Ninth House

²¹ Winter

Turner had his phone out and Alex knew what came next. Part of her wanted to let it happen. She wanted the steady beep of hospital machines, the smell of antiseptic, an IV full of the strongest dope they had to knock her into sleep and away from this pain. Was she dying? She didn’t think so. Now that she’d done it once, she figured she’d know. But it felt like she was dying.

“Don’t.” She forced the word out in a rasp. Her throat still hurt like it was being squeezed by Lance Gressang’s enormous hands. “No hospital.”

“Did you see that in a movie?”

“How are you going to explain this to a doctor?”

“I’ll say I found you this way,” said Turner.

“Okay, how am I going to explain this? And the messed-up crime scene. And how I got in here.”

“How did you get in here?”

“I don’t need a hospital. Take me to Dawes.”

“Dawes?”

Alex was annoyed that Turner had somehow forgotten Dawes’s name. “Oculus.”

“Fuck this,” said Turner. “All of you with your code names and your secrets and your bullshit.” She could see the way he was leaping from rage to fear and back again. His mind was trying to erase everything he’d seen. It was one thing to be told magic existed, quite another to have it literally give you the finger.

Alex wondered how much Lethe had shared with Centurion. Did they hand him the same Life of Lethe booklet? A long file full of horror stories? A commemorative mug that said Monsters Are Real ? Alex had spent her life surrounded by the uncanny and it had still been hard to let in the reality of Lethe. What would it be like for someone who had grown up in what he believed was an ordinary city—his city—who had been an instrument of order on its streets, to suddenly know that the most basic rules did not apply?

“She need a doctor?” A woman stood in the hall, her cell phone in her hand. “I heard a commotion.”

Turner flashed his badge. “Help is on the way, ma’am. Thank you.”

That badge was a kind of magic too. But the woman turned to Alex. “You okay, honey?”

“I’m good,” Alex managed, feeling a pang of warmth for this stranger in a bathrobe, even as she cradled her phone to her chest and shuffled away.

Alex tried to raise her head, the pain spiking through her like a whip crack. “You need to take me somewhere warded. Someplace they can’t get to me, understand?”

“They.”

“Yes, they. Ghosts and ghouls and inmates who can walk through walls. It’s all real, Turner, not just a bunch of college kids dressing up in robes. And I need your help.”

Those were the words that woke him. “There’s a uniform out front, and I can’t carry you past him without answering a whole heap of questions—and you sure can’t walk out on your own.”

“I can.” But, God, she didn’t want to. “Reach into my right pocket. There’s a little bottle in there with a dropper.”

He shook his head but dug into Alex’s pocket. “What is this?”

“Basso belladonna. Just put two drops in my eyes.”

“Drugs?” asked Turner.

“Medication.”

Of course that placated him. Turner the Eagle Scout.

As soon as the first drop hit her eyes, she knew she’d made a bad miscalculation. She felt instantly energized, ready to move, act, but the basso belladonna did nothing to ease the pain, only made her more aware of it. She could feel the places where her broken bones were pressing that they shouldn’t, where the blood vessels had burst, the capillaries ruptured and swelling.

The drug was telling her brain that everything was okay, that anything was possible, that if she willed it, she could heal herself right now. But the pain was shrieking panic, banging on her awareness, a fist against glass. She could feel a splinter starting, her sanity like a windshield that wasn’t meant to break. She’d been called crazy countless times, had sometimes believed it, but this was the first time she’d felt insane.

Her heart was thundering. I’m going to die here.

You’re fine. Through how many late nights and long afternoons had she said that to someone who’d smoked too much, swallowed too much, snorted too much? Breathe through it. You’re fine. You’re fine.

“Meet me on Tilton,” she told Turner, pushing to her feet. He was beautiful. The basso belladonna had lit his brown skin like a late-summer sunset. Light bounced off the short stubble of his shaved head. Medication, my ass. The pain screamed as her broken ribs shifted.

“This is a terrible idea,” he said.

“The only kind I have. Go on.”

Turner blew out an exasperated breath and went.

