Chapter Seventeen
The Shelbourne Hotel, Dublin (Baile átha Cliath)
Two Days Before Samhain
Sam froze, unