Chapter Four #3
“Not the unnaturalist?” Sam said, a fluttering in the cage of her ribs, like wings.
“You’ve heard of me?” Miss Shinagh said, a look of pleasure crossing her face.
Heard of her—Sam had read all of her work.
Her writings on the seasonal aspects of the Otherworld in Ireland were legendary amongst librarians of abnormal phenomena, her dissertation on the locational variations in common Folk without comparison.
It was said she’d been lost to the Otherworld for twenty-seven years, and that in escaping, she’d uncovered the tangled workings of their passage and could slip through the veil and back again whenever she pleased.
Rumor had it, she’d gone a little Other herself. Sam believed it. If this was truly Róisín Shinagh, she didn’t look a day over twenty-three.
“I’ve read all your work,” Sam said, feeling flustered.
There was talk that Miss Shinagh was the muse of the infamous poet Thomas Keene, whose yearning poetry was steeped in the Otherworld.
He’d proposed to her three times, and each time she’d turned him down.
He’d been unable to ask a fourth, his tongue tying itself in a knot whenever he summoned the courage to try.
Sam had always thought it an exaggeration. Seeing her, Sam wasn’t so sure.
Miss Shinagh tilted her head, her lips quirking. “And here I thought hunters couldn’t read.”
“Oh, I’m not really a hunter,” Sam confessed. “I’m a researcher who escaped into the field.”
“Escaped!” Miss Shinagh laughed. “You make it sound like some sort of purgatory.”
“Not at all,” Sam rushed to say. “I love the library. It’s just . . .”
“I understand,” Miss Shinagh confided, conspiratorial. She stepped closer, and her scent slipped around Sam like a secret, velvet as night-blooming jasmine. “I never could leave the stories to the books, either.”
Sam swallowed, suddenly unable to look at her. “It’s that, but also, there are people who need my help.”
The Viscount and the Duke. Her grandfather. Hel, even if she was too stubborn to admit it.
“Ah,” Miss Shinagh said, leaning back. “The Society field agents who disappeared. They were friends of yours?”
Friends was putting it a bit strong. “They were kind to me.”
“A pity.” Miss Shinagh hmmed again, before hefting the camera. “Well, I suppose you’ll be needing this, then.”
“Yes, please,” Sam said at once, remembering the photo of her undressing. Except, of course, that wouldn’t be why Miss Shinagh was offering. “Wait, why do I need your camera?”
“Because it’s not mine,” Miss Shinagh said. “I liberated it from a sycamore tree the morning after your friends disappeared.”
“And you didn’t report it?” Sam exclaimed. If the Viscount and the Duke had been using a camera, it might hold clues that would allow Sam and Hel to pick up their trail. To find them, wherever they were, and bring them home.
Miss Shinagh shrugged. “Why would I help the English? If enough of them disappear, perhaps they’ll take the hint and stop coming.
They’re terrible houseguests, you know. Always taking all your things and redecorating your house to suit themselves.
As if the whole world were merely a mirror in which to admire their reflection.
Look how much trouble you Americans had shoving them out the door. ”
This, Sam realized, was precisely the sort of person Detective Lynch had meant them to look out for. A woman with uncanny knowledge of the Otherworld and an affinity for its thousand monstrous faces. A woman with a tinderbox for a mind and a reflexive dislike of the English.
She had the motive and the opportunity. There was the question of means, of course, but if anyone could figure out how to set a monster on someone, it would be the woman who had spent so many years amongst them.
Sam ought to question her, but without Hel, the thought was perilous.
Subtlety wasn’t one of her strengths, and Miss Shinagh already knew what Sam was about.
“I’m not the one who disappeared them, if that’s what you’re wondering,” Miss Shinagh said, and Sam flushed. Was she truly so transparent? “I would have, of course. But I don’t have to.”
“Because Ireland is rising up in defense of her people?” Sam asked carefully, remembering the verses from Keogh’s. The Irish had, as Hel might say, reason to be upset with the British Empire.
“If you’re a poet, perhaps,” Miss Shinagh said, and she paused, her gaze catching on a Georgian townhouse across the lake, workers scrambling over it like bees on a hive, repairing what appeared to be bite marks taken out of the stone.
She nodded with her chin. “Do you know, it used to be the custom to seek out the approval of the Otherworld before building a house? Where I grew up, you would pile stones at the four corners and see if any of them were knocked over by morning. If they were, you picked a different plot.”
“And if you didn’t,” Sam said, “you had to build special doors in your house to let the Otherworld through, or else suffer for it.”
“That’s right,” Miss Shinagh said approvingly.
“But the English see the Otherworld not as a part of nature, but as an infestation of sorts. The houses they build ask no permissions, and if the Otherworld objects? Well. The English send people like you to beat it back into submission. Is it any wonder it is finally fighting back?”
“They build no doors,” Sam said softly.
“They build no doors,” Miss Shinagh confirmed, and Sam had the oddest impression they weren’t talking about Ireland anymore, but about magic. About wrath. About Sam.
“But giving it a door is dangerous,” Sam said carefully. “People might get hurt.”
Miss Shinagh shrugged. “People are already hurt. Sometimes they just forget because they’ve been holding on to it for so long.
Besides, building a wall around something does not make it go away.
You can no more suppress a thing’s true nature than you can hold back the tides.
It will out. Better you give it a door than force it to find its own. ”
“I don’t understand,” Sam protested. “Why are you helping me?”