Alex’s hyped-up mind had already plotted a route down the back hall and out onto the rickety landing. The air was cool and moist against her fevered skin. She could see every grain of the weathered gray wood, feel sweat blooming on her cheeks and turning cold in the winter air. It was going to snow again.

Down the little row of steps. Just hop them, said the drug lighting up her system.

“Please shut up,” gasped Alex.

Everything seemed to be coated in a smooth, silvery sheen, painted in high gloss. She forced herself to walk instead of run, her bones scraping against each other like a violin bow. The blacktop of the alley behind Tara’s apartment glittered, the stink of garbage and piss like a thick, visible haze that she had to push through as if she were underwater. She passed between two row houses and onto Tilton. A moment later, a blue Dodge Charger rounded the corner and slowed. Turner hopped out and opened the back door, letting Alex slide into the back seat.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“Il Bastone. The house on Orange.”

It was almost worse to lie down and stop moving. All she could think about as she sank into the new-car smell of Turner’s leather seats was the pain rolling through her. She stared at the bits of sky and rooftop passing by the window, trying to follow their path to Il Bastone in her head. How much longer? Dawes would be there. Dawes was always there, but could she help? It’s my job.

“Oculus isn’t answering her phone,” said Turner. Was Dawes in section? Somewhere in the stacks? “What was I seeing back there?” he asked.

“Told you. Portal magic.” She said it with confidence, though she couldn’t really be sure. She’d thought portal magic was used for traveling big distances or entering secure buildings. Not getting the jump on someone in a beatdown. “Portals are Scroll and Key magic. I thought Tara and Lance might be dealing to them because of Colin Khatri. And Tara’s tattoo.”

“Which one?”

“Rather die than doubt. From Idylls of the King.” She had the strange sense that she’d taken Darlington’s place. Did that mean he’d taken hers? God, she hated being this high. “Lance said something when he was kicking the crap out of me. He wanted to know who hurt Tara. He didn’t do it.”

“Do I need to remind you that he’s a criminal?”

Alex tried to shake her head, then winced. “He wasn’t bullshitting me.” In the panic and fear of the attack, she’d thought she was being hunted again, like with the gluma. But now she wasn’t so sure. “He was interrogating me. He thought I’d broken in.”

“You did break in.”

“He wasn’t there for me. He came back to the apartment for something else.”

“Yeah, let’s talk about that. I explicitly told you not to go anywhere near—”

“Do you want answers or do you want to keep being an asshole? Lance Gressang didn’t kill Tara. You have the wrong guy.”

Turner said nothing and Alex laughed softly. The effect was not worth the effort. “I get it. Either you’re crazy and seeing shit or I’m crazy, and wouldn’t it be nicer if I was the crazy one. I have bad news for you, Turner. Neither of us is nuts. Someone wanted you to believe Lance is guilty.”

“But you don’t think he is.” There was a long silence. Alex heard the tick tock tick tock of the turn signal in time with her heartbeat. At last, Turner said, “I checked into the whereabouts of the society members you mentioned.”

So he’d followed up. He was too good a detective to turn down a lead. Even if it came from Lethe. “And?”

“We already knew it was impossible to confirm Tripp Helmuth’s whereabouts, because no one had eyes on him the whole night. Kate Masters claims she was at Manuscript until just after three in the morning.”

Alex grunted as the Charger hit a bump. It hurt to talk, but it also helped keep her distracted. “Her whole delegation should have been there,” she managed. “It was a Thursday night. A meeting night.”

“My impression is they were partying late. It’s a big building. She easily could have come and gone with no one the wiser.”

And Manuscript was only a few blocks from the crime scene. Could Kate have snuck out, glamoured as Lance, to meet Tara? Had it been some kind of game? A high gone wrong? Had Kate intended to hurt Tara? Or was all of this just in Alex’s head?

“What do you know about the kid from Scroll and Key, Colin Khatri?” Turner asked.

“I like him,” Alex was surprised to hear herself say. “He’s nice and he dresses sharp like you but more European.”

“That’s great intel.”

