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.