Chapter Four #2
Hel bent to examine the bark of the tree.
Even from where she was standing, Sam could see that there was something off about it.
Not the bark—the moss. It was . . . patchy.
Hel scratched at one of the brown spots.
It flaked beneath her fingernails. There was, Sam saw, almost a pattern to it.
A circular spread of them, like the coat of a leopard.
“Rock salt,” Hel said, eyes grazing the bark. “I should have known. It kills moss. The Viscount must have loaded his shotgun with it.” The evidence would have been washed away with the morning rain. It might explain why people had heard shots but no bullets could be found.
Salt and iron. Ghosts, Sam thought. Though salt and iron were also effective against the Folk and all manner of minor monstrosities.
“Do you think they misidentified whatever was after them?” Sam asked.
“Unlikely,” Hel said. “Whatever else they were, the Viscount and the Duke were experienced field agents.”
Sam bit her lip. “What if it was something they didn’t expect? Something that shouldn’t be here?”
Hel frowned up at the chain in the tree. “Plausible. Though even with correct identification, a field agent can be . . . overcome.”
“Overcome,” Sam repeated, shuddering as what Hel was suggesting sank in. “You mean the monsters might have swarmed them, like locusts.”
For some reason, the idea that there might be more than, say, three of any given monster at once, that they might come in throngs, had never occurred to Sam. It should have. Dr. Gastrell had been working his way up to a swarm of his own when Sam and Hel had caught up with him.
Sam turned to see Hel shrugging off her suit jacket and loosening her tie.
“What are you doing?” Sam felt herself blushing as Hel rolled up her sleeves.
“Getting that chain,” Hel answered, and then she leapt, catching a knot on the tree with the toe of her shoe and pushing off to grasp a branch.
A university student shouted in disbelief and pointed at Hel, all caution abandoned.
Passersby turned their heads, wandering over to watch as Hel pulled herself up within reach of another branch.
This, she realized as she eased away from the gathering crowd, was her chance. If the Viscount and the Duke had left anything behind—some token, some message—Sam had to find it.
Sam knelt, tugging off her gloves to run her hands over the grass, the blades tickling her palms. She dug her fingers into patches of withered clover, feeling the dirt beneath her nails.
The small hairs rose on the nape of her neck.
Sam jerked to her feet, glancing over her shoulder, certain she would see Van Helsing storming toward her—or worse, waiting and watching, readying himself to do what he thought must be done. But no one was there.
This was useless. Drawing in a deep breath, Sam closed her eyes and concentrated on her other senses. The wind tugging her skirts against her legs. The scent of humus and green things. The taste of damp in the air. The murmur of university students, and—
That song. It slipped through her thoughts like a secret; if only she should listen—
No! Sam pressed her hands to her ears, entirely too aware of how strange she must look. The song quieted. Almost at once, Sam spotted it; or rather, she smelled it: wet metal. Her eyes flew open. There, hidden beneath a leaf like a beetle, was a carnelian cuff link. Her fingers closed around it.
“Lose something?” a voice whispered in her ear.
Sam whirled, her fist tightening on the cuff link, only to find herself adrift in a sea of fog, with an echo of laughter for company—and she wasn’t entirely certain that existed outside her head. “Who are you?”
“Who are you?” It echoed back at her, the emphasis in the wrong spot. Sam turned in a slow circle. Shadows moving in the whiteness.
“Hel?” The sycamore tree was gone, and Hel and the crowd of students with it. Sam’s stomach tightened. The cuff link must have triggered a vision. She opened her hand to let it fall, but it wasn’t there anymore. Nothing was there but laughter, and even that was fading.
This wasn’t a vision. This was something else entirely.
“Wait!” Sam chased after the sound, suddenly certain in the uncanny way of dreams that if that voice were to slip away, if it were to fade entirely, she might never find her way free. She might wander lost forever, just one more shadow trapped in the Otherworld.
Was this what had happened to the Viscount and the Duke? Sam thought of Hel coming down from the tree to find Sam gone, adding her name to the list of the lost.
No. Sam wouldn’t let that happen.
Think, Sam scolded herself. She was a researcher, for goodness’ sake; if there was anything she was good at, it was knowing things.
She must have read some case file, some compendium that could help.
It didn’t seem like a monster. At least, not one she’d heard of.
