Chapter Twelve #3
It wasn’t what Sam had expected. It was almost mundane, the sort of question Sam might have asked at any point, and yet, she hadn’t.
Sam did the math. Her grandfather had disappeared ten years ago, four years before Hel defected.
Which meant that Hel had been working for her father when he spirited away Sam’s grandfather—perhaps she’d even helped.
Sam wondered if afterward, they’d worked together, until Hel left, burning it all down behind her.
Burning it all down . . . A chill walked up her spine. Sam hadn’t thought this through.
In Paris, Hel had leveraged her remaining contacts in her father’s organization in an attempt to glean information about Sam’s grandfather, before Sam had even told her about him—just from the sight of those numbers.
Because she cared so much for the partner she’d just met and still didn’t trust?
Or because when she’d burned her father’s house down to ash, she’d burned Sam’s grandfather with it?
“Sam?” Hel’s voice came soft through the door. “You all right in there?”
“I’m—I’m fine,” Sam said. Sam had always known her grandfather might be dead, despite Ruari’s claims to the contrary. But despite knowing Ruari was manipulative, that she couldn’t trust his word on anything, let alone her grandfather again, Sam discovered she had begun to hope.
There was a pause. “All right.”
Sam drew in a shuddering breath. “Actually, could you come in?” she asked, her voice small. “I—I don’t want to be alone right now.” Couldn’t go back to the dreams of blood and ice and song. Of what Hel might have done.
“Sam, you know I can’t,” Hel said quietly.
Sam squeezed her eyes shut against the sting of tears.
It had been a foolish question. It wasn’t as if Sam could confide in Hel about the note.
Or the song, or the black feathers she kept finding in her things, or the way her shadow was changing.
Not after the way Hel had reacted to her brother’s raven.
Hel would lose herself again, get herself arrested or killed, and then Sam would truly be alone.
Besides. There was nothing she could do about it. Nothing to be done.
“My brother has eyes on this—” Hel began.
Hel did not need to tell Sam about her brother.
“Did you know my grandfather?” Sam blurted, the words pulling themselves from her lips before she could stop them.
Hel gave a sharp intake of breath.
Sam wanted to regret it, wanted to take back her words; to tell Hel never mind, she’d see her in the morning.
But she didn’t. It didn’t matter that it was Ruari who had put those words in her skull.
Once they were there, she couldn’t get them out.
Sam needed to know if Hel had known her grandfather. If she had killed him.
“Hel, please,” Sam said to the silence on the other side of the door. She heard Hel shift.
“I don’t . . . recognize the man from your stories,” Hel said carefully.
“That’s not what I asked,” Sam said, hurt by Hel’s oblique answer. “Did you kidnap him?”
“What? No,” Hel said. “I was twelve.”
Sam didn’t think that would have stopped Hel. “Did you kill him?”
“I—” Hel stumbled, and Sam’s heart squeezed. “I don’t know.”
“How can you not know if you murdered someone!” Sam said, and she could feel herself losing her grip on her words. We need to trust each other, or there’s no point to any of this. But how could she, if Hel couldn’t answer this?
“I already told you,” Hel said, her voice hollow and aching. “When I left, I burned the place down. I don’t know who was still inside.”
The weight of the silence between them then was almost too much to bear.
But Sam couldn’t bring herself to speak.
Couldn’t get the image of her grandfather’s body, charred and broken, out of her head.
She should have known. The way Hel was so quick to pull her revolver at the mention of her brother’s name, even shooting at the raven who bore his voice.
Of course she’d tried to end things with her family before she left, the only way she’d known how.
She was her father’s daughter, after all.
“Sam, he wasn’t—” Hel began carefully, before trying again.
“The man you describe, soft spoken, understated, always there with a story to make you laugh. You should know, I never met a man like that. I don’t know what your grandfather did for my father.
It was kept secret, even from me. But I did a few jobs for him.
They were . . . worse . . . than most of the work I did. ”
Sam stilled, remembering Hel’s casual mention of dismembering a corpse. What could be worse than that? Or was that, then, part of Hel’s work for Sam’s grandfather? No. Sam wouldn’t believe it.
“He was only doing what he had to, to survive, to protect us,” Sam argued. “Who knows what your father might have done to ensure his compliance?”
“You’re probably right,” Hel said, but she didn’t sound as if she believed it. “Good night, Sam.”
Sam wanted to say it back. But she couldn’t.
At last, Sam understood what it was to be manipulated by a Moriarty.
It didn’t matter that Ruari had wanted her to ask; Sam had wanted to, and now she regretted it.
Hel was wrong, Sam told herself. Her grandfather was in enemy territory, after all.
It was no wonder he would be different. Unkind to those who’d torn him from his family.
What had Hel expected, that he’d sit with her against the dark, the way he had with Sam?
That he’d tell her stories and teach her to catch frogs and give her the saint medal from his own neck to protect her when she was scared?
Her grandfather was a good person. She knew that to be true, and nothing Hel said could change that.
But still, Sam didn’t sleep the rest of the night. Only stared into the darkness and listened to the tap-tap-tapping of her grandfather’s numbers in the rain.