Page 98 of Angelika Frankenstein Makes Her Match
It was at this exact moment that the front door banged open. Huffing, puffing, a shirtless Victor Frankenstein appeared, gleaming in sweat. An apple was in his hand.
“What are you doing up so early?” Angelika was aghast. “Where is your shirt?”
“I’ve got nothing but early mornings in my future; I am adapting myself in advance.” Victor leaned in the doorway and raised his eyebrows in greeting at Christopher, carelessly ignoring the other two visitors. He bit his apple and spoke with his mouth full. “Do you ever run for fitness, Chris? We could go together.”
Arlo wasn’t invited. He understood why. He still felt sad.
“We are here on something serious, Victor,” Christopher replied after a shocked laugh, masked as a cough. “Perhaps you ought to take a seat, so I may introduce your guests and we can explain it.”
“After a quick wash,” Angelika pleaded wearily, knowing when she was beaten. “Please, Victor, you absolutely stink.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
This feels a little extreme,” Victor said from above as Arlo shoveled dirt up beside his boots. “I can’t believe you, of all people, agreed to this, Chris.”
“It was his idea,” Christopher pointed out, putting his shovel into the ground and leaning on it. “And if it puts this nonsense to rest, then I’m all for it.” He resumed digging, but his pace was much slower than his first couple of hours when he’d glanced up at his beautiful onlooker with every repetition.
Arlo wasthis closeto knocking him on the back of his blond head and reusing the grave.
“How are you feeling?” Angelika asked Arlo from her seat beside the headstone.
She had tasked a clerk to bring her a chair as though spectatorship was to be reasonably expected, and she sat on the fine mahogany piece under a dome of night sky that bore ribbons of sunset pink. She looked every bit the fairy queen, seated beneath the yew tree clasping around her. She had dressed in a midnight-black gown, beaded with so many jet stones that she sparkled brighter than the cosmos. Beneath the skirts were long black boots, laced up to the knees.
Arlo decided he’d leave those boots laced up when he undressed her later.
“Are you all right?” Angelika prompted him. “You look a little pale.”
Arlo’s physical exhaustion, the pain that shimmered across his skin to grind deep into his joints, his icy-dead hands, the astonishing mental toll it took to dig beneath a marble stone bearing one’s own name and birthday... none of that interested him now, because Angelika smiled down at him. A star streaked across the sky above her.
His emotions overflowed.
“Angelika, no woman is as beautiful as you.” Arlo knew this to be absolute truth, because he now had every memory his brain had decided to retain, from dropped-corncob moments to the life-altering losses of his grandparents and Michael. Waist deep in his grave, he leaned an elbow on the edge and made a memory of this moment. “I love you so much.”
In reply, she cooed and leaned down to cup his chin in her palm.
“Keep digging, Sir Resurrection,” Christopher interjected in a complaining tone.
“Did you mention our news to the commander, my love?” Recharged, Arlo sank his shovel into the ground and his news like a dagger into Christopher’s heart. “I asked Angelika to marry me, and she said yes most emphatically. I am sure you are very happy for us.”
He hoisted both soil and broken heart at Angelika’s feet, with an unholy sense of retribution.
Christopher stood with a half-lifted shovel of dirt, shocked to his core, but before he could say anything, a thin voice urged, “Please, delay any thought of such a thing until we understand what has gone on here.”
It was Father Porter at the foot of the grave, inspecting their progress. If he was worried he would be found out for selling bodies to the morgue, he betrayed nothing. It was the same blithe expression Angelika and Victor wore. Wealth gave a person a certain inner strength. Perhaps he had no part in it? Mr. Thimms had not stopped pacing the path since their arrival.
Father Porter pursed his mouth at the scene. “Are you quite sure you would not like to wait in my office, Miss Frankenstein?”
“Quite sure,” she replied. “It is a fine night to watch muscular men dig a hole.”
“In that case, I’ll take a turn,” Victor said with a grin, and put a hand down to Arlo, pulling him out of the hole. It was an odd thing, volunteering to entertain his own sister, since Lizzie was at home with instructions to rest herself. But as Arlo regained his balance and straightened up, Victor whispered, “You look like you’re about to faint. Rest yourself. Drink.”
Father Porter was at Arlo’s elbow with remarkable speed. “I really do wish we could speak privately.”
“There’s no need,” Arlo replied, wiping his brow with his forearm, trying not to weave on the spot. Dizziness was giving the edges of his vision a swirling effect. Below, Victor and an exhausted Christopher were making a competition of it; dirt was flipping out faster and faster. “All will be revealed momentarily, and we will deal with the consequences then. We will open the casket, and either Arlo Northcott is there, or he is not.”
Standing against the wall of the church, the magistrate heard this statement and nodded. “It’s nonsense, but if it’s what it takes.”
Father Porter’s eerie light eyes were intense on Arlo’s face. “You have no memory of me?”
