“Clever boy,” said Belbalm. “But I was no ordinary girl and I am no ordinary Gray. My new body had to be sustained and I had the means to do it.” She shot Alex a small, mischievous smile. “You already know you can let the dead inside. Have you never wondered what you might do to the living?”
The words had weight, sinking into Alex’s understanding. Daisy hadn’t just killed Gladys. That had been almost incidental. She had consumed Gladys’s soul. It was that violence that had created a nexus. So what had created the other nexuses? My new body had to be sustained.
Gladys had been the first. But not the last.
Alex stood, backing away toward the mantel. “You killed them all. All of those girls. One by one. You ate their souls.”
Belbalm gave a single nod. It was almost a bow. “And left their bodies. Husks for the undertaker. It’s no different than what you do when you draw a Gray inside you for strength, but you cannot imagine the vitality of a living soul. It could sustain me for years. Sometimes longer.”
“Why?” Alex asked desperately. It made no sense. “Why these girls? Why this place? You could have gone anywhere, done anything.”
“Wrong.” Belbalm’s laugh was bitter. “I have had many professions. Changed my name and my identity, building false lives to disguise my true nature. But I never made it to France. Not in my old body, not in this one. No matter how many souls I consume, I cannot leave without starting to decay.”
“It’s the town,” said Sandow. “You need New Haven. This is where the magic lives.”
Belbalm smacked her palm against the arm of her chair. “This dump of a town.”
“You had no right,” said Alex.
“Of course not.” Belbalm looked almost confused. “Did the boys of Skull and Bones have the right to cut that poor man open?” She bobbed her chin at Sandow. “Did he have the right to murder Tara?”
Sandow flinched in surprise.
“You knew?” asked Alex. “Did you eat her soul too?”
“I am not a dog to come running when the dinner bell rings. Why would I trifle with a soul like that when I had a feast set before me?”
“Oh,” said Sandow, pressing his fingertips together. “I see. Alex, she means you.”
Belbalm’s glance was cold. “Don’t look so pleased, Elliot. I’m not here to tidy up your mistakes, and I don’t intend to waste any time worrying about you blabbing my secrets. You’re going to die in that chair.”
“I think not, Marguerite.” Sandow stood, his face suffused with the same determination that had possessed him the night of the new-moon rite, when he’d looked into the fires of hell. “The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, the lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea—”
North cringed backward. He cast a desperate look at Alex, scrabbling futilely at the walls as he began to fade through the bookshelf, fighting his banishment even as fear of the death words seized him.
“North!” Alex cried, holding out her hand to him, trying to pull him back into her. But it was too late. He disappeared through the wall.
“The plowman homeward plods his weary way,” declared Sandow, his voice ringing loud through the room. “And leaves the world to darkness and to me—”
Belbalm rose slowly from her chair and shook out the sleeves of her elegant black tunic. “Poetry, Elliot?”
Death words. But Belbalm didn’t fear death. Why would she? She’d already met it, bested it.
Sandow focused his hard eyes on Belbalm. “Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid some heart once pregnant with celestial fire—”
Belbalm drew a deep breath and thrust out her hand to Sandow—the same gesture Alex had used to welcome Hellie, to draw North into her.
“Stop!” Alex shouted, lunging across the room. She grabbed Belbalm’s arm, but her skin was hard as marble; she didn’t budge.
Sandow’s eyes bulged and the high whistle of a teapot beginning to boil emerged from his parted lips. He gasped and fell back into the chair, with enough force to send it rolling across the floor. His hands gripped the armrests. The sound faded, but the dean remained sitting upright, staring at nothing, like a bad actor miming shock.
Belbalm pursed her lips in distaste and daintily wiped the corner of her mouth. “Soul like a mealy apple.”
“You killed him,” Alex said, unable to look away from the dean’s body.
“Did he really deserve better? Men die, Alexandra. It’s rarely a tragedy.”
“He won’t pass behind the Veil, will he?” Alex said, beginning to understand. “You eat their souls and they never move on.” That was why North hadn’t been able to find Gladys or any of the other girls on the other side. And what had become of Tara’s soul, sacrificed to Sandow’s ritual? Where had she gone in the end?
“I’ve upset you. I see that. But you know what it is to carve out a place in the world, to have to fight for your life at every turn. You can’t imagine how much worse it was in my time. Women were sent to madhouses because they read too many books or because their husbands tired of them. There were so few paths open to us. And mine was stolen from me. So I forged a new one.”
Alex jabbed a finger at Belbalm. “You don’t get to turn this into some kind of feminist manifesto. You forged your new path from the lives of other girls. Immigrant girls. Brown girls. Poor girls.” Girls like me. “Just so you could buy yourself another few years.”
“It is so much more than that, Alexandra. It is a divine act. With each life I took, I soon saw a new temple raised to my glory—built by boys who never stopped to wonder at the power they claimed, only took it as their due. They toy with magic while I fashion immortality. And you will be part of it.”
“Lucky me.” Alex didn’t have to ask what she meant. Belbalm had rejected Sandow’s offering because she hadn’t wanted to spoil her appetite. “I’m the prize.”
“I’ve learned patience in this long life, Alexandra. I didn’t know what Sophie was when I met her, but when I consumed her soul? It was wild and gamey, bitter as yew, lightning in the blood. It sustained me for over fifty years. Then, just as I was beginning to weaken and age, Colina appeared. This time, I recognized the smell of her power. I scented her in a church parking lot and followed her for blocks.”
Their deaths had been the foundations of the tombs for St. Elmo’s and Manuscript.
What was the word Belbalm had used? “They were Wheelwalkers.”
“It was as if they were drawn here to feed me. Just like you.”
That was why the killings had paused in 1902. Girls had died in rapid succession through the late 1800s as Daisy fed on ordinary girls to stay alive. But then she’d found her first Wheelwalker, Sophie Mishkan, a girl with a power just like hers. That soul had kept her sated until 1958, when Belbalm had murdered Colina Tillman, another gifted girl. And now it was Alex’s turn.
This town. Did New Haven draw Wheelwalkers here? Daisy. Sophie. Colina. Had Alex always been on a collision course with this place and this monster? Magic feeding magic?
“When did you know what I was?” Alex asked.
“From the moment we met. I wanted to let you ripen for a while. Wash the stink of the common from you. But…” Belbalm gave a profound shrug. She threw out her hand.
Alex felt a sudden sharp pain in her chest, as if a hook had lodged beneath her sternum, notched into her heart. Around her, she saw blue flames ignite, a ring of fire surrounding her and Belbalm. A wheel. She felt herself falling.
Hellie had been sunlight. North had been cold and coal smoke. Belbalm was teeth.
Alex was swaying next to the grill on the tiny balcony at Ground Zero, the smell of charcoal thick in the air, smog smeared across the hills in the distance. She could feel the bass track thumping through her bare feet. She held up her thumb, blotting out the rising moon, then making it reappear.