Chapter Thirteen #2
Sam tilted her head back, the wind stinging the tears from her eyes as the boat surged through spindrift to the far bank. The sky was overcast, the clouds so low, Sam imagined she might reach up and comb her fingers through them.
The road in front of Amiens Street Station was covered in mud and crisscrossed with the marks of passing carriages.
Rising from the muck, the train station looked as if it had been plucked from the Italian Renaissance, with slender columns and delicate balconies just waiting for Juliet to emerge to sigh over her Romeo.
In stark contrast with its exquisite exterior, the interior of the train station was dingy.
The red-brick-and-Portland-stone walls were slicked with grime, the railway nearly as muddy as the road outside.
A raven perched in the skeletal structure above, watching them with uncanny, almost human, attention.
The song surged in Sam’s mind, beckoning, and she shivered, rubbing the chilblains on her arms. Ruari was watching.
Unfortunately, they had to wait, as only one of the trains seemed to be in service, due to an unnatural profusion of blackthorn growing between the tracks. Not just blackthorn, Sam noted, as she studied it from the platform. There was something moving inside it, swarming up the tangled branches.
“Lunatisídhe,” Sam breathed. A lunar variety of Folk, as she recalled. Mostly human in appearance, the creatures were small and wizened as year-end apples, with long and spindly limbs and a decidedly spikey look about them.
They were fascinatingly botanical. Wherever a human might possess hair, it seemed the creatures had thorns. Sam leaned closer to the lunatisídhe, intent on a better look, when one of them lunged at her, hissing and baring needle-sharp teeth.
Sam gasped and stumbled back, remembering also that they were said to curse people.
“This is absurd,” Van Helsing said. “We’ve been here for hours. A carriage would have been faster, at this point. Why don’t they simply cut the bushes back?”
“You can’t cut blackthorn before November 11,” Hel said. “You’ll anger the lunatisídhe.”
“They already look angry,” Sam said, and she couldn’t help but hear the whispers of the poets claiming the Otherworld was rising up against the English.
It was nearly sunset before they at last heard the screeching of metal as their train pulled into the station, grinding to a halt in front of the platforms teeming with would-be passengers in their tweed and wool. Oddly, no one else had lined up near the last train car.
Van Helsing reached for the door handle and pulled, then grunted. “Hold on just a moment.” He put his back into it, his face going red with exertion.
“Excuse me!” Sam called out as Van Helsing wrestled with the door.
She flagged one of the other passengers before he could board—a weatherworn older man in madder red, his eyes bright in his wind-roughed face and a hand-carved pipe clenched between his teeth.
His were the rough, scarred hands of a fisherman, the sweet scent of tobacco and salt clinging to his clothes.
With a pang, Sam was reminded of her grandfather, and then the conversation with Hel she’d had the night before. “Why isn’t this door opening?”
“Oh, that? It’s been stuck like that for ages now,” the man said around his pipe.
“And they haven’t fixed it?” Sam exclaimed. It was no small matter to jump between cars—not with the ground racing beneath them and the wind whipping past, when one wrong step could send you tumbling out of the train altogether.
“Fixed it? Oh, no, there’s nothing wrong with it. They’d have dropped it behind somewhere if there were,” the man said, maneuvering his pipe from one side of his mouth to the other. “More likely some rich arse bought it out, unwilling to rub elbows with his lessers.”
“Is that even allowed?” Sam said.
The old man shrugged. “The sun doesn’t shine if the rich don’t want it to. Can’t see why a door would be any different. Though why anyone rich enough to buy out a train car wouldn’t just wheel around in one of those automobiles is beyond me. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
He was right, Sam thought.
The train whistle blew, and Sam startled.
“Are you with us, Miss Harker?” Hel called, leaning out of another train door, her ginger hair whipping around those dark glasses in the wind. Heathcliff peeked out of her pocket.
“Coming!” Sam hurried toward the train car, wishing she hadn’t worn heels. Hel pulled her in just as the train began to shudder to life.
