“Sophia?” she said, ridiculously.
The figure vanished. It had been there; now it was gone. Julia was certain she hadn’t blinked. She switched on the bedside lamp, saw only her room. Everything was as it should be.
She turned the lamp off again, lay back down, thought of Francis and the man in the fireplace. Do you find yourself susceptible to suggestions? Not long after the disaster, one of Julia’s friends had suggested that she hold a séance, so she might talk with Francis and George again. Julia hadn’t spoken to the woman since.
She lay in the dark. She turned over. Her eyes slowly closed.
Julia was in the ballroom, where the dead had gathered.
All of them were there, fifteen hundred and more, their faces blue and frost-rimed. Sea-water drenched their gowns and dinner-jackets. They stood, they talked; a few danced. Julia walked among them, forcing herself to smile, trying to remember whether she’d invited them, or whether they’d simply arrived. Sophia—where was Sophia?
She caught a flash of a wine-red gown amid the finery. Her daughter was dancing with a man, tall and dark-haired, dressed only in a ragged pair of trousers and a tradesman’s leather apron. Julia recognized him at once. As she watched, he gathered Sophia close, and whispered into her ear; his eyes cut to Julia as he spoke. Sophia smiled, and turned her face to his.
Julia, furious, tried to push through the crowd—but the dead were too cold to touch, and they gathered around her, chilling her through; she was shaking, she would never be warm again—
Go away! she shrieked.
The dead vanished; the room changed. She was in a bedroom—no, a hotel room. Behind her, sheer curtains billowed in a breeze from a half-open window. Sophia trembled upon the bed, her face contorted. The man was bent over her as though examining her. He straightened and became a woman, naked, with long, dark hair.
What have you done to her? Julia cried.
The woman only smiled—
Julia woke, her head pounding. She sat up, one trembling hand to her mouth, wondering if she was about to be ill. A warm breeze trailed across her skin—and then it was gone.
* * *
In her coat and hat Charlotte Levy hurried the half block to the gate on 136th.
The night was cool and windy, the Asylum a weight of dreaming minds. She felt ahead for patrolmen, or runaways looking to jump the fence, but all was quiet. She unlocked the gate and slipped through, walked the path to the stairwell. The dark of the basement greeted her. At the end of the south wing, she placed a hand on the doorknob—You are Charlotte Levy, she told herself, do not forget—and turned it sharply to the left.
Yossele sat in his alcove, slowly examining each of the day’s revelations while Kreindel dreamt above him.
Miss Levy was a cooking instructor. Miss Levy was a golem, too. His master didn’t like her—but his master didn’t know what she was. He, Yossele, was separate from Kreindel. He, not Kreindel, knew the truth of Miss Levy’s nature.
These thoughts were large and unwieldy. He tried to hold them all together, so he could see the larger picture they made, but they slipped from his grasp. He didn’t know how Miss Levy could be both a cooking teacher and a golem. He didn’t know why she had left him so suddenly that morning, though he’d recognized her expression as dismay. He didn’t know how Kreindel’s knowledge of her could be so incomplete. It felt wrong that he knew, and she didn’t.
Distantly, through the maze, came the sound of the doorknob turning.
Yossele came alert. Only now, as the door opened, did he realize that a part of himself had been waiting, hoping that she’d return.
She closed the door behind herself and pulled the locket from around her neck. There was just enough light to read by—she’d be quick, she’d read the words into the air and then forget that anything had ever—
Miss Levy?
The thought, and its hope, pierced her like a spear.
is it Miss Levy?
Her finger shook on the locket’s catch. Of course he’d know her name. He saw Kreindel’s entire life; he would’ve seen her, too. She wanted to cry out, to sob. Everything she had was at risk if he lived, she had to do it, she had to—but—
Miss Levy?
golem?
But here, in this room, she couldn’t pretend. Every buried impulse, every hint of otherness that she’d concealed beneath the polished veneer of Charlotte Levy—everything she’d tried so desperately to leave behind—all of it was rushing to the surface. He was the only other golem she’d ever known, and he sat only a few feet away. She wanted to see him again. Suddenly, she needed to.
She knew the way now, knew the worst of the obstacles: the thicket of cot-legs, the corner that threatened her shins. It must have been Kreindel who’d carved this path. She pictured the small, determined girl hauling at furniture in a pitch-black room, to make a home for her protector.
He was in the alcove, behind the hanging burlap, exactly where she’d left him. She sat, lifted the curtain away, tucked it up into a crevice between stacks of boxes.
“Hello, Yossele,” she said quietly.
His eyes couldn’t widen, but she felt his surprise: How could she know—?
“I heard it in Kreindel’s mind,” she told him.
But—how? He was Kreindel’s golem, so how could Miss Levy . . .
“It’s an ability that I have,” she said. “My master died, soon after I was brought to life. I can’t feel him anymore, so I feel everyone else instead.”
His confusion only deepened. A master could die? But that made no sense! The world itself, vanishing! He struggled to imagine it; he reached out for Kreindel for reassurance—and felt her asleep, safe above him. But for how long? Yes; humans died. He knew this. He pictured Kreindel’s father on the parlor floor, his unseeing eyes. The memory disturbed him. He wouldn’t think about it.
That surprised her. His mind seemed
