Ninth House

by Leigh Bardugo

  “You go ahead,” Alex said.

  The dean shrugged and entered. He set his crutches aside and leaned against the desk.

  Alex left the door open so they would be at least partially visible to the partygoers. She didn’t expect Sandow to pick up a fancy paperweight and club her with it, but he’d already killed one girl.

  “You murdered Tara Hutchins.”

  Sandow opened his mouth, but Alex stopped him with a hand. “Don’t start lying yet. We’ve got a lot of territory to cover and you’ll want to pace yourself. You killed her—or you had her killed—on a triangle of unused land, one I’m guessing the Rhinelander Trust is going to move to acquire.”

  The dean took a pipe from his pocket, then brought out a pouch of tobacco and gently began filling the bowl. He set the pipe down beside him without lighting it.

  At last, he folded his arms and met her gaze. “So what?”

  Alex wasn’t sure what she’d expected, but that wasn’t it. “I—”

  “So what, Miss Stern?”

  “Did they pay you?” she asked.

  He glanced over her shoulder, making sure no one was lingering in the hallway.

  “St. Elmo’s? Yes. Last year. My divorce left me with nothing. My savings were gutted. I owed outrageous alimony. But a few dedicated St. Elmo’s alumni wiped all of that trouble away with a single check. All I had to do was provide them with a nexus to build over.”

  “How did they know you could create one?”

  “They didn’t. I approached them. I’d guessed at the pattern during my days at Lethe. I knew it would repeat. We were so long overdue. I didn’t think I’d actually have to do anything. We simply had to wait.”

  “Were the societies involved in the murders of those other girls? Colina and Daisy and the rest?”

  Again he glanced behind her. “Directly? I’ve wondered that myself over the years. But if any of the societies had solved the riddle of creating a nexus, why would they have stopped at one? Why not use that knowledge? Barter it?” He picked up his pipe. “No, I don’t think they were involved. This town is a peculiar one. The Veil is thinner here, the flow of magic easier. It eddies in the nexuses, but there is magic in every stone, every bit of soil, every leaf of every old elm. And it is hungry.”

  “The town…” Alex remembered the strange feeling she’d had at the crime scene, the way it had mirrored the map of the New Haven colony. Dawes had said that rituals worked best if they were built around an auspicious date. Or an auspicious place. “That’s why you chose that intersection to kill Tara.”

  “I know how to build a ritual, Alex. When I want to.” Hadn’t Darlington told her that Sandow was a brilliant Lethe delegate? That some of the rites he’d fashioned were still in use?

  “You killed her for money.”

  “For a great deal of money.”

  “You took the payoff from the board of St. Elmo’s. You told them you could control the location of the coming nexus.”

  “That I would prepare a site. I thought all I had to do was wait for the cycle to run its course. But it didn’t happen. No one died. No new nexus formed.” He shook his head in frustration. “They were so impatient. They … they said they would demand their money back, that they would go to the Lethe board. They had to be appeased. I created a ritual I knew would work. But I needed an offering.”

  “And then you found Tara.”

  “I knew her,” Sandow said, his voice almost fond. “When Claire was sick, Tara got her marijuana.”

  “Your wife?”

  “I nursed her through two bouts of breast cancer and then she left me. She … Tara was in my house. She heard things she probably shouldn’t have. I was not focused on discretion. What did it matter?”

  What did it matter what some town girl knew? “And Tara was nice, wasn’t she?”

  Sandow looked away guiltily. Maybe he’d fucked her; maybe he’d just been happy to have someone to talk to. That was what you did. You made nice with clients. Sandow had needed a sympathetic shoulder and Tara had provided it.

  “But then Darlington found the pattern, the trail of girls.”

  “The same way I did. I suppose it was inevitable. He was too bright, too inquisitive for his own good. And he always wanted to know what made New Haven different. He was trying to make a map of the unseen. He brought it up to me just in passing, an academic exercise, a wild theory, a possible subject for his graduate work. But by then—”

  “You’d already planned on killing Tara.”

  “She’d taken what she’d heard at my house and built a nice little business on it, dealing to the societies. She was in too deep with Keys and Manuscript. The drugs. The rituals. It was all going to come crashing down. She was nineteen, a drug user, a criminal. She was—”

  “An easy mark.” Just like me. “But Darlington would have figured it out. He knew about the girls that had come before. He was smart enough to connect them to Tara. So you sent the hellbeast to consume him that night.”

  “Both of you, Alex. But it seems Darlington was enough to sate the beast’s appetite. Or maybe he saved you in some final, foolish act of heroism.”

  Or maybe the monster hadn’t wanted to consume Alex. Maybe it had known she might burn going down.

