Chapter Fifteen
Lusk, County Dublin (Lusca, Contae Bhaile átha Cliath)
Two Days Before Samhain
Sam rushed out of the pub, ignoring the shouting behind her.
The fog whispered against her skin. The grasping branches of trees were reduced to charcoal sketches in the moonlight, her shadow stretching long across the furrowed road.
Mist pulled between the crumbling crenellations of the castle like spiderwebs.
“It’s happening again,” Sam said as Van Helsing and Hel caught up with her. The unnatural fog had preceded the last three attacks. The Wild Hunt would ride that night—and this time, they would come for her.
Hel’s spectacles glinted. “If you panic every time there’s mist in Ireland, you’re going to swoon.”
“It’s not natural,” Sam argued. “The fog—it rose far too quickly, and look, the breeze doesn’t touch it.”
“She’s right.” Van Helsing’s hands strayed to his revolvers. “We have to get Miss Harker to the train.”
Hel grimaced, head tilted back to the wind-torn sky. “It’s not due for another half hour, and with the disruption in the train lines, even that is far from certain.”
“Then we find a more defensible position than this!” Van Helsing said.
“She’ll be fine,” Hel said dismissively.
“You can’t be certain of that,” Van Helsing said, a thread of panic running through his voice. Which Sam thought was patently unfair, seeing as she was the one who was going to die if Hel was wrong.
“Right,” Hel said, looking down, and Sam reminded herself that Hel would know if the ghost had returned: She had the Sight. Which meant Sam was safe—for now. “Do you have any better ideas?”
“You know I don’t,” Van Helsing snapped.
Sam forced herself to draw in a shaky breath. “The fog lasted for hours before the attack on Mr. Enfield. If Lord Lusk knows something, if he can stop this—”
Van Helsing gritted his teeth; he wanted to say no, but the train wasn’t there, might not be there for hours yet. “Fine,” Van Helsing said at last. “But you are not to go out of my sight, and at the first sign of the Wild Hunt—”
“It will be far too late,” Hel said.
Van Helsing cursed, clearly regretting his decision already.
“I’ll be all right.” Without thinking, Sam laid her hand on Van Helsing’s forearm, just as she had when they were kids and his father was yelling at him.
He had always blamed Jakob, whatever misadventures she had gotten them into—and it was always Sam getting them into trouble.
In part, it was because Jakob was his son; but also because he was a boy, and she a girl—and a channel at that.
Even then, Sam had known it to be unfair. To both of them.
Van Helsing went very still, looking down at her fingers. Sam wondered if he was remembering, as she was, or if those memories had been lost in the translation to adulthood, put away with other childish things.
Van Helsing sighed. She could almost hear his thoughts: We’re not children anymore. His father wasn’t there to reprimand him. Van Helsing had taken on that role himself.
“You are the most stubborn creature I have ever met,” Van Helsing said, freeing his arm from her grasp.
Sam braced herself to be pulled back into the pub, or toward the train station, or wherever Van Helsing decided was defensible.
But he only turned and stalked into the fog, his brown coat snapping behind him.
Castle Lusk rose up before them out of the fog, the sheer rocky mass of it broken by the diaphanous glow of gaslight through arched windows. Blackthorn bushes ringed the castle like something out of a fairy tale, frost burned and scraggly, their thorns long as Sam’s thumb.
Her gaze snagged on a familiar figure resolving out of the swirling fog, uncomfortably close: a woman in a violet wool riding suit that set off her freckled brown skin perfectly, her sleek black hair caught up in a bun, scratching notes in the book she braced on her knee.
A brass lantern rested beside the stone bench on which she sat, illuminating the fog.
Hel stepped in front of Sam, her dark spectacles flashing in the lantern light. Heathcliff squeaked and dove further into Hel’s pocket.
“Róisín Shinagh,” Hel drawled. “Why is that whenever men disappear, there you are?”
“Come now, Dr. Moriarty. I have as little to do with this as you do with your prior partners’ gruesome deaths, I’m sure.
” Miss Shinagh sounded amused. She peered around Hel to catch sight of Sam, her lips curving into a smile.
“Miss Harker, what an unexpected pleasure. I was wondering when I’d see you again. ”
“It’s—ah, I’m delighted to see you as well,” Sam said, and despite knowing the Wild Hunt rode that night, that they might be riding for her, Sam found herself blushing. Hel’s jaw tightened. Sam felt a twist of guilt, but what would Hel have her do? Be rude?
“Why are you here?” Van Helsing demanded, oblivious to the small opera playing out before him. “If you’re not behind the attacks, that is.”
