“Alexandra?” She and Sandow turned. Professor Belbalm hovered in the doorway, a glass of champagne in her hand. “What’s going on here? Elliot… are you all right?”
“She attacked me!” he cried. “She’s unwell, unstable. Marguerite, call campus security. Get Colin to help me subdue Alex.”
“Of course,” said Belbalm, the compulsion taking hold.
“Professor, wait—” Alex began. She knew it was futile. Under the influence of Starpower, there would be no reasoning with her. “I have a recording. I have proof—”
“Alexandra, I don’t know what’s gotten into you,” Belbalm said with a sad shake of her head. Then she smiled and winked. “Actually, I know exactly what’s gotten into you. Bertram Boyce North.”
“Marguerite!” snapped Sandow. “I told you to—”
“Oh, Elliot, stop.” Professor Belbalm shut the door behind her and turned the lock.
31
Early Spring
Alex stared. It wasn’t possible. How was Belbalm resisting the Starpower? And could she somehow see North?
Belbalm set her champagne on a bookshelf. “Please, won’t you sit, Alex?” she asked with the gracious air of a hostess.
“Marguerite,” said Sandow sternly.
“We’re overdue for a talk, yes? You’re a desperate man, not a stupid one, I think. And the president is already pleasantly sozzled and settled in front of the fire. No one will interrupt us.”
Warily, Sandow sat back in the desk chair.
But Alex wasn’t ready to oblige. “You can see North?”
“I can see the shape of him,” said Belbalm. “Tucked inside you like a secret. Didn’t you notice my office was protected?”
Alex remembered the sense of peace she’d had there, the plants growing in the window boxes—mint and marjoram. They’d bloomed in the borders around Belbalm’s house too, though it had been the dead of winter. But she couldn’t quite grasp what Belbalm was suggesting. “You’re like me?”
Belbalm smiled and gave a single nod. “We are Wheelwalkers. All worlds are open to us. If we are bold enough to enter.”
Alex felt suddenly dizzy. She sank into a chair, the creak of the leather strangely reassuring.
Belbalm picked up her champagne and relaxed into the seat opposite her, elegant and poised as ever, as if they were a mother and daughter who had come to meet with the dean.
“You can let him out if you like,” she said, and it took Alex a second to realize Belbalm meant North.
Alex hesitated, then gave North a gentle nudge and he poured out of her, taking shape beside the desk, wary eyes darting between Alex and Belbalm.
“He’s not quite sure what to do, is he?” Belbalm asked. She cocked her head to the side and a lively smile played over her lips. “Hello, Bertie.”
North flinched backward.
Alex remembered that sunlit afternoon in the office at North & Sons, sawdust still in the corners, a deep feeling of contentment. What is it you’re thinking, Bertie?
“Daisy?” Alex whispered.
Dean Sandow leaned forward, peering at Belbalm. “Daisy Fanning Whitlock?”
But that couldn’t be.
“I prefer the French, Marguerite. So much less provincial than Daisy, yes?”
North shook his head, his expression turning angry.
“No,” said Alex. “I saw Daisy. Not just her photo. I saw her. You look nothing like her.”
“Because this is not the body I was born into. This is not the body my smug, adoring Bertie destroyed.” She turned to North, who was glaring at her now, his face disbelieving. “Don’t worry, Bertie. I know it wasn’t your fault. It was mine in a way.” Belbalm’s accent seemed to have vanished, her voice taking on North’s broad vowels. “I have so many memories, but that day at the factory is the clearest.” She closed her eyes. “I can still feel the sun pouring through the windows, smell the wood polish. You wanted to honeymoon in Maine. Maine, of all places… A soul shoved into me, frantic, blood soaked, bristling with magic. I had spent my life in communion with the dead, hiding my gift, borrowing their strength and their knowledge. But I had never had a spirit overtake me in that way.” She gave a helpless shrug. “I panicked. I pushed him into you. I didn’t even know I could do such a thing.”
Frantic, blood soaked, bristling with magic.
Alex had suspected that something had gone wrong with a prognostication back in 1854, that the Bonesmen had accidentally killed the vagrant they’d used as victima. She’d wondered why that spirit had been drawn to that particular room, why it had sought refuge in North, if it had just been some awful coincidence. But, no, that magic, that wayward soul cut free of its body and caught between life and death, had been drawn to a young girl’s power. It had been drawn to Daisy.
“It was a foolish mistake,” Belbalm said on a sigh. “And I paid for it. You couldn’t contain that soul and its anger. It took your gun. It used your hand to shoot me. I had lived so little and, just like that, my life was over.”
North began to pace, still shaking his head.
Belbalm sank back in her seat and released a snort. “My God, Bertie, can you possibly be this obtuse? How many times have you passed me on the streets without a second glance? How many years have I had to watch you moping around New Haven in all your Byronic glory? I was robbed of my body, so I had to steal a new one.” Her voice was calm, measured, but Alex could hear the anger beneath it. “I wonder, Bertie, how many times you looked at Gladys without really seeing her.”
Guys like this never noticed the help. Alex remembered gazing through the windows of North’s office, seeing Gladys strolling through the dogwoods in her white bonnet. No—that wasn’t right. She’d had the bonnet in her hand. It was her hair that had been white, smooth and sleek as a seal’s head. Just like Belbalm’s.
“Poor Gladys,” Belbalm said, resting her chin in her hand. “I’ll warrant you’d have noticed if she’d been prettier.” North was peering at Belbalm now, his expression caught between belief and stubborn refusal. “I wasn’t ready to die. I left my ruined body and I claimed hers. She was the first.”
The first.
Gladys O’Donaghue had discovered Daisy’s and North’s bodies and run screaming up Chapel to High Street, where the authorities found her. High Street, where Daisy’s desperate spirit chased her. High Street, where the first nexus was created and the first of the tombs would be built.
“You possessed Gladys?” said Alex, trying to make sense of what Belbalm was saying. North had shoved himself into Alex’s head but only for a short time. She knew there were stories of possessions, real hauntings, but nothing like… whatever this was.
“I fear that is too kind a word for what I did to Gladys,” Belbalm said gently. “She was Irish, you know. Very stubborn. I had to barge into her, just as that miserable soul had tried to push into me. It was a struggle. Do you know that the Irish had a taboo against the word ‘bear’? No one knows why exactly, but it was most likely because they feared even saying the word would summon the creature. So they called it ‘the shaggy one’ or ‘the honey eater.’ I always loved that phrase. The honey eater. I ate her soul to make room for mine.” She clicked her tongue against her teeth, surprised. “It was so sweet.”
“That isn’t possible,” Sandow said. “A Gray can’t simply seize someone’s body. Not in any permanent way. The flesh would wither and die.”