Alex searched her memory. The basso belladonna made it easy to remember the elaborate interior of the Scroll and Key tomb, the patterns of the tiles on the floor. The night of the botched attempt to open a portal to Budapest, Colin had given her an excited little wave when he’d seen her, as if they were rushing the same sorority. “Darlington said Colin was one of the best and brightest, doing graduate-level chem work as an undergrad. Headed someplace prestigious next year. Stanford, I think.”

“He never showed at Scroll and Key last Thursday. He was at a party at a professor’s house. Bell-something. A French name.”

She wanted to laugh. “Not a party. A salon.” Colin had been at Belbalm’s salon. Alex was supposed to attend the next one… tomorrow? No, tonight. Her magical summer working in the professor’s quiet office and watering her plants had never seemed more far away. But had Colin actually been at the salon? Maybe he’d slipped away. Alex hoped that wasn’t the case. Belbalm’s world of peppery perfume and gentle conversation felt like a refuge, the reward she probably didn’t deserve but would happily accept. She wanted to keep it separate from all of this mess.

Alex felt her awareness drifting, that first bright burst of the basso belladonna letting go. She heard a beep that sounded too loud, then Turner talking over the radio, explaining the damage at Lance and Tara’s apartment. Someone looking for drugs. He had pursued on foot but lost the perp. He gave a vague description of a suspect who might have been male or female in a parka that might have been black or dark blue.

Alex was surprised to hear him lying, but she knew he wasn’t covering for her. He didn’t know how to explain Lance or what he’d seen.

At last, Turner said, “We’re coming up on the green.”

Alex forced herself to sit up so she could direct him. The world felt red, as if even the air touching her body was out to get her.

“Alley,” she said, as the dark brick and stained glass of Il Bastone came into view. There were lights on in the parlor window. Be home, Dawes. “Park in back.”

Alex shut her eyes and released a sigh when the engine stopped. She heard Turner’s door slam and then he was helping her climb out of the car.

“Keys,” he said.

“No keys.”

She had a worried moment when Turner fumbled with the doorknob, wondering if the house would let him in. But either her presence was enough or it recognized Centurion. The door swung open.

Il Bastone made a worried rattle as she entered, the chandeliers tinkling. To anyone else it probably would have felt like a truck rolling by, but Alex could feel the house’s concern and it put a lump in her throat. Maybe it just disapproved of so much blood and trauma crossing its threshold, but Alex wanted to believe that the house did not like the suffering of one of its own.

Dawes was lying on the parlor carpet in her lumpy sweatshirt, headphones on.

“Hey,” said Turner, and repeated, “Hey!” when she didn’t answer.

Dawes jumped. It was like watching a big beige rabbit come to life. She startled and cringed backward at the sight of Turner and Alex in the parlor.

“Is she a racist or just twitchy?” asked Turner.

“I’m not a racist!” said Dawes.

“We’re all racists, Dawes,” said Alex. “How did you even make it through undergrad?”

Dawes’s mouth went slack as Turner dragged Alex into the light. “Oh my God. Oh my God. What happened?”

“Long story,” said Alex. “Can you fix me?”

“We should go to the hospital,” said Dawes. “I’ve never—”

“No,” said Alex. “I’m not leaving the wards.”

“What got you?”

“A very big dude.”

“Then—”

“Who can walk through walls.”

“Oh.” She pressed her lips together and then said, “Detective Turner, I… could you—”

“What do you need?”

“Goat’s milk. I think Elm City Market stocks it.”

“How much?”

“As much as they have. The crucible will do the rest. Alex, can you get up the stairs?”

Alex glanced at the staircase. She wasn’t sure she could.

Turner hesitated. “I can—”

“No,” said Alex. “Dawes and I will manage.”

“Fine,” he said, already heading toward the back door. “You’re lucky this dump of a town is gentrifying. Like to see me walk into the Family Dollar looking for goat’s milk.”

“You should have let him carry you,” Dawes grunted as they made their slow way up the stairs.

Alex’s body was fighting every step. “Right now he feels guilty for not listening to me. I can’t let him make up for it just yet.”

“Why?”

“Because the worse he feels, the more he’ll do for us. Trust me. Turner doesn’t like to be in the wrong.” Another step. Another. Why didn’t this place have an elevator? A magical one full of morphine. “Tell me about Scroll and Key. I thought their magic was waning. The night Darlington and I observed, they couldn’t even open a portal to Eastern Europe.”

