Chapter Two #3
“Where were you?” Sam asked Hel once Van Helsing was out of earshot, trying not to sound accusing. It wasn’t Hel’s job to stay by her side, whatever Van Helsing might imply, but Sam had thought she might want to. “I looked everywhere for you.”
Gently, Hel slipped Heathcliff into her pocket. She didn’t meet Sam’s eyes. “We’re in my family’s territory now.”
“On a ship?” Sam laughed.
But Hel wasn’t laughing. “We need to pretend not to care too deeply about each other. My father can scent such weakness a mile away.”
Despite the implication that she might be murdered, a thrill shivered through her.
So Hel did care—deeply. Sam wanted, right then, nothing more than to feel the heat of Hel’s eyes on her, that sharp and fascinated gaze, the way she looked at Sam like she was a puzzle in want of solving. How she made Sam ache to be solved.
“Hel, he already knows.” Sam reached for Hel’s cheek. For an agonizing moment, Hel leaned into her touch, before pulling away, her lips scraping Sam’s palm so briefly it might have been an accident.
“He knows I find you useful,” Hel bit off. “That you’re a valuable game piece. Which is not the same thing.”
Sam’s own words thrown back at her.
“Not the same thing as what?” Sam demanded. If Hel was bent on denying Sam, she wanted her to say it.
At last, Hel looked at her, and it stole the breath from Sam’s lungs.
“You know what,” Hel rasped.
Sam was suddenly unable to meet Hel’s gaze. “So what do we do? We can’t simply avoid each other; we’re working a case together.”
“We’ll have to,” Hel said.
It was going to be Paris all over again, Sam could feel it. Hel was going to slip away, rousing the Society’s suspicion against her and leaving Sam alone with Van Helsing. Only this time, Sam wouldn’t be able to follow without making everything worse. Unless . . .
“What if we make a game of it?” Sam said, a plan coming together in her mind.
“A game?” Hel furrowed her brow. But she didn’t, Sam noticed, say no.
“All we need to do is tell them a story.” Sam stepped closer, warming to the idea.
She’d read about this before, in her romantic detective novels, which were, admittedly, fiction.
But the theory was sound. It was something she used to be good at.
“A story they want to believe. Say, that you’ve finally tired of your favorite game piece . . .”
Hel leaned in to meet her. “And that you’re done with my deceptions.”
“Just so,” Sam said. They were so close it felt like a dare, but Hel didn’t back away.
“If this is to work,” Hel warned, her voice catching, “we’ll have to give them reason to believe we’re at odds.”
“Naturally.” Sam swallowed. “You mustn’t take anything I say to heart.” It would be harder than that, and there would be none of this—whatever this was. At least, not in public. Unless . . .
“We can use a book code,” Sam said quietly, quickly. “Meet in private. Speak when no one is watching.” Perhaps do other things, beyond speak.
It sounded almost exciting when she put it like that.
“All right,” Hel said at last, leaning back. “We’ll try it. But if it doesn’t work—”
“I know,” Sam said before Hel could say it, and she hesitated. “Are you certain you shouldn’t change your name? People won’t . . . react poorly?”
“There are so many Moriartys in Ireland there are nicknames for the different branches,” Hel said dismissively.
Before Sam could ask whether her particular branch had a nickname, the jingle of spurs cut her off.
“Is that so?” Van Helsing said, arms crossed, as if Hel had let slip something vitally important.
“Yes, and we all know each other, and commit crimes together,” Hel said dryly.
Van Helsing scowled. “The ship is setting off soon. I’d advise you to deboard, unless you want to swim.”
“So soon?” Sam said, surprised. “Don’t they have to resupply?”
“Apparently, some otterish sea monster has taken to destroying English ships,” Van Helsing said.
Sam blinked. “Just the English ones?”
“The Dobhar-chú,” Hel murmured. Another name Sam recognized from her reading, though she was more accustomed to their informal name: King Otters, called so for their size rather than any sovereignty.
From what she recalled, there were always two.
Mated pairs. Kill one, and the other would chase you over land and sea until they tore out your throat.
It perhaps said something about Sam’s state of mind that she thought it romantic.
“The captain is being overcautious. The Dobhar-chú, like most Irish monsters, is nocturnal.”
“Not anymore, apparently,” Van Helsing grumbled.
“I told them I’d take care of it, but they said it destroys the ship before surfacing.
Punches right through the hull, then plucks the sailors out of the drink like it’s bobbing for apples.
” And his revolvers wouldn’t be able to touch it until it surfaced.
No wonder Van Helsing was so sour—there was a monster and he wasn’t permitted to kill it.
“But why didn’t they tell us the problem is nautical in nature?” Sam asked. What they needed was a whaling ship, with harpoons to tire it and force it to the surface.
“Because it’s not our quarry,” Hel said. She was right: The Dobhar-chú was killing people, not disappearing them. This, then, was part of the aforementioned increase in violent abnormal phenomena. It made one wonder why this wasn’t their assignment.
Van Helsing led the way onto the pier—seagulls shrieking and wheeling above.
It occurred to Sam that they’d arrived in the Dublin Port without so much as a snapped rope or runaway train.
It hardly felt real. They weren’t out of the woods yet—selkies might grab their feet from under the docks, dragging them under the cold and crashing waves, or a horse might spook in the street—but regardless . . . Professor Moriarty was late.
Professor Moriarty was never late, and if Hel’s suspicions were correct, if her father knew precisely where they were and what they were doing .
. . It sent an uneasy feeling worming through Sam’s gut.
Was this how Hel’s father showed his approval?
Sam wasn’t certain he knew the word. More likely, it was a trap, and they were walking right into it.
Sam’s journal burned in her pocket, the message she’d translated from her grandfather’s numbers whispering in the back of her mind: Don’t follow me. Saint Brigid hide you and keep you safe. Love always, Grandpa.
The necklace he had given her, a medal of St. Brigid, was a reassuring weight against her chest.
Ten years ago, Professor Moriarty had stolen Sam’s grandfather from her.
She couldn’t imagine what was so important about an old man who liked to tinker with radiotelegraphs that Professor Moriarty had chased him all the way to the United States.
Nor did she have the slightest idea how to track him down now that she was finally in Ireland.
It wasn’t as if he’d be listed in the Blue Book, and she doubted anyone would have seen him—a man in his position was unlikely to be permitted to wander.
It was a trap, it had to be. And Sam recalled what Van Helsing had said in the catacombs of Paris: It’s not a trap if you know about it. It’s an opportunity.
For perhaps the first time, Sam hoped Van Helsing was right.