“Same reason you are, I suspect.” Miss Shinagh gave a liquid shrug. “I am an unnaturalist, after all, and something unnatural has happened.”
“Mr. Pearse,” Van Helsing said.
Miss Shinagh’s lips curled. “Just so.”
“And how exactly did you hear of him?” Hel demanded.
Miss Shinagh cocked her head. “I’d thought you’d figured it out, the way you were talking about the fog.”
A flicker of movement snagged her attention.
Sam tensed, her chest tightening—but it was only another fox, there and gone again, before she could so much as unstring her nerves.
Sam wondered if it was the same fox as before, if it was following them.
Van Helsing raised an eyebrow at her; she shook her head. It’s nothing.
“It’s the weather. The fog and the wind,” Miss Shinagh said. “It makes the sluagh easy to track.”
“We didn’t say it was the sluagh.” Van Helsing’s eyes narrowed with suspicion.
Miss Shinagh laughed. “My dear Dutchman, I’m an unnaturalist. This is what I do.
The greater surprise is that you managed to figure it out.
” Van Helsing’s ears went a deep red. “I don’t know as of yet why some they take keep walking and others wither.
It’s one of the things I’m studying. You could say Mr. Pearse is one of the lucky ones.
Or unlucky. Depending on how you look at it.
So, if you’re quite finished interrogating me . . .”
Miss Shinagh picked up her lantern. Sam’s attention snagged, caught on something that glittered on her left hand in the shifting light: a ring, two stones twisted around each other, one emerald and one diamond. Her stomach tightened.
“Almost,” Sam interrupted apologetically. “I just have one more question.”
“Just the one?” Miss Shinagh said, that velvet in her voice again, making it terribly hard for Sam to focus. She wondered if that was the point.
“Who are you engaged to?” Sam asked.
“Is that all?” Miss Shinagh said, a twinkle in her eyes. “I’m engaged to Lord Lusk. Why else would I be here?” On the land the Viscount and the Duke had taken a photograph of, the land on which the bodies had been uncovered.
All at once, the details of the investigation began to take on a different cast.
Hours before Mr. Enfield’s death, Mr. Bishop had warned Lord Lusk he had no idea what “she” was capable of—not worried about Lord Lusk but for him. On account of a woman.
Mr. Enfield’s affections weren’t reason to break curfew.
No, Mr. Enfield must have uncovered something urgent, something that had driven him out into the unforgiving night.
Something so dangerous he’d written it down in sympathetic ink and sewn it inside a squirrel in case something should happen to him, only for someone to break in and burn it.
Someone with uncanny knowledge of the Otherworld and an affinity for its many monsters, who had reason to want Mr. Enfield dead and the English out.
Someone who was looking a lot like Lord Lusk’s fiancée.
“Is that why you were in Mr. Enfield’s apartments the night after his murder?” Sam asked, ignoring the sharp intake of breath from Van Helsing.
“Would you believe I was there to call on him?” Miss Shinagh said. Sam noticed the cleverness of the wording—not that this was, indeed, the reason, only would they believe it. It was rumored the Folk could not lie, that they could only deceive through misdirection and your assumptions.
It was not the first time Miss Shinagh had evaded a direct answer, either. Sam recalled the unnaturalist’s careful language when Sam had first suspected her of being behind the attacks. I’m not the one who disappeared them, if that’s what you’re wondering.
Because she wasn’t—that was the Wild Hunt.
“Given the state of Mr. Enfield’s apartments, no,” Hel said dryly.
“Don’t tell me you haven’t heard what they’re saying about me,” Miss Shinagh said.
“What do you mean?” Van Helsing demanded. “What is she talking about?”
“She’s saying,” Hel said, “that she partook in the company of Mr. Enfield in addition to that of Lord Lusk.”
Van Helsing went red as ripe fruit. Sam was scarcely better, her own cheeks pricking with heat.
Only Hel was unmoved, crossing her arms. “That still doesn’t explain what sent Mr. Enfield running out in the middle of the night.”
“I’m afraid he could be . . . possessive,” Miss Shinagh said.
Sam thought of how you were never to eat food from the Otherworld or all other food would taste of ash.
It was said you would become obsessed with it, unable to do anything but think of it, until you wasted away for want.
Running out in the middle of the night to argue for Miss Shinagh’s hand didn’t sound quite so far-fetched.
As for Miss Shinagh’s curious detachment, the Folk had a different sort of morality, and a different understanding of relationships as well. Less . . . monogamous.
Van Helsing crossed his arms. “That still doesn’t explain what you were looking for.”