“They’ve had a few bad years, trouble getting the best taps. There’s been some speculation in Lethe that portal magic is so disruptive it’s been eroding the power nexus their tomb is built on.”

But maybe the Locksmiths had been pretending, running a little con, trying to look weaker than they actually were. Why? So that they could perform rituals in secret without Lethe interference? Or was there something shady about the rituals themselves? But how would that connect Colin Khatri to Tara? All Tripp had said was that Tara had mentioned Colin once in passing. There had to be more to it. That tattoo couldn’t just be coincidence.

Dawes led Alex to the armory and propped her up against Hiram’s Crucible. It felt like it was vibrating gently, the metal cool against Alex’s skin. She had never used the Golden Bowl, just watched Darlington mix his elixir in it. He had treated it with reverence and resentment. Like any junkie with a drug.

“The hospital would be safer,” Dawes said, rummaging through the drawers in the vast cabinet, opening and closing one after another.

“Come on, Dawes,” Alex said. “You gave me that spider-egg stuff before.”

“That’s different. It was a specific magical cure for a specific magical ailment.”

“You didn’t hesitate to drown me. How hard can it be to fix me up?”

“I did hesitate. And none of the societies specialize in healing magic.”

“Why?” Alex said. Maybe if she kept talking, her body couldn’t give up. “Seems like there’d be money in it.”

Dawes’s disapproving frown—that “learning should be for the sake of learning” look—reminded her painfully of Darlington. Actually, everything she did in this moment was painful.

“Healing magic is messy,” said Dawes. “It’s the most commonly practiced by laypeople, and that means power gets distributed more broadly instead of being drawn to nexuses. There are also strong prohibitions against tampering with immortality. And it isn’t like I know exactly what’s wrong with you. I can’t x-ray you and just cast a spell to mend a broken rib. You could have internal bleeding or I don’t know what.”

“You’ll think of something.”

“We’re going to try reversion,” said Dawes. “I can take you back… will an hour do it? Two hours? I hope we have enough milk.”

“Are you… are you talking about time travel?”

Dawes paused with a hand on a drawer. “Are you serious?”

“Nope,” said Alex hurriedly.

“I’m just helping your body revert to an earlier version of itself. It’s an undoing. Much easier than trying to make new flesh or bone. It’s actually a kind of portal magic, so you can thank Scroll and Key for it.”

“I’ll send them a note. How far back can you go?”

“Not far. Not without stronger magic and more people to work it.”

An undoing. Take me back. Make me into someone who has never been done harm. Go as far as you can. Make me brand-new. No bruises. No scars. She thought of the moths in their boxes. She missed her tattoos, her old clothes. She missed sitting in the sun with Hellie. She missed the gentle, dilapidated curves of her mother’s couch. Alex didn’t really know what she missed, only that she was homesick for something, maybe for someone, she’d never been.

She ran her hand along the edge of the crucible. Could this thing burn me new? Make it so I’d never have to see another ghost or Gray or whatever they decided to call it? And would she even wish for that now?

Alex remembered Belbalm asking what she wanted. Safety. A chance at a normal life. That was what had come to mind in that moment—the quiet of Belbalm’s office, the herbs blooming in the window boxes, a matched set of teacups instead of the chipped mugs of jobs lost and promotional giveaways. She wanted sunlight through the window. She wanted peace.

Liar.

Peace was like any high. It couldn’t last. It was an illusion, something that could be interrupted in a moment and lost forever. Only two things kept you safe: money and power.

Alex didn’t have money. But she did have power. She’d been afraid of it, afraid of staring directly at that blood-soaked night. Afraid she’d feel regret or shame, of saying goodbye to Hellie all over again. But when she’d finally looked? Let herself remember? Well, maybe there was something broken and shriveled in her, because she felt only a deep calm in knowing what she was capable of.

The Grays had plagued her life, changed it horribly, but after all of those years of torment, they’d finally given something back to her. She was owed. And she’d liked using that power, even the alien feeling of North inside her. She had enjoyed the surprise on Lance’s face, on Len’s face, on Betcha’s. You thought you saw me. See me now.

