leads to my front door. When she speaks, her voice is hushed. “His father cut up dead people and sewed them together so he could bring them back to life. Made a murderous monster, one that wanted to kill him in return.”

I choke on the sip of tea I’ve just taken. Mary smacks me on the back until I stop coughing.

“The book that tells his story is one of the most famous horror stories ever told. There are countless movies, books, television shows that feature the monster and even his father.”

I don’t even know what to say, I’m so horrified.

“Victor isn’t in the book, by the way. Not even referenced, because he’s one of those
in-betweener-slash-intent
events the Librarian always prattles on about. He was,” her voice lowers even further, “the product of a night of comfort with a lady of the night before Frankenstein Senior’s eventual death. The Society found him as a toddler and brought him back. Brom raised him since then, so it’s not even like he knew his biological father. But he believes everyone is just waiting for him to follow his father’s footsteps.” She sighs, fingers lacing tightly across her knees. “The thing is, it’s like Victor’s waiting to go bonkers. Like he thinks it’s inevitable he’s inherited his father’s inclination toward corpse mutilation. That’s stupid, right?”