But with a steeling breath, I forced myself to enter the hall. Each of the doors save one was closed. The galley, I assumed, so I crept to it . . . then poked my head inside.
On the right was a wall of cabinets, while against the left wall stood a squat, round table with stools tucked below it. The fourth stool was beside the porthole, and Allison Wilcox sat stiffly upon it.
I gave a low cough, slinking inside. “Allison . . .” I hesitated, for what should I say? At last, though, I managed a pathetic “Would you like something to eat?”
She did not look away from the porthole. “You,” she said coolly, “are the first person to acknowledge my presence since we left Paris four hours ago. Everyone else pretends I do not exist.”
“I am . . . sorry?” The apology came out as a question, and to cover the clear lack of pity in my tone, I hurried to the nearest cabinet and swung the door wide. Inside was jug upon jug of water. I moved to the next cabinet, which was filled with lumpy sacks of apples. I withdrew a bruised, red fruit, but when I turned to offer it to Allison, I found her still staring out the window.
“Two weeks, I traveled,” she said. “Over the ocean and through France, but for what?” She swiveled toward me. “So that you could abandon me immediately.”
I wet my lips as guilt—always the guilt—wriggled into my lungs. “I did not ask you to board this airship, Allison. Nor did I ask you to cross an ocean.”
“Oh?” Her eyebrows shot up. “So should I have written a letter about your mother’s death? Your maid—Mary or Marie or whatever her name is—intended to do just that. But I know from personal experience that death is not the sort of news one should drop upon another person.”
My fingers tightened around the apple. “Is that a comment on my own behavior, Allison? When I told you Elijah killed Clarence, are you implying that I dropped that news on you?”
“Of course you did!” She shoved to her feet. “You left Philadelphia only moments later—”
“Because I was being hunted.”
“I realize! But all the same, I wanted to do what you wouldn’t do for me. Besides, I have nothing left for me in Philadelphia, Eleanor! I thought if I came to France, I could join you. In your travels. We could . . .” She wet her lips, and her shoulders sank. As quickly as her temper had grown, it now deflated. “I thought we could . . . mourn together, Eleanor.”
“But what of your mother? You should stay with her.” For you never know when she might be gone.
Allison shook her head. “Mother’s only interest now is in marrying me off.” She leaned expectantly toward me, knowing I related to her predicament.
“I understand you don’t want to get married,” I admitted, “but the fact is that it makes no difference in the end. You cannot stay with us, Allison. You must return to Philadelphia. There’s no place for you here.”
“No place for me here,” she said sharply. “Of course there isn’t. You are Eleanor Fitt. You do not want me now, just as you never wanted my company before.”
“That has nothing to do with it.” I opened my hands, inwardly ordering my temper to stay cool. “The Spirit-Hunters and I almost lost our lives fighting a demon in Paris, Allison. Now we go to Marseille to fight her master. It is not safe.”
Allison wilted back slightly. “A . . . demon? But I thought you were fleeing that necromancer. What happened to him?”
“Marcus,” I said softly. I spun around and shuffled to the table to set down the apple. But then my hands felt too empty. I plucked it back up again and stared at the speckled peel. “The necromancer who died . . . and then returned to life. His name is Marcus.”
“And he is the one who now possesses Elijah’s body,” Allison whispered.
I nodded. “And he was the reason the Spirit-Hunters were in Paris. It was his demon we fought. She was sacrificing people to help Marcus build a spell—a compulsion spell that we believe he used to kidnap Jie.”
Allison’s breath caught. “The Chinese boy?”
“Chinese girl,” I corrected, looking back to Allison’s face. “Marcus and Jie boarded a train bound for Marseille, so now we intend to ambush him there. And we intend to kill him.”
“But what if that is precisely what he wants?” Allison gestured south, toward Marseille. “Perhaps he kidnapped Jie just to lure you in.”
I blinked, surprised Allison would jump to that conclusion so quickly. Of course Joseph, Daniel, and I had thought of that—but we were also intimately familiar with Marcus’s tricks by now. Allison was not. . . .
Yet her cleverness had always managed to catch me off guard in the past—even after she had proven it time and time again.
“Marcus might be luring us,” I finally acknowledged. “We did consider that, but since we have this balloon, we can travel much faster than any train. We intend to reach Marseille first and ambush him.”