“You have to take your clothes off,” said Dawes.

Alex unbuttoned her jeans, trying to hook her fingers into the waist. Her movements were slow, hampered by pain. “I need your help.”

Reluctantly, Dawes stepped away from the shelves and helped shove the jeans over Alex’s hips. But once they were around her ankles, Dawes realized she needed to take off Alex’s boots, so Alex stood there in her underwear while Dawes untied her boots and yanked them off.

She stood, eyes jumping from Alex’s bruised face to the tattooed snakes at her hips, which had once matched those at her clavicles. She’d gotten them after Hellie told her there was a rattler inside her. She liked the idea. Len had wanted to try tattooing her in their kitchen. He’d gotten his own gun and inks online, insisted it was all sterile. But Alex hadn’t trusted him or their filthy apartment and she hadn’t wanted him to leave a mark on her, not that way.

“Can you lift your arms over your head,” Dawes said, cheeks red.

“Uh-uh,” Alex grunted. Even forming words was getting difficult.

“I’ll get shears.”

A moment later, she heard the snip of scissors, felt her shirt pulled away from her skin, the fabric sticking to the drying blood.

“It’s okay,” said Dawes. “You’ll feel better as soon as you’re in the crucible.”

Alex realized she was crying. She’d been choked, drowned, beaten, choked again, and nearly killed, but now she was crying—over a shirt. She’d bought it new at Target before she’d come to school. It was soft and fit well. She hadn’t owned many new things.

Alex’s head felt heavy. If she could just close her eyes for a minute. For a day.

She heard Dawes say, “I’m sorry. I can’t get you in. Turner will have to help.”

Was he back from the market? She hadn’t heard him return. She must have blacked out.

Something soft moved over Alex’s skin and she realized Dawes had wrapped her in a sheet—pale blue, from Dante’s room. My room. Bless Dawes.

“Is she in some kind of shroud?” Turner’s voice.

Alex forced herself to open her eyes, saw Turner and Dawes emptying cartons of milk into the crucible. Turner’s head moved back and forth like a searchlight, a slow scan, taking in the strangeness of the upper floors. Alex felt proud of Il Bastone, the armory with its cabinet of curiosities, the bizarre golden bathtub at its center.

She meant to be brave, to grit her teeth through the pain, but she screamed when Turner lifted her. A moment later, she was sinking beneath the cool surface, the sheet unwrapping, blood staining the goat’s milk in veins of pink. It looked like a strawberry sundae cup, the kind with the wooden spoon.

“Don’t touch the milk!” Dawes was shouting.

“I’m trying to keep her from drowning!” Turner barked back. He had his hands cradled around her head.

“I’m all right,” said Alex. “Let me go.”

“You’re both nuts,” said Turner, but she felt his grip ease.

Alex let herself sink beneath the surface. The cool of the milk seemed to seep straight through her skin, coating the pain. She held her breath as long as she could. She wanted to stay below, feel the milk cocoon around her. But eventually she let her toes find the bottom of the crucible and pushed back to the surface.

When she emerged, Dawes and Turner were both shouting at her. She must have stayed beneath the surface a little too long.

“I’m not drowning,” she said. “I’m fine.”

And she was. There was still pain but it had receded, her thoughts felt sharper—and the milk was changing too, becoming clearer and more watery.

Turner looked like he might be sick, and Alex thought she understood why. Magic created a kind of vertigo. Maybe the sight of a girl on the brink of death descending into a bathtub and then emerging whole and healthy seconds later was just one spin too many on this ride.

“I need to get to the station,” he said. “I—”

He turned and strode out the door.

“I don’t think he likes us, Dawes.”

“It’s okay,” Dawes said, picking up the heap of Alex’s bloodied clothes. “We had too many friends already.”

Dawes left to make Alex something to eat, claiming she’d be famished once the reversion was complete. “Do not drown while I’m gone,” she said, and left the door to the armory open behind her.

Alex lay back in the crucible, feeling her body change, the pain leaching out of her, and something—the milk or whatever it had become in Dawes’s enchantment—filling her up. She heard music coming from the tinny sound system, the sound so staticky it was hard to pick out a tune.

She dunked her head beneath the surface again. It was quiet here, and when she opened her eyes it was like looking through mist, watching the last traces of milk and magic fade. A pale shape loomed before her, came into focus. A face.

Alex sucked in a breath, choking down water. She burst through the surface, coughing and sputtering, arms crossed over her breasts. The Bridegroom’s reflection stared up at her from the water.

“You can’t be here,” she said. “The wards—”

“I told you,” his reflection said, “wherever water pools or gathers, we can speak now. Water is the element of translation. It is the mediary.”

“So you’re going to be showering with me?”

North’s cold face didn’t change. She could see the dark shore behind him in the reflection. It looked different than it had the first time, and she remembered what Dawes had said about the different borderlands. She must not be looking into Egypt this time—or whatever version of Egypt she had traveled to when she’d crossed the Nile. But Alex could see the same dark shapes on the shore, human and inhuman. She was glad they couldn’t reach her here.

“What did you do to me at Tara’s apartment?” North said. He sounded haughtier than ever, his accent more clipped.

“I don’t know what to tell you,” said Alex, because it felt truer than most things. “There wasn’t really time to ask for permission.”

“But what did you do? How did you do it?”

Stay with me.

“I don’t really know.” She didn’t understand any of it. Where the ability had come from. Why she could see things no one else could. Was it buried somewhere in her bloodline? In the genes of the father she’d never met? Was it in her grandmother’s bones? The Grays had never dared approach in Estrea Stern’s house, the candles lit at the windows. If she’d lived longer, would she have found a way to protect Alex?

“I gave you my strength,” said North.

No, thought Alex. I took it. But she doubted North would appreciate the distinction.

“I know what you did to those men,” said North. “I saw when you let me inside.”

Alex shivered. All the warmth and well-being that had poured into her as she’d soaked in the milk bath was no match for the thought of a Gray rattling around in her head. What else had the Bridegroom seen? It doesn’t matter. Unlike Darlington, North couldn’t share her secrets with the world. No matter how many layers of the Veil he pierced, he was still trapped in death.

“You have enemies on this side of the Veil, Galaxy Stern,” he continued. “Leonard Beacon. Mitchell Betts. Ariel Harel. A whole host of men you sent to the darker shore.”

Daniel Arlington.

Except he’d said Darlington wasn’t on the other side. A murmur rose from the shapes behind the Bridegroom, the same sound she’d heard when she waded into the Nile. Jean Du Monde. Jonathan Mont. It might not even be a name. The syllables sounded strange and wrong, as if spoken by mouths not made to form human language.

And what about Hellie? Was she happy where she was? Was she safe from Len? Or would they find each other behind the Veil and make their own misery there?

“Yeah, well, I have enemies on this side too. Instead of looking up my old buddies, how about you find Tara?”

“Why don’t you seek out Darlington’s notebooks?”

“I’ve been busy. And it’s not like you’re going anywhere.”

“How glib you are. How sure of yourself. There was a time when I had the same confidence. Time took it. Time takes everything, Miss Stern. But I didn’t have to go looking for your friends. After what you did to me at Tara Hutchins’s residence, they came looking for me. They could smell your power on me like stale smoke. You’ve deepened the bond between us.”

Perfect. Exactly what she needed. “Just find Tara.”

“I have hope that repellent object will draw her to me. But her death was brutal. She may be recovering somewhere. The other side can be a dismaying place for the new dead.”

Alex hadn’t thought of that. She had just assumed people crossed over into some kind of understanding. Painlessness. Tranquility. She looked again at the surface of the water, that wobbling reflection of the Bridegroom, at those monstrous shapes somewhere behind him, and shivered.

How had Hellie passed into the next world? Her death had been… well, in some ways, compared to Tara, compared to Len and Betcha and Ariel, she had passed in relative peace.

It was still death. It was still death too soon.

“Find her,” said Alex. “Find Tara so I can figure out who hurt her and Turner can put him away before he hurts me.”

