Chapter Three
George Keogh’s Pub, Dublin (Baile átha Cliath)
Five Days Before Samhain
“This is a waste of time,” Van Helsing grumbled.
The fog rubbed against Sam’s skin like a cat as it threaded the streets of Dublin, passersby and carriages seeming to emerge as if from a dream.
The aforementioned waste of time was a pub, taking its ease on the corner under the stained-glass eye of a baroque church.
It endeared itself to Sam at once by looking like nothing so much as a leather-bound book slid between brick apartments, with its green cornice and ornate red scrollwork and George Keogh painted across the front like a title on a spine.
Despite the shadow of Professor Moriarty, Sam couldn’t repress a sense of excitement.
She had heard stories of the pubs in Ireland that made them sound like something of a living library.
It was where all the best poetry was found, and half the best people.
A place where authors bickered with university students, building castles out of words in place of cards and daring each other to greater flights of wit; where informants drank alongside revolutionaries, and Gaelic revivalists alongside titans of industry.
A place, in short, where everyone was welcome. Except, of course, for women.
But then, Van Helsing had to be good for something.
“We should be at Dublin Castle by now, getting debriefed,” Van Helsing groused. “Not going to get a pint of ale.”
“We already agreed,” Sam reminded him. A woman could, she recalled, go into a pub, were she escorted by a man.
“That’s before I knew he was recommending a pub!” Van Helsing said, exasperated.
The captain, in his wisdom, had advised Van Helsing that he ought to see George Keogh about a priest. Heeding his wisdom, they’d sent their luggage on ahead to the Shelbourne and gone in search of the man.
It hadn’t taken long to find out George Keogh was the proprietor of a pub by the same name, and that a priest was, by extension, a sort of drink, if a variety none of them had heard of.
“And you don’t think that was some sort of code?” Sam said.
Van Helsing snorted. “Don’t be ridiculous.
Why should he need to tell us where to get the details of our assignment in code?
We’re field agents, not spies.” All that, he managed without an ounce of irony.
“I doubt the man even knows who we are. He probably just thought we looked thirsty. Moriarty, tell me you’re not on board with this. ”
Hel shrugged. “Worst case scenario, we get a drink.” She looked as if she could use one.
When Van Helsing pushed open the door, the clinking of glasses and laughter washed over them.
The floorboards were worn, and Sam caught glimpses of yellow walls between whiskey mirrors and beer advertisements, theater posters and photographs.
The air was rife with smoke and poetry, students in their black gowns arguing over Yeats, while others were finding increasingly absurd ways to declare their affection for their beverage of choice.
The bar’s low counter was crowded with suited men lounging on comfortable barstools, contemplating their pints, while the barman measured out coffee, rice, and snuff for them to carry home.
A few of the younger men—in flat caps and the trendier telescope crown hats—paused to watch as Van Helsing pushed his way through to signal the barman.
“If it’s not too much trouble,” Van Helsing said, wearing his discomfort like a coat, “I’d like a priest.” Laughter chased his comments, and Van Helsing scowled.
“Well, you’d best be off to confession, then, hadn’t you?” the barman said. He flipped a glass in his hand without looking and added a splash of amber-colored whiskey.
The look on Van Helsing’s face. “What?”
“The confession box,” one of the students clarified as the others sniggered.
“You know, the snug,” said another.
And here the Dutchman had thought he spoke English.
“He means the closet by the entrance,” Hel said, pushing past, and laughter and groans broke out around them. “Come on.”
It seemed that what Sam had taken for the corner of the pub had, in fact, a door. But rather than opening it, the barman slid a small hatch aside and placed the whiskey on a ledge within, before sliding it closed again. A moment later, there was a click and the door swung ajar.
“Let me know if you require more inspiration for your prayers,” the barman said, pressing his palms together as they entered the snug. The door clicked shut behind them.
The lock, Sam realized, was on the inside. Her gaze caught on the buzzer next to the hatch. Her stomach twisted, and suddenly, she was back in the petite salon in Lapérouse, where no one would come, not even if you screamed as a Beast devoured your heart, unless you pushed that button.
But there the comparison ended. Where the petite salon had been lush and carnal, the snug gave Sam more the feeling of being tucked into a cigar box.
