Shade by Merrie Destefano

Author:Merrie Destefano [Destefano, Merrie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ruby Slippers Press
Published: 2018-05-01T05:00:00+00:00

Nine

The room was brighter than any I’d been in before, with four oil lamps burning and a full fire crackling in the hearth. A welcoming heat rolled over me and I removed my cloak, watching John as he stared down at the furry limbs spread across the table. They were from different animals, one hind leg was longer than the others and had silver fur, while the other legs were a dark grey; the torso was barrel-chested and wide and covered with black fur. I glanced in the nearby wheelbarrow and noticed that, in the leftover pieces, all of the heads save one had been crushed.

John reached into the barrow and drew out the one head that was still intact, jaws swinging open as he carried it to the table. I recognized it immediately. This head had landed at my feet when I opened the front door.

I stepped back in horror, afraid its jaws were moving of its own accord.

“Don’t worry, Mary,” John said. “It’s only a reflex. Before long, the joints will stiffen, but for now they move easily. The beast is dead. But watch this.”

He took a stick and prodded one of the wolf’s legs. It flinched, as if trying to get away from the stick.

“What’s happening?” I asked.

“I’ve never seen this before, except when applying an electrical current to dead frogs—like the work done by Dr. James Lind—but this is why I came here. For years, I’ve been looking for the right place, the right circumstances. I thought if I got to a crime scene in time, I might discover it, but I never did. Then I heard about how every year, there were mysterious violent deaths here, in the mountains surrounding Lake Geneva, and I heard that sometimes the dead bodies that were left behind weren’t fully dead.”

He lifted his head to look at me, his dark eyes so deep that I worried I could get lost in them.

“I don’t understand. How can something be dead, but not fully dead?” I asked.

“I don’t know. But the tales sounded so close to what Luigi Galvani calls animal electricity, that I had to explore them. I convinced Byron to come here, when he decided to leave England. He knew some of the local folklore, so he thought this might be an intriguing intellectual adventure.” John watched me, his gaze moving from my eyes to my mouth, then back. “But I didn’t know he was going to invite you or Claire. I would never have willingly brought either of you to a place that might be dangerous.”

“I’m not afraid,” I told him, realizing it was true. “I don’t fully understand these theories, but I’d like to know more.”

He smiled and, for an instant, the room seemed even brighter. There was a childlike innocence in his expression that I’d never noticed before. Perhaps he’d been hiding it from me, just like I had tried to hide my bouts of melancholy from others.

“You were right when you said I was about

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