Sam seemed to recall reading about patches of grass that you might step on only to find yourself having strayed into the Otherworld, a red mountain before you whichever way you turned, or an endless sea, or a forest thick with fog.
Stray sod, it was called—though its enchantment was supposed to fade with the light of day.
Theories were mixed on whether it was a turf enchanted by the Folk or a tear in the fabric between worlds.
To escape, you either needed a piece of bread tied about with a red string—though if the string came off, you would have to cast the bread aside, else you’d never escape—or to turn your clothing inside out, and Sam was fresh out of bread.
Cheeks burning, but as out of ideas as she was of baked goods, Sam unbuttoned her jacket, her fingers slipping on the buttons in her haste. Feeling quite undressed, she had barely threaded her arms through when she heard a mechanical click.
Sam whirled, clutching her jacket together at her chest. The fog thinned, and she was startled to find that she was back in Saint Stephen’s Green.
Sam might have put the whole thing down to nerves and a particularly aggressive patch of water vapor if it weren’t for the fact that she wasn’t by the sycamore anymore.
Instead, she’d somehow found her way to the island in the heart of the lake—an island to which there wasn’t, Sam noted, a bridge—and yet her skirts were bone dry.
More importantly, she wasn’t alone. Lounging on the lower branch of an ash tree was a woman, curiosity alight in her kohl-lined amber eyes. Three ravens perched in the tree beside her, eyeing her warily, as if they knew of her association with Hel and begrudged her that shot.
The hairs on the nape of Sam’s neck rose. While surely not all the ravens of Ireland answered to the Moriartys, not knowing was unsettling. This, Sam understood, was the brilliance of Ruari’s training common birds. They were everywhere, and any time you saw one, you thought of him.
The strange woman had light brown skin dusted with freckles and canines just a little too sharp for Sam’s comfort.
Her sleek black hair was pulled into a high bun with tendrils that framed her face, and she wore a white shirtwaist and brown wool skirt.
A satchel filled with books was slung over her shoulder, a pair of brass-and-steel binoculars around her neck.
She looked as if she might have wandered out of one of Sam’s more daring daydreams. Human enough, at first glance; but there were many creatures that might take on a mortal’s seeming when it suited.
Fetches, pookas, changelings . . . and then there was the matter of the ravens.
Sam eyed her warily. The other woman was winding a key on the back of a black cardboard-and-leatherette box. That click. It was a Kodak Brownie No. 2 camera.
“Do you always take pictures of women undressing?” Sam said sharply.
The woman laughed. “Not always.” Her voice was smooth and melodic and distinctly lower than the voice she’d heard in the fog. Human, then. Probably. It was said pookas had amber eyes. “Only when they look like you.”
Sam’s cheeks burned, certain the woman couldn’t mean what she thought she meant. “Utterly lost? In need of assistance?”
The woman hmmed, and there was a vibration to it that Sam felt all the way to the tips of her toes. It was practically indecent.
“Like a maiden in a fairy tale,” the woman said, bending her head to keep eye contact with Sam in a way she found inexplicably alluring. “Turning your coat inside out against Themselves.”
“Perhaps because that’s exactly what I was doing,” Sam said tartly as she clutched her jacket together. “I trust you can hold off on more photographs until I’m properly dressed?”
“I’ll try to restrain myself,” the woman said, sounding amused. Sam set about righting her jacket before anyone else could come along and deepen her embarrassment. “I have to say, you’re not at all what I expected, Miss Harker.”
Sam’s fingers froze on the buttons of her jacket.
“I’m not—” she began, but caught sight of the gleam in the other woman’s eyes.
She knew. Sam didn’t know how, but she did.
She was only waiting to see what Sam would do with it.
There is nothing he does not see in Ireland, no whisper he does not hear. “How do you know who I am?”
“Why, from Themselves, of course. They whispered it in my ear at night. How else did you think I heard?” the woman said, before adding, conspiratorially, “Also, the tall Dutch fellow is very loud.”
Sam winced as she pulled on her gloves. She couldn’t disagree with that. “I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage.”
“Ah, of course, where are my manners. Allow me to introduce myself.” The woman slipped down from the tree, brushing her hands on her skirts. They left dark, wet streaks on the fabric—however she’d gotten to the island, it was honest.
“I’m Róisín Shinagh,” she said, stepping closer and offering her hand. Sam took it instinctively.