  Sandow sighed. “Darlington liked to talk about how New Haven was always on the brink of success, always about to tip over into good luck and good fortune. He didn’t understand that the city walks a tightrope. On one side, success. On the other, ruin. The magic of this place and the blood shed to retain it is all that stands between the city and the end.”

  This town has been fucked from the start.

  “Did you do it yourself?” Alex asked. “Or did you not have the balls?”

  “I was once a knight of Lethe, you know. I had the will.” He actually sounded proud.

  Isabel had said that Sandow was sleeping off too much bourbon in Belbalm’s study the night Tara died, but he could have slipped out somehow or even used the same portal magic she’d suspected Colin of using. He still would have had to manage a glamour—but of course that was no problem for Sandow. Alex thought of the compact she’d used to get into Tara’s apartment and then the jail. When she’d taken it from the drawer, there had been a smudge on it. But Dawes never would have put it away dirty. Someone had used it before Alex.

  “You put on Lance’s face. You got Tara high so she wouldn’t hurt and then you murdered her. Did you send the gluma after me?”

  “I did. It was risky, maybe foolish. I have no talent for necromancy. But I didn’t know what you might have discovered at the morgue.”

  She remembered Sandow sitting across from her at the Hutch, his teacup perched on his knee, telling her that her power had brought on the gluma attack, that she was to blame for it, for Tara’s murder. “You told me it was my fault.”

  “Well, you weren’t meant to survive. I had to say something.” He sounded so reasonable. “Darlington knew you would be trouble. But I had no idea how much.”

  “You still don’t know,” said Alex. “And Darlington would loathe everything about you.”

  “Darlington was a gentleman. But this isn’t a time for gentlemen.” He picked up his pipe. “Do you know the terrible thing?”

  “That you murdered a girl in cold blood so some rich kids can build a fancy clubhouse? Seems pretty terrible.”

  But he didn’t seem to hear her. “It didn’t work,” he said, shaking his head, his steepled brows creasing his forehead. “The ritual was sound. I built it perfectly. But no nexus appeared.”

  “So Tara died and you’re still screwed?”

  “I would have been if not for you. I’m advocating for Manuscript to be stripped of their tomb. St. Elmo’s will have a new home by the next school year. They’ll get what they want. I’ll get my money. So the question is, Alex, what do you want?”

  Alex stared at him. He was actually trying to negotiate with her. “What do I want? Stop killing people. You don’t get to murder a girl and
disappear Darlington. You don’t get to use me and Dawes and Lethe because you want to live in a nice neighborhood and drive a nice car. We aren’t supposed to be walking that tightrope. We are the goddamn shepherds.”

  Sandow laughed. “We are beggars at the table. They throw us scraps, but the real magic, the magic that makes futures and saves lives, belongs to them. Unless we take a bit of it for ourselves.”

  He lifted his pipe, but instead of lighting it, he tapped the contents of the bowl into his mouth. It glittered against his lips—Astrumsalinas. Starpower. Compulsion. He’d given it to Blake to use on Alex that night at Il Bastone. The night Sandow had sent Blake Keely to kill her.

  Not this time.

  Alex reached out to North and, with a sudden rush, felt him flood into her, filling her with strength. She launched herself toward Sandow.

  “Stay right there!” said the dean. Alex’s steps faltered, wanting only to obey. But the drug had no power over the dead.

  No, said North, the voice clean and true inside her head.

  “No,” said Alex. She shoved the dean down into a chair. His crutches clattered to the floor. “Turner is coming. You’re going to tell him what you did. There isn’t going to be another tomb for St. Elmo’s. This isn’t all going away with fines and suspensions. You’re all going to pay. Fuck the societies, fuck Lethe, and fuck you.”

  “Alexandra?” She and Sandow turned. Professor Belbalm hovered in the doorway, a glass of champagne in her hand. “What’s going on here? Elliot … are you all right?”

  “She attacked me!” he cried. “She’s unwell, unstable. Marguerite, call campus security. Get Colin to help me subdue Alex.”

  “Of course,” said Belbalm, the compulsion taking hold.

  “Professor, wait—” Alex began. She knew it was futile. Under the influence of Starpower, there would be no reasoning with her. “I have a recording. I have proof—”

  “Alexandra, I don’t know what’s gotten into you,” Belbalm said with a sad shake of her head. Then she smiled and winked. “Actually, I know exactly what’s gotten into you. Bertram Boyce North.”

  “Marguerite!” snapped Sandow. “I told you to—”

  “Oh, Elliot, stop.” Professor Belbalm shut the door behind her and turned the lock.

  31

  Early Spring

  Alex stared. It wasn’t possible. How was Belbalm resisting the Starpower? And could she somehow see North?

  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 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.”