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The reek of blood and formaldehyde hits Erina the moment she opens the door. At night, she has stopped noticing it, too busy with her work, but when she comes back home it always shocks her. She will have to air the house later.
The stench gets stronger when she enters the sitting room. The curtains are drawn, as always; it is difficult to make out details, but she can see that the floor is strewn with papers and bottles. Just as she walks past the entrance, a small glint of metal catches her eye and she stops. A shiver runs down her spine. She walks into the room, careful not to step on anything, and leans down to pick up the lancet. She holds it up and inspects it. Thankfully, it looks clean, and she sighs with relief.
On the way out of the room she almost trips on a bottle.
Some nights, before Dio wakes up, she takes Jonathan with her down to the cellar, locks the door and bars it. There is always some meat in the kitchen, so he should be able to take care of himself for a few hours.
This is one of these nights. After what happened yesterday at the cemetery, she doesn’t want to see his face. She sets Jonathan on the table, close enough to be able to look at him, but not close enough that she would risk knocking him over.
Eventually she hears banging on the door, but ignores it. Eventually it will stop, Dio gives up more easily these days.
Time and again, Erina ends up working from dusk to dawn. She has her work cut out and knows better than to expect any help. She tries to comfort herself, tells herself that the hours she spent cutting up the bodies taught her a lot. That her work is leading to something. That she knew what she agreed to.
At the hospital, people begin to ask if she’s alright. If her grief is weighting her down. She smiles and dismisses people’s concerns. Everything is well, she can continue working. And so she does: she bandages wounds, delivers babies, and hides surgical needles in her apron when nobody’s looking.
Jonathan hasn’t aged a day. This is, of course, good news. All her efforts would be for naught if they couldn’t preserve him. Erina has seen preserved specimens before, though. Yellow, distorted, shrunken. Their sight is familiar to her now. And yet Jonathan’s skin is still as it was on the day he died, his expression peaceful, his hair floating in the fluid like in clean spring water.
Erina didn’t prepare the solution they keep Jonathan in. Maybe one day she will be brave enough to ask Dio what he’s done.
This corpse is too heavy, and in the rush she didn’t tie the fabric around it properly. She hopes the knots won’t come undone, that the body isn’t so decayed as to fall to pieces.
Dio isn’t paying any attention to that. He carries the corpse on his shoulder and grins, so surely he isn’t paying any attention to the stench, either. Maybe he’s so happy to be outside for once that he will graciously put up with this mild inconvenience. Or maybe he spent enough time among the dead that decay is no different to him from any other smell.
“You needn’t have worried about the guards”, he says after a long while. They are almost home now. “Even if they’d noticed us, killing them would be as easy as swatting a fly.”
“You are not to kill anyone”, she reminds him. They do have a deal, after all. Dio ignores her.
“If you witnessed the power you are so stubbornly rejecting, you would change your mind. You’re damning yourself and Jonathan to a miserable fate, Erina.”
“I won’t allow you to kill anyone”, she says, her voice louder and sharper.
Dio laughs. It’s ugly, like a dog’s bark.
She often feels like she’s holding a rabid dog on a weak, frayed leash that threatens to snap at any moment. That if she drops her guard for a second, he will kill her, like he threatens to.
Other times she knows he needs her and that she’s safe for as long as she’s useful. If he figured out a way to accomplish his goals without her, their truce would be over.
So she lies to him. She keeps him away from her experiments, doesn’t allow him to touch her tools. She invents a code to write notes in.
He may still kill her, but this way he will never have Jonathan.
One evening, Dio comes down to the cellar while Erina is there, despite the fact that he’s been avoiding her for a week. She glances up, but when he doesn’t acknowledge her presence, she returns to her work. Muscle tissue is a difficult little thing, she must give it her undivided attention.
“I understand that there are professionals you could hire”, he says after a moment. She looks up again and sees that he’s standing next to the shelves with jars, his back turned to her. “If you made use of their services, it would save us time.”
She puts her tools away and straightens her back.
“This is out of the question. I couldn’t possibly afford to do this,” she says, fixing her gaze at the back of his head, “even if I made you go hungry for weeks. I’ve inquired about these services before. The prices are ridiculous.” She pauses and looks around the room. The floor really needs to be cleaned soon.
“Besides,” she resumes, “even if I could afford them, I couldn’t trust them.”
“You don’t trust me, either.”
“I can trust you not to tell anyone.”
Choosing bodies is very difficult.
They have to be very close in age to Jonathan, of a similar built, healthy, in good shape. No broken bones, because neither Erina nor Dio knows if they’ll be able to mend them. No diseases. They had to throw away many ruined lungs and livers.
Most nights their excursions are fruitless. They’ll soon have inspected every possible grave on this cemetery. If this continues, they may have to start looking in other towns and cities.
Jonathan floats in his jar, serene, ignorant of everything she is doing for his sake. Sometimes Erina wants to open his eyes. That would make him look more alive.
Sometimes she allows herself to rest and doesn’t open the cellar door immediately after coming home. Sometimes her hands are clean. Sometimes she sleeps through the whole night. Sometimes she and Dio eat together at the same table.
Sometimes she finds him asleep on the floor, holding tightly onto Jonathan, the door of the safe torn out with the key still in the keyhole. Sometimes she cuts herself with her own lancet. Sometimes the sentries on the graveyards spot them and chase them out. Sometimes she falls asleep sitting by a patient’s bed.
Sometimes the tissues and body parts behave just like she wanted them to. Sometimes she makes visible progress. Sometimes she has to bury a stranger’s arm in the garden.
The garden, at least, is very healthy.
“What will you do”, Erina asks one night, “when we’re done?”
She and Dio are sitting on the floor, surrounded by her drawings and notes. Some of the papers are ruined with spilled wine. No matter. She’ll make new ones. She has all the time in the world.
Dio pours himself another glass and swirls it. Maybe he didn’t hear her, but she isn’t going to ask again. She reaches for the bottle herself.
“Well, it’s not important,” she says and takes a swig. “Whatever you’re planning now, it won’t happen.”
This gets his attention and he turns to look at her. His eyebrows are raised but he still doesn’t say anything.
“When we are finished,” Erina says, drawing out the words, “Jonathan is going to kill you. And I will burn your body.”
Dio turns away from her and laughs, as he always does when Erina threatens him. She never thought she could hate a sound so much.
She’s been hearing other nurses and even doctors whispering about a gang of resurrectionists. All anatomists are denying involvement, of course. Nobody has studied a fresh corpse in years.
One day the morning paper publishes an article about the desecration of a grave of a well-respected man. Erina reads it and curses under her breath. Not now, not when she’s so close.
She’s determined to revive Jonathan, of course, but in a way, she’s also very proud of her work. She’s recreating life from its basic pieces. She might be able to accomplish a miracle.
She might also create a monster. She will cross that bridge when she comes to it.
For now, she ignores the whispers, and tells Dio that next week they have to take a longer trip.
Erina hasn’t touched Jonathan directly since before he died, but Dio has, many times. She pretends she doesn’t notice it anymore, the bloody fingerprints along Jonathan’s jawline, the fact that his hair looks combed. She’s not surprised when she finds Jonathan on the mantelpiece, a poetry book beside him. It’s a wonder how many things she has gotten used to.
She will be done very soon; in a few days, her role will be over. She might die then – they might both die, her and Jonathan. All of her work might have been for nothing.
Erina thinks she should be afraid, but she’s long forgotten how to be. She was afraid on the ship, in the coffin, during the first few weeks in this house, but now she’s calm.
There’s very little left for her to do.
When she lifts Jonathan out of his jar, his skin is just as soft as it was before he died.