Paneled mahogany and rolled glass stretched nearly to the embossed ceiling, redolent with the scent of wood and tobacco.
A cracked leather bench sat behind the smallest of tables, where, waiting for them, was a man still very much in possession of his heart. Anatomically speaking, at least.
The man wore a flat cap and a sack suit under a long wool coat, his clothing remarkable only in its unremarkableness.
He was of average build, with one of those faces that was pleasant enough, but which you couldn’t seem to fix in your mind.
The only thing that stood out about him was a curious stillness.
But even as Sam noted it, that changed, too.
This man was dangerous. She could feel it in her marrow, even if she couldn’t have said why.
Something about the way he blended into his surroundings, how he seemed to be watching everything at once without watching anything at all.
Here was someone as proficient in the secret language of glances as Sam was, only she had a feeling he didn’t use that proficiency in quite the same way.
The man took a sip of the whiskey the barman had passed through the hatch. “Lock the door, would you?”
Hel didn’t move, didn’t so much as take her eyes off him. Sam hesitated, glancing back at the lock, wondering what they knew about this man, really, and whether they ought to lock themselves in a room with him. Van Helsing turned it with a click.
“There now, that’s better,” the man said. “Thank you all for coming.”
“We are gratified to be here,” Van Helsing said, holding out his hand. The man took it, and Van Helsing held it as he leaned in, his forearm tightening. “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure. What branch of the Society do you work for, Mr. . . . ?”
“Lynch,” the man said with an Irish accent. “And I don’t. I’m in charge of fixing this problem, Mr. Van Helsing.”
“He’s Special Branch,” Hel said, an edge to her voice.
Sam looked at Hel sharply. “How did you—”
“His accent is technically Irish, but it isn’t from anywhere,” Hel said.
“His shoes are old, the leather creased, but the tread is unworn—artificially aged—and the way he sips that whiskey he ordered shows he has no affection for it. He’s playing at what he thinks of as Irish.
Put together with the game he made of drawing us here, who else could it be? ”
Detective Lynch favored her with what both was and was not a smile. “As astute and ill-humored as your reputation, I see, Dr. Moriarty.”
Rumor had it that the Special Branch had eyes and ears in every criminal organization and a tail on every corrupted official, with members that had integrated themselves into the governments of twenty-three countries.
In one instance, it was said they’d even penetrated the Irish Nationalist movement and instigated a plot to blow up Queen Victoria at Westminster Abbey, all in a ploy to radicalize and then imprison as many separatists as possible.
All of which was to say, they were spies, and this was a royal mission of the utmost importance and utmost secrecy. No wonder Mr. Wright hadn’t been briefed—he didn’t have the clearance.
This, then, would also be why the matter hadn’t been left to the fairy doctors.
“Far from home, aren’t we, Detective Lynch?” Hel said.
Detective Lynch lifted his glass of whiskey to the light. “I think you’ll find all of the British Empire is our home, Dr. Moriarty.”
Van Helsing cleared his throat and leaned forward. “What do you have for us, then?”
Detective Lynch set his briefcase on the small table. Turning it to face them, he clicked it open. Inside was a single file. Van Helsing swept it up before Sam could so much as protest, and flipped through it as he paced the narrow room. Detective Lynch removed the briefcase to the floor.
“Well?” Hel demanded. Van Helsing tossed the file down, silvertone photographs spilling out across the table.
“What can you tell me about them?” Van Helsing demanded.
“The first is James Pearse,” Detective Lynch said, tapping the edge of one of the photographs. “Proprietor of the Pearse Textile Factory in Belfast. The second son of one of Ireland’s few industrialized cattle ranchers, and an avid participant in motorsports.”
Sam slid the picture out from the pile and nearly dropped it.
The man’s flesh twisted and bulged in the still frame of the photograph, as if he no longer had bones, his skin just a shell for something else.
Sam bit back a gasp, breathing in a fragrance that was at once hypnotic and nauseatingly sweet.
The song only she could hear thrummed through her, eerie and bewitching. Sam found herself listening closer, felt as if she could almost hear words—
Sam wrenched her fingers away. The photograph fell to the table.
“All right, Miss Harker?” Van Helsing said dangerously.
“Yes, it’s just . . . this is a lot,” Sam said, her voice shaking.