Chapter Seven #2
“I thought it meant a few sharp words,” Sam said. “Not this.” She hadn’t thought Hel would be able to leave Sam in danger, that she would be able to stop herself from coming to her aid, the way Sam would for her, despite having all the martial prowess of a moldy turnip.
“If I’d come running, it would have confirmed my affections, and then you would have been in far more danger than you were last night,” Hel said reasonably.
She passed the strip of film through a tray of water, once, twice, three times, keeping it in constant motion.
“My father might have sent the ghost himself, just to measure my reaction. I couldn’t let him win. ”
“Win.” Sam was briefly at a loss for words. “I might have died!”
Hel scoffed. “Hardly.” She continued to move the film, this time through the developer, pulling it through as an eerie fog-like film crept over the images.
“You’re far more competent than you give yourself credit for.
” But Hel hadn’t been there. She hadn’t seen how Sam had been trapped.
“Besides, Van Helsing was there, and if there’s one thing he’s good at, it’s killing monsters. ”
“You were counting on Van Helsing to save me?” Sam exclaimed, horror worming through her that this had been Hel’s plan. “The man despises me. We’re fortunate he decided to help and not merely watch.”
Hel snorted. “He would never allow his record to suffer your loss.” She pulled the strip of film through the fixing bath three times, before letting it soak. “Besides, he doesn’t despise you. He fears you. It’s entirely different.”
“That’s even worse.” The most terrible things men did, they did from fear. The witch burnings, the imprisonment of channels, the persecution of anyone who had the unbearable temerity to be different from them.
“Don’t worry, he fears his father more,” Hel said dismissively. “Besides, he did save you, and while he was at it, he noted I wasn’t there when you needed me—again. With any luck, you’ve excited his protective streak.”
The worst part was, Hel was right. It had. It had seemed almost as if Van Helsing cared, before he mentioned murdering Sam as a natural extension of said affections. It played into their ploy perfectly. Van Helsing had ordered Sam to accompany Hel, to keep an eye on her. But still—
“How do I know how much is a game?” Sam whispered.
This whole scenario felt awfully like when Sam had met Hel’s brother, when she hadn’t known which visions were real, hadn’t been able to trust her senses.
Sam had been right: Hel was too good at pretending to be someone else.
Unless she wasn’t. Unless this was who she was.
Sam closed her eyes. “I don’t—I can’t tell what’s real. ”
Hel caught Sam’s hand, clasping it between them as she searched Sam’s face, her features painted starkly in red light and shadow.
“This is real,” Hel said intensely. Sam caught her breath, desire shivering through her.
“This is the only thing that’s real. We need to trust each other, or there’s no point to any of this. ”
Hel brushed Sam’s cheek as if she were made of glass, as if she were afraid of breaking her. Sam ached for her to stop being so gentle, to press harder, to hook her fingers into Sam as if she needed her the way Sam needed Hel.
But Sam was still furious with Hel, even if she was also drunk on her. She turned, not quite pulling away.
“I do trust you.” Or she had. “But I can’t keep—”
Hel went rigid, staring at the photograph negatives in the fixing bath over Sam’s shoulder. Sam followed her gaze. The fog had come clear, the pictures resolved. There was the shush of shifting water as Hel drew them free of their chemical bath.
The images were ghostly—the film a translucent, yellowed silver, etched in shades of grey and black. Everything was reversed from the way it was in life—trees a ghostly white against a midnight sky, teeth black against pale lips.
The first was of a dark flower shaped like a trumpet, with five toothlike points to it and arrow-shaped leaves the color of ash.
Datura, Sam thought, though it was hard to be sure.
A poison, though it was a warm-weather plant and oughtn’t be found in Ireland, so perhaps she was mistaken.
The second was of the ragged, black crenellations of a Gothic castle like something out of a fairy tale, glimpsed through tangled ivory branches of a blackthorn bush.
The third was of the Duke in his bloodless suit, staring up at a pale sky filled with a murmuration of waxen birds.
Wingbeats, Sam thought, remembering her vision. Or ravens.
Sam squinted and bent closer. There was something wrong with how the film had developed behind the Duke, a place where the negative hadn’t come clear, almost as if—Sam caught her breath as eyes that burned like stars resolved in the mist, the brim of a hat, the suggestion of a cloak.
A ghost. And behind the Viscount—another.
Though spirits were rarely seen when they did not wish it, spiritualists in New York City had found you might capture a ghost’s image in photography—something to do with etheric resonance.
Was this, then, why the Viscount and the Duke had a camera?
Had they found evidence that Mr. Hayes and Mr. Pearse were haunted as well?
Sam’s eyes skipped to the image of Mr. Enfield, his crumpled form silhouetted on the cobblestones.
It was hard to make out, the night rendering the image muddy, but she could just pick out the shadow of a little girl in a pinafore against the whiteness.
A girl who most definitely had not been there the night before.
Hel’s breath hitched. “Sam.” At last, Sam allowed her gaze to be drawn to the last picture.
This was the photograph of Sam, stripped to her habit shirt under the pale-berried boughs of a mountain ash, looking very much as Miss Shinagh had said, like a woman in a fairy tale.
At first, all Sam could see was her own embarrassment.
But then, she caught sight of it. Behind her, in the fog, was the misty form of a woman in an ephemeral nightgown, staring directly at the camera, her milky lips parted to reveal the points of two black fangs.
A chill trickled down her spine. “The ghost that attacked me.” Then it hit her—the victims were each haunted by a ghost; Sam was haunted by a ghost. Fear flooded her lungs like water. “Wait, does that mean I’m next?”
