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?”