Лей Бардуго - Ninth House

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.”

“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.