Sam squeezed her eyes shut. She could still hear the roar of the wind when she closed her eyes. Still hear those awful wingbeats, the battlefield scent of rotting meat curling around her. She thought again of the horrible blankness of Mr. Enfield’s face as he’d fallen, the absence of a scream.
“I won’t let them take you,” Hel said.
“How can you know that?” Sam said, embarrassed of the tremble in her voice. “We don’t even know what they are.” And besides, Hel had not so long ago left Sam to die, whatever her reasoning. Sam didn’t entirely trust that she wouldn’t do so again. Not if it would let her win.
Hel seemed to read as much in Sam’s expression. “Do you know how long a ghost takes to reconstitute?”
“Um . . .” Sam knew this, she just had to calm down and think. “Roughly three days.” The knowledge calmed her. She had three days to figure this out. She drew a shuddering breath. Hel was right: They needed to trust each other or there was no point to any of this.
“Was there anything of use in the files?” Hel asked.
“Not particularly,” Sam said. On paper, the good detective was right.
“Aside from the usual altercations with workers, and their being influential Unionists, there was nothing in the reports to indicate why anyone might hold a grudge against Mr. Hayes and Mr. Pearse. The only event of note was that one of the men—Mr. Pearse—had reported the theft of a ring while on holiday in Dublin, only to cancel the report the very next day. It had, it turned out, been in his pocket the whole time.”
“Hmmm,” Hel hummed in her throat.
“Perhaps Van Helsing will have had more luck with the ring,” Sam said unsteadily.
“Oh, that?” With a bit of sleight of hand, Hel produced something that sparkled brilliantly in the red light, flipping it into the air and catching it: Mr. Enfield’s ring.
“You didn’t!” Sam gasped.
“You’re right, I didn’t,” Hel said with that crooked smile, and this time, it sat a little better. “Heathcliff did.” Heathcliff poked his head out of Hel’s pocket proudly at the sound of his name.
“And you just let me set Van Helsing after poor Lord Lusk like that?” Sam laughed despite herself. “Knowing he’s innocent?”
Hel shrugged. “We don’t know he’s innocent of anything but the theft. Besides, how else was I to steal time alone with you?”
Heat pricked in Sam’s cheeks. It struck her then that Hel must have conceived of the plot to steal time with Sam the night before, when Van Helsing was interrogating Lord Lusk.
She’d known Sam would notice the absence of the ring and push to uncover whether there was a connection, bait that Van Helsing’s need for vindication wouldn’t let him ignore—all so Sam and Hel might have a portion of time together while keeping up the charade that they were at odds.
It was dizzying, the way Hel was always three steps ahead, leaving Sam to chase after—a sense that had only grown more acute in Ireland. Hel had always been devious, but now, it was as if everyone were just a pawn in the game she played against her father.
It was what Hel had trained her whole life for. Sam wondered if this was the true reason Hel hadn’t wanted her along—not simply because of the risk, but because she hadn’t wanted Sam to see her this way: so like her father.
You can no more suppress a thing’s true nature than you can hold back the tides. Sam shoved the thought away. Hel wasn’t her father. She cared. She’d promised to be better. To try.
“Let me see the ring,” Sam asked. Hel tossed it to her. Even through her gloves, vertigo swept through her, bringing with it an echo of what she’d felt the night before.
The song whispered in her ears, and Sam found herself moving as if in a dream, reaching for her gloves, the sudden desire to feel the air on her bare skin singing through her—
No. Sam shuddered, and she opened her hand, dropping the ring to clatter to the ground. The song melted away as if it had never been.
“Tell me,” Hel said intently. A part of Sam wondered if this was why she’d wanted to steal time away with Sam: so she might channel. It didn’t matter, Sam told herself, she had, and if it might help solve the case, that was what mattered.
“It felt . . . like falling,” Sam said.
“Up or down?”
“Up,” Sam said, for she’d felt the tug on the earth in her feet, and she was reminded of the fingernails on the windowsill of the folly and her subsequent deduction that Mr. Pearse had fallen skyward rather than in accordance with gravity.
“I could smell rotting meat and hear wingbeats. But that still leaves us at ghosts, doesn’t it? ”
The vengeful spirits had a similar odor. So did vampires. It was, it seemed, a common theme amongst the dead and discontent. The wingbeats, though . . . was that simply Hel’s brother? Or something else . . . ? Sam had seen something fly past her the night prior, too quick to see clearly.
If Sam had listened to the song, if she’d removed her gloves, she might know. But she hadn’t, for that feeling, of moving without her own control, had scared her more than any vision could.
“Anything else?” Hel demanded. “Even if it’s small, even if it doesn’t make sense.”
“It’s . . . strange. There was no end to it.
” Sam’s visions mostly concerned endings, as if death were what birthed them, like the fire-following hollyhock that only blooms from the ashes.
She shook her head. “It felt almost as if Mr. Enfield was dead before he hit the ground. But that’s impossible. ”
“Is it?” Hel said. “He fell ten feet. None of his bones were broken. The back of his skull was intact. There was minimal bruising.”
Which meant that whatever had killed him, it had done so after he stopped screaming and before he hit the ground. Sam thought again of the ghost—of what might have happened if she hadn’t woken Sam, if they hadn’t all been gathered by the broken window when Mr. Enfield screamed.
They might have missed it entirely.
It’s your assumptions that blind you, her grandfather had said. The things you don’t even think to question, that you presume can’t change.
Her grandfather—there was another puzzle. Usually, Sam liked puzzles, but after so many years of searching, she would rather just have her grandfather.
“Come,” Hel said. “Let’s see if the library can give us any insight into what kind of monster might have murdered Mr. Enfield, before it comes for you.”