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