and skirt. A blonde in a plumed hat appeared, skin like a faded apricot, her plaid dress high-necked, her waist cinched to an impossible size; then a black girl, shimmering in a soft pink cardigan and circle skirt, her hair pressed into shining waves. One after another
they pulled themselves from Belbalm, joining the crowd of Grays.
Gladys was the last and she did not want to come. Alex could feel it. Despite all of the
years she’d spent cowering within Daisy’s consciousness, she was afraid to leave her body.
“She doesn’t get to keep you,” Alex pleaded. “Don’t be afraid.”
A girl emerged, barely visible, a scrap of a Gray. She was a far younger version of Belbalm, slender and sharp-featured, her white hair bound in a braid. Gladys turned to stare at herself, at Belbalm in her black tunic and rings. She held up her hands as if to ward her off, still frightened, shrinking back into the crowd as the other girls gathered her to them.
Belbalm opened her mouth as if to scream, but the only sound that emerged was that
high teakettle whistle Alex had heard the dean make.
North was beside Alex now; maybe he’d been there all along.
“She isn’t a monster,” he said, begging. “She’s just a girl.”
“She knew better,” said Alex. There was no room for mercy in her. “She just thought
her life was more important than all of ours.”
“I didn’t know she was capable of such things,” he said over the clamor of the crowd.
“I never knew she had such a heart.”
“You never knew her at all.”
Careful Daisy, who had kept her secrets close, who had seen ghosts, who had longed to
see the world. Wild Daisy, cut down before she could even start to live. Cruel Daisy, who
had refused her fate and had stolen life after life to keep herself fed.
Alex spoke the final name. “Daisy Fanning Whitlock!”
She thrust out her hand and felt Daisy’s spirit inch toward her, slowly, grudgingly, fighting to hold on to her body like a plant determined to curl its roots in the ground and
remain.
Alex took strength from the Grays surrounding her, passing through her. She let her mind form teeth, let them sink into Daisy’s consciousness. She pulled.
Daisy’s soul hurtled toward her. Alex cast it free before it could enter her and seize hold.
For the briefest moment, she glimpsed a dark-haired, pixie-faced girl in wide skirts and
ruffled sleeves. Her chest had been blown open by a gunshot; her mouth was stretched in a
scream. The Grays surged forward.
North threw himself in front of Daisy. “Please,” he said. “Leave her be!”
But Gladys stepped forward, thin as air. “No.”
“No,” chorused the lost girls. Sophie and Zuzanna, Paoletta and Effie and Colina.
The Grays surged past North. They fell upon Daisy in a whirling horde.
“Mors irrumat omnia,” Alex whispered. Death fucks us all.
The Wheel spun and Alex felt her stomach lurch. She thrust her hands out, trying to find something, anything, to hold on to. She smacked into something solid, fell to her
knees. The room went suddenly still.
Alex was on the carpeted floor of the president’s office. She looked up, her head still
spinning. The Grays were gone—all but the Bridegroom. She could hear her heart
pounding in her chest and, through the door, the sounds of the party. The dean lay dead in
the desk chair. When she closed her eyes, an afterimage of the Wheel burned blue against
her lids.
Belbalm’s body had collapsed in on itself, her skin dissolving to a powdery husk, her
bones crumbling as the weight of a hundred years fell upon them. She was little more than
a pile of ash.
The Bridegroom stood staring at the heap of dust that had once been a girl. He knelt and reached out, but his hand passed right through it.
Alex used the edge of the desk to pull herself to her feet. She stumbled to the French
doors that led onto the garden. Her legs felt wobbly. She was pretty sure the wound in her
side had reopened. She unlocked the door and cold air blew through. It felt clean on her
flushed cheeks and scattered Belbalm’s ashes.