“You know,” Hel mused to Van Helsing once they’d settled in, “if we can’t cure Miss Harker of her ghost problem, we can always leave her on a train.”
“You cannot,” Sam said sharply. “I’m not a piece of luggage you might move from one place to another at your convenience.”
“You’d be safe enough here,” Hel said. “From your ghost and the Wild Hunt both.”
“Being safe isn’t the same as living!”
“Neither is being dead,” Hel drawled.
“It’s a good idea,” Van Helsing said, but he seemed like he was only half listening. He was restless, his knee bouncing. It was unlike him to be so distracted, particularly when the subject matter was the one he seemed to best enjoy: how to solve the problem of Sam.
Abruptly, Van Helsing stood, grimacing. “I’ll be back.” He threaded the aisle to the back of the train car, his spurs jingling with the shaking of the train.
“Are you well?” Sam ventured.
“Never better,” Hel said, wincing as the light from the setting sun flashed off a passing train.
But Sam could read the lie in the way her jaw tightened, the way she wouldn’t meet Sam’s eyes even behind the dark circles of her spectacles.
Surreptitiously, Sam caught her hand between her thighs and slipped off her glove.
She reached out; Hel jerked back, but for once, she wasn’t fast enough.
Sam snatched the spectacles off Hel’s face.
The moment Sam’s hand touched them, her breath caught in her throat, a feeling coursing through her like a current, pulling her under.
A vision. She felt oil slick her eyelids and tears stinging her eyes, heard whispers fluttering like moths caught in the cockles of her ears.
She breathed in a strange miasma, vaguely mossy, acrid as a cat’s breath, and something else.
Something bitter and bloody that recalled bare wires and bubbling retorts.
Alchemy.
“What did you do?” Sam hissed.
Hel looked peaky without her dark spectacles.
Her skin sheened with what Sam had first taken for spindrift, but which she was fairly certain was sweat, despite the bite in the autumn air.
Her pupils were blown, the black swallowing the hazel of her eyes.
If the eyes were the windows to the soul, hers were wide open.
Hel snatched back her dark-lensed spectacles, settling them on her face. “I gave myself the Sight. It has . . . side effects.”
“You didn’t,” Sam breathed. But Hel’s wince as she shaded the side of her head from the fading light was answer enough. “Why couldn’t you simply use a hagstone like the rest of us?”
“And what, fashion a pair of glasses from them?” Hel said. “That wouldn’t attract any attention at all. Not to mention the lack of peripheral vision.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Sam said. “It’s not like you need the Sight all the time—”
Hel cut her off. “You know I do.”
The ghost. It had been three days since Van Helsing had dispersed it.
Hel had done all this so she might catch Sam’s ghost when it pulled itself back together.
So she could protect Sam, just as she’d said she would.
But who would protect Hel if she got caught?
Mr. Wright had been correct; this was all Sam’s fault.
“It’s not worth it,” Sam whispered urgently. “If Van Helsing finds out—”
“It’s no worse than what you do,” Hel said dismissively.
“Don’t act as if this is the same thing!
” Sam said angrily. What Hel had done was dangerous—using alchemy to pierce the veil that clouded the eyes of the living, letting her see ghosts even when they didn’t wish to be seen.
Like channels, users of alchemy risked corruption and imprisonment if they were caught.
But unlike channeling, it was a conscious action.
“What I do, I don’t have a choice. You have every choice. ”
“Don’t you?” Hel said, angling her dark spectacles at Sam’s ungloved hand.
Sam set her jaw. She knew she ought to feel embarrassed, ought to trust Hel, but how could she, when Hel still insisted on keeping secrets? “Hel—”
“Mr. Van Helsing,” Hel said loudly, and Sam became aware of the jingle of his spurs, harmonizing with the rattling of the train. Hurriedly, Sam tugged on her glove as Van Helsing sat down heavily beside them. “You certainly took your time.”