“Who says I’m helping you?” Miss Shinagh said, raising an eyebrow. She laughed, breaking the spell, the strange intensity gone as if it had never been. “Let’s just say I haven’t given up on you, yet. Besides,” she said with a sly smile, “it’s not like I’m just going to give the camera to you.”
“Oh. Right. Of course.” Sam pulled out her purse. She wasn’t certain how much a camera cost these days. “Is five shillings sufficient?”
Miss Shinagh cocked her head. “Is that all your field agents are worth? I could pay you five shillings right now to go home.”
“It might just be pictures of flowers,” Sam objected.
“It might,” Miss Shinagh returned. “Are you willing to take that risk?”
Sam wasn’t, and Miss Shinagh knew it. “What about a book? I have access to the Society’s library. There are plenty of rare volumes within.”
“Why, are you offering to steal for me, Miss Harker?” Miss Shinagh said, her voice dropping to a purr.
“I—I didn’t mean . . .”
“More’s the pity.” Miss Shinagh sighed, as if the theft, and not the book, was what made the offer interesting—the compromise of Sam’s values on her behalf. She eased closer, her eyes flicking to Sam’s lips. “Is that all you have to offer?”
Sam blushed, a shiver coursing through her, as she gripped the little silver-and-iron knife Hel had given her hard enough to bruise. It was as if she’d stepped into a fairy tale, and while she didn’t know for certain, Sam suspected her next offer would be her last—for such things ran in threes.
It was like a riddle: What is the difference between a stolen book and one freely given?
“Well?” Miss Shinagh asked, toying with the camera. I never could leave the stories to the books.
An idea sparked in Sam then. It was dangerous—Sam couldn’t help but recall the tales her grandfather had told her, of such tricks as the Folk might play on those foolish enough to deal with them.
The Folk were notoriously clever, known for slipping through the cracks in promises, when they didn’t weave your words into a noose and hang you with it.
Miss Shinagh wasn’t one of the Folk. Not precisely. But she’d been influenced sufficiently by her time with them that she wasn’t entirely human anymore either. Sam hesitated. She was in over her head.
But Miss Shinagh was losing interest. “Perhaps I was wrong about—”
“A favor,” Sam blurted, scrambling to find the right words. “So long as it is of equal worth and does not cause harm to anyone by way of my action or inaction.”
“A favor.” The way Miss Shinagh’s amber eyes lit up, Sam knew she’d been right. Miss Shinagh wasn’t seeking recompense—she was seeking a good story. She was seeking an open door. “Whatever I want?”
“Within my conditions,” Sam said evenly. “And any of those you choose to set.”
“Very well, a favor.” Miss Shinagh stepped so close Sam blushed, looking up into her gleaming eyes, thinking of the stories she’d heard, of magical contracts sealed with a kiss.
But Miss Shinagh only pressed the Kodak Brownie into Sam’s hands.
“Don’t forget.” Her fingers lingered on Sam’s like a promise.
“Sam!” The voice was coming from behind her.
“Hel!” Sam cried. She turned to see Hel emerging from the fog, the rusty iron chain wrapped around her shoulder like an epaulette. Heathcliff was on her head, the only dry thing about her, her shirt clinging to her in ways that made Sam feel things she was determined not to let on about.
“Are you all right?” Hel murmured, uncommonly close, as she took in the disheveled state of Sam’s clothing, the pink in her cheeks. Heathcliff squeaked and abandoned his drenched ship for Sam’s warmer vestments, nestling in the hook of her scarf. “You’re not hurt?”
“Yes—I mean no, I’m not hurt.” Sam glanced over her shoulder, but Miss Shinagh was gone. “I saw—”
A warning flashed in Hel’s eyes as she stepped back, and the words died in Sam’s throat. A familiar jingle sounded in the fog.
She lifted her gaze to see Van Helsing striding toward them, dripping, his scowl fixed on Hel. “You were supposed to be keeping an eye on her.”
Hel shrugged. “I told you she couldn’t have gotten far.”
“And you. Why aren’t you wet?” Van Helsing eyed Sam narrowly, as if her visions somehow allowed her to fly, and it occurred to Sam that if she started to go monstrous, they might.
“I was caught in a bit of stray sod,” Sam said, lifting her chin. It could have happened to anyone. “By the time I escaped, I was here.”
“Stray sod.” Hel cursed. “We’re lucky she wasn’t halfway to County Clare.”
“I met Róisín Shinagh,” Sam said, though she carefully avoided mentioning the ravens. She didn’t think they were Moriarty ravens. Didn’t want to know what Hel would do if she suspected they were.
“The revolutionary?” Van Helsing frowned.
“The unnaturalist,” Sam corrected. “She gave me this.” She held out the camera, eliding the bit where she owed the woman a favor.
Something told her Van Helsing would not approve.
“Said she found it near the sycamore yesterday morning. Do you think it might have belonged to the Viscount and the Duke?”
“Doubtful,” Van Helsing scoffed. “Miss Shinagh is a known radical. Why would she help you? Most likely, she’s playing a trick on you. Whatever’s on that camera, you can be sure it will lead you in the opposite direction of the Viscount and the Duke.”
It was possible, but Sam didn’t think so. It was more of a test. A game. The woman had been in the Otherworld a long time. Besides, she got the impression Miss Shinagh liked her.
“There’s only one way to find out,” Hel said, a gleam in her eye. “Trinity College will have the means to develop the film.”
“If you are determined to waste your time, it will have to be tomorrow.” Van Helsing tilted his head back, the tall collar of his coat brushing his stubbled jaw as he took in the darkening sky. The crescent moon cut through the tumbling clouds like a scythe. “The Crown has instituted a curfew.”