North frowned. “I don’t know that the detective is a good partner in this endeavor.”

Alex leaned back against the curve of the crucible. She wanted to get out of the water but she wasn’t sure if she was supposed to. “Not used to seeing a black man with a badge?”

“I haven’t been holed up in my tomb for the last hundred years, Miss Stern. I know the world has changed.”

His tomb. “Where are you buried?”

“My bones are in Evergreen.” His lip curled. “It’s quite the tourist attraction.”

“And Daisy?”

“Her family had her interred in their mausoleum on Grove Street.”

“That’s why you’re always lurking around there.”

“I’m not lurking. I go to pay my respects.”

“You go because you’re hoping she’ll see you doing your penance and forgive you.”

When North was mad, his face changed. It looked less human. “I did not hurt Daisy.”

“Temper temper,” crooned Alex. But she didn’t want to provoke him further. She needed him and she could make a gesture toward peace. “I’m sorry about what I did at the apartment.”

“No, you’re not.”

So much for peace. “No, I’m not.”

North turned his head away. His profile looked like it had been cut for a coin. “It wasn’t an entirely unenjoyable experience.”

Now, that surprised her. “No?”

“It was… I had forgotten what it felt like to be in a body.”

Alex considered. She shouldn’t deepen the bond. But if he could look inside her head when he entered her, maybe his thoughts would be open to her too. She’d gotten little sense of him in the panic of the fight. “You can come back in if you like.”

He hesitated. Why? Because there was intimacy in the act? Or because he had something to hide?

Dawes bustled through the door, a tray heaped with dishes in her hands. She set it down on the map cabinet. “I kept it simple. Mashed potatoes. Macaroni and cheese. Tomato soup. Green salad.”

As soon as the smell hit, Alex’s stomach began to rumble and saliva filled her mouth. “Bless you, Dawes. Can I get out of this thing?”

Dawes glanced at the tub. “It looks clear.”

“If you’re going to eat, I’ll stay,” said North. His voice was steady, but he looked eager in the mirror of the water.

Dawes handed Alex a towel and helped her climb awkwardly from the tub.

“Can I be alone for a minute?”

Dawes’s eyes narrowed. “What are you going to do?”

“Nothing. Just eat. But if you… If you hear anything, don’t worry about knocking. Just come on in.”

“I’ll be downstairs,” Dawes said warily. She closed the door behind her.

Alex leaned over the crucible. North was waiting in the reflection.

“Want in?” she asked.

“Submerge your hand,” he muttered, as if asking her to disrobe. But, of course, she’d already disrobed.

She dunked her hand beneath the surface.

“I’m not a murderer,” said North, reaching for her.

She smiled and let her fingers clasp his. “Of course not,” she said. “Neither am I.”

She was looking through a window. She felt excited, a sense of pride and comfort she’d never known. The world was hers. This factory, more modern than Brewster’s or Hooker’s. The city before her. The woman beside her.

Daisy. She was exquisite, her face precise and lovely, her hair in curls that brushed the collar of her high-necked dress, her soft white hands buried in a fox-fur muff. She was the most beautiful woman in New Haven, maybe Connecticut, and she was his. Hers. Mine.

Daisy turned to him, her dark eyes mischievous. Her intelligence sometimes unnerved him. It was not quite feminine, and yet he knew it was what elevated her over all of the belles of the Elm City. Perhaps she was not really the most beautiful. Her nose was too sharp, her lips too thin—but oh the words that spilled from them, laughing and quick and occasionally naughty. And there was absolutely nothing to fault in her figure or her clever smile. She was simply more alive than anyone he’d ever met.

These calculations were made in a moment. He could not stop making them, because always they tallied to a sense of triumph and contentment.

“What is it you’re thinking, Bertie?” she asked in her playful voice, sidling closer. Only she used that name with him. Her maid had come with them, as was proper, but Gladys had hung back in the hallway and now he saw her through the window drifting toward the green, the strings of her bonnet trailing from her hand as she plucked a sprig of dogwood from the trees. He hadn’t had much cause to speak to Gladys, but he would make more of an effort. Servants heard everything, and it would pay to have the ear of the woman closest to the woman who would be his wife.