He scowled at Hel. “I was summoned,” he said, tossing Hel a slip of paper folded into a square. Sam’s stomach tightened, until she realized it was far too big to be glued to the back of a bee, even if that bee was of exceptional size. “Someone slipped this in my pocket at the train station.”
Hel unfolded the paper, revealing neat cursive writing:
Mr. Van Helsing,
Your presence is required in car 151132 at your earliest convenience. Come alone. Tell no one.
With kind regards,
Detective Lynch
“Wait, so you received this note, and you just . . . went there?” Sam said. It was, perhaps, the most suspicious note Sam had ever seen. “Without so much as telling us?”
Van Helsing snatched the note back. “It told me not to.”
“And you listened to it?” Sam said. The barest whiff of authority, and Van Helsing was tying himself in knots to prove himself. It was like a sickness. “A note. Over us. Your partners.”
“I don’t see how this is any different from going to see Keogh about a priest,” Van Helsing said, his hackles rising at the implication that he might answer to her on anything. “Besides, it’s him. I recognize the handwriting from the reports.”
“It’s different because we were in that together,” Sam said. “What if it had been a trap?”
“Don’t pretend you care,” Van Helsing said bitterly, and it occurred to Sam that Van Helsing minded, that he thought his efforts ought to be rewarded with her affections, as if he were bringing anything into her life aside from fear.
Well, Sam reflected, that wasn’t entirely fair. He inspired other emotions too. Frustration, for instance, and fury. He had rescued her, she reminded herself. Whatever he thought of Sam, he had done that, even if it was only for the sake of his reputation.
“It’s just that I don’t like secrets,” Sam said.
“Right,” Van Helsing said dryly. “That’s why you keep so many of them.”
“Come now, Miss Harker,” Hel interrupted. “We oughtn’t be surprised. It’s hardly the first time Detective Lynch has wanted to talk to Mr. Van Helsing alone.”
“Thank you, Miss Moriarty,” Van Helsing said.
“So, what happened?” Hel pressed. “You met with Detective Lynch?”
Van Helsing nodded. “The dead car is the Special Branch’s mobile base.”
That actually made sense. If their theories were accurate, the Wild Hunt would come for the Special Branch. But the train was a moving fortress made of iron; even the Wild Hunt would struggle to rip someone from its grasp.
“What did he want?” Hel asked.
Van Helsing sighed and turned away. “Detective Lynch is less than pleased with our progress so far.”
“It’s only been three days,” Sam said. “What were they expecting?”
“They were expecting the foremost experts on abnormal phenomena in the British Empire,” Van Helsing said, a bit more savagely than Sam would have guessed for words aimed at himself.
“We are the experts,” Sam said.
“Then perhaps you can explain why, when we were brought here to make things better, we managed to escalate things?” Van Helsing said bitterly. “Because I couldn’t.”
“I’m not entirely certain we did.” But she remembered the crack of Van Helsing’s revolver, right before Mr. Enfield crumpled to the cobblestones.
“There is a pile of corpses waiting for us in Lusk, Miss Harker,” Van Helsing said, his voice harsh. “The Duke and the Viscount amongst them. Men we’d been sent to save. I’d argue that constitutes an escalation.”
“If it makes you feel any better, they’ve likely been dead a long time,” Hel offered. “So it’s not so much an escalation as uncovering the slaughter that was already taking place.”
Sam and Van Helsing both turned to stare at Hel, who was gritting her teeth against the glare of lamplight against the windows.
“Lord Lusk will answer for his crimes,” Van Helsing promised at last, his voice grim. “I will make certain of it.”
Sam wasn’t so certain. She couldn’t help but think that it felt awfully convenient, that the bodies should show up at their primary suspect’s residence, even though she knew it was fairly common.
If Sam were to murder someone, she would ensure their bodies were as far from her domicile as possible.
Roll them into a bog or something. Somewhere they wouldn’t be found. Not soon, at any rate.
And even though it seemed likely that the attack by the fabricated hellhounds was unrelated, Sam couldn’t get out of her mind the fact that Mr. Bishop had referred to a her.