Лей Бардуго - Ninth House

Come to me , she begged. Help me. She let them feel her terror, her fear burning bright like a watchtower, her longing to live another day, another hour, lighting the way.

There was no end to them, flowing over the streets, past the garden, through the walls, crowding into the office, crowding into Alex. They came on in a cresting wave.

Alex felt Belbalm recoil and suddenly she could see the room, see Belbalm before her, arm outstretched, eyes blazing. The Wheel still encircled them, bright blue flame. They stood at its center, surrounded by its spokes.

“What is this?” Belbalm hissed.

“Call to the missing!” Alex cried. “Call to the lost! I know their names.” And names had power. She spoke them one after another, a poem of lost girls: “Sophie Mishkan! Colina Tillman! Zuzanna Mazurski! Paoletta DeLauro! Effie White! Gladys O’Donaghue!”

The dead whispered their names, repeated them, drawing closer, a tide of bodies. Alex could see them packed into the garden, halfway in and out of the walls. She could hear them moaning Sophie, Colina, Zuzanna, Paoletta , a rising wail.

The Grays were speaking, calling out to the scraps of those souls, a murmur of voices that rose in a broken chorus, louder and louder.

“Alexandra,” snarled Belbalm, and Alex could see sweat on her brow. “I will not relinquish them.”

It wasn’t up to her anymore.

“My name is Galaxy, you fucking glutton.”

At the sound of Alex’s name, the Grays released a unified sigh that gusted through the room. It ruffled Alex’s hem, blew Belbalm’s hair back from her face. Her eyes went wide and white.

A girl seemed to emerge from inside her, peeling away from Belbalm like a pale onion skin. She had thick dark curls and wore the apron of a factory worker over a gray blouse and skirt. A blonde in a plumed hat appeared, skin like a faded apricot, her plaid dress high-necked, her waist cinched to an impossible size; then a black girl, shimmering in a soft pink cardigan and circle skirt, her hair pressed into shining waves. One after another they pulled themselves from Belbalm, joining the crowd of Grays.

Gladys was the last and she did not want to come. Alex could feel it. Despite all of the years she’d spent cowering within Daisy’s consciousness, she was afraid to leave her body.

“She doesn’t get to keep you,” Alex pleaded. “Don’t be afraid.”

A girl emerged, barely visible, a scrap of a Gray. She was a far younger version of Belbalm, slender and sharp-featured, her white hair bound in a braid. Gladys turned to stare at herself, at Belbalm in her black tunic and rings. She held up her hands as if to ward her off, still frightened, shrinking back into the crowd as the other girls gathered her to them.

Belbalm opened her mouth as if to scream, but the only sound that emerged was that high teakettle whistle Alex had heard the dean make.

North was beside Alex now; maybe he’d been there all along.

“She isn’t a monster,” he said, begging. “She’s just a girl.”

“She knew better,” said Alex. There was no room for mercy in her. “She just thought her life was more important than all of ours.”

“I didn’t know she was capable of such things,” he said over the clamor of the crowd. “I never knew she had such a heart.”

“You never knew her at all.”

Careful Daisy, who had kept her secrets close, who had seen ghosts, who had longed to see the world. Wild Daisy, cut down before she could even start to live. Cruel Daisy, who had refused her fate and had stolen life after life to keep herself fed.

Alex spoke the final name. “Daisy Fanning Whitlock!”

She thrust out her hand and felt Daisy’s spirit inch toward her, slowly, grudgingly, fighting to hold on to her body like a plant determined to curl its roots in the ground and remain.

Alex took strength from the Grays surrounding her, passing through her. She let her mind form teeth, let them sink into Daisy’s consciousness. She pulled.

Daisy’s soul hurtled toward her. Alex cast it free before it could enter her and seize hold.

For the briefest moment, she glimpsed a dark-haired, pixie-faced girl in wide skirts and ruffled sleeves. Her chest had been blown open by a gunshot; her mouth was stretched in a scream. The Grays surged forward.

North threw himself in front of Daisy. “Please,” he said. “Leave her be!”

But Gladys stepped forward, thin as air. “No.”

“No,” chorused the lost girls. Sophie and Zuzanna, Paoletta and Effie and Colina.

The Grays surged past North. They fell upon Daisy in a whirling horde.

“ Mors irrumat omnia ,” Alex whispered. Death fucks us all.

The Wheel spun and Alex felt her stomach lurch. She thrust her hands out, trying to find something, anything, to hold on to. She smacked into something solid, fell to her knees. The room went suddenly still.

Alex was on the carpeted floor of the president’s office. She looked up, her head still spinning. The Grays were gone—all but the Bridegroom. She could hear her heart pounding in her chest and, through the door, the sounds of the party. The dean lay dead in the desk chair. When she closed her eyes, an afterimage of the Wheel burned blue against her lids.

Belbalm’s body had collapsed in on itself, her skin dissolving to a powdery husk, her bones crumbling as the weight of a hundred years fell upon them. She was little more than a pile of ash.

The Bridegroom stood staring at the heap of dust that had once been a girl. He knelt and reached out, but his hand passed right through it.

Alex used the edge of the desk to pull herself to her feet. She stumbled to the French doors that led onto the garden. Her legs felt wobbly. She was pretty sure the wound in her side had reopened. She unlocked the door and cold air blew through. It felt clean on her flushed cheeks and scattered Belbalm’s ashes.

Helplessly, North watched them gust up from the carpet.

“Sorry,” Alex muttered. “But you have shit taste in women.”

She looked at the dean’s body and tried to make her mind work, but she felt wrung out, empty. She couldn’t quite keep hold of her thoughts. In the garden, daffodils were just pushing up through the soil of the flower beds.

Turner , she thought. Where was he? Had he gotten her message?

She took out her phone. There was a message from the detective. Working a case. Stay put. Will call when I’m done. DON’T DO ANYTHING STUPID.

“It’s like he doesn’t even know me.”

A burst of laughter floated through the door. She needed to think. If the records from the other deaths ascribed to Daisy were correct, then Sandow’s death would most likely look like a heart attack or stroke. But Alex wasn’t taking any chances. She could sneak out through the garden, but people had seen her going into the office with him. She hadn’t exactly been discreet.

She would have to slip back into the party, try to mingle. If anyone asked, she’d claim she last saw the dean talking to Professor Belbalm.

“North,” she said. He glanced up from where he’d been kneeling. “I need your help.”

It was possible he wouldn’t be willing, that he would blame her for Daisy’s final death. Alex wondered if the Grays would leave any part of her to pass beyond the Veil. North’s presence here, his grief, didn’t make it seem likely.

Slowly, North rose. His eyes were dark and mournful as ever, but there was a new caution in them as he looked at Alex. Is he afraid of me? She didn’t mind the idea. Maybe he’d think twice about jumping into her skull again. Still, she felt for North. She knew loss, and he’d lost Daisy twice—first the girl he loved, and then the dream of who she’d been.