He turned away from the window to Daisy glowing like a piece of milky glass against the polished wood of his new office. His desk, along with the new safe, had been built especially for the space. He’d already spent several late nights here working in comfort. “I was thinking of you, of course.”

She tapped him on the arm, drawing closer still. Her body had a sway to it that might have been unseemly in another woman, but not in Daisy.

“You needn’t flirt with me anymore.” She held up her hand, fluttered her fingers, the emerald glinting on them. “I’ve already said yes.”

He snatched her hand from the air and pulled her near. Something in her eyes kindled, but with what? Desire? Fear? She was sometimes impossible to read. In the mirror above the mantel, he saw the two of them, and the image thrilled him.

“Let’s go to Boston after the wedding. We can drive up to Maine for our honeymoon. I don’t want a long sea voyage.”

She only lifted a brow and smiled. “Bertie, Paris was part of the bargain.”

“But why? We have time to see the whole world.”

“You have time. I will be a mother to your children and a hostess to your business partners. But for a moment…” She stood on tiptoe, her lips a bare breath from his, the heat of her body palpable as her fingers pressed against his arm. “I might simply be a girl seeing Paris for the first time, and we might simply be lovers.”

The word hit him like a hammer swing.

“Paris it is,” he said on a laugh, and kissed her. It was not their first kiss, but like every kiss with Daisy it felt new.

A creak sounded on the stairs, then a rolling sound, like someone stumbling.

Daisy pulled away. “Gladys has the very worst timing.”

But over Daisy’s shoulder, Bertie could see Gladys still drifting dreamily along the green, her white cap bright against the dogwoods.

He turned and saw—nothing, no one, an empty doorway. Daisy sucked in a startled breath.

The edge of his vision blurred, a dark blot spreading like flame catching at the corner of a page, eating along its edge. He cried out as he felt something like pain, something like fire, pierce his skull. A voice said, They cut me open. They wanted to see my soul.

“Daisy?” he gasped. The word came out garbled. He was lying on his back in an operating theater. Men stood above him—boys, really.

Something’s wrong, one said.

Just finish! shouted another.

He looked down. His stomach had been cut open. He could see, oh God, he could see himself, his gut, the meat of his organs, displayed like winding snakes of offal in a butcher’s case. One of the boys was pawing at him. They cut me open.

He screamed, doubled over. He clutched his stomach. He was whole.

He was in a room he didn’t recognize, some kind of office, polished wood everywhere. It smelled new. The sunlight was so bright it hurt his eyes. But he wasn’t safe from those boys. They’d followed him here. They wanted to kill him. They’d taken him from his good spot at the train yard. They’d offered him money. He knew they wanted to have their fun, but he hadn’t known, he didn’t know. They’d cut him open. They were trying to take his soul.

He couldn’t let them drag him back to that cold room. There was protection here. If he could only find it. He reached for the desk, pulling open drawers. They seemed too far away, as if his arms were shorter than he remembered.

“Bertie?”

That wasn’t his name. They were trying to confuse him. He looked down and saw a black shape in his hand. It looked like a shadow, but it felt heavy in his palm. He knew the name for it, tried to form the word for it in his mind.

There was a gun in his hand and a woman was screaming. She was pleading. But she wasn’t a woman; she was something terrible. He could see night gathered around her. The boys had sent her to bring him back so they could cut him open again.

Lightning flashed but the sky was still blue. Daisy. He was supposed to protect her. She was crawling across the floor. She was weeping. She was trying to get away.

There, a monster, staring back at him from above the mantel, his white face filled with horror and rage. They’d come for him and he had to stop them. There was only one way to do it. He had to ruin their fun. He turned the shadow in his hand, pressed it to his gut.

Another flash of lightning. When had the storm come on?

He looked down and saw that his chest had come apart. He’d done the work. Now they couldn’t cut him open. They couldn’t take his soul. He was on the floor. He saw sunlight crisscrossing the slats, a beetle crawling over the dusty floorboards. Daisy—he knew her—lay still beside him, the roses fading from her cheeks, her wicked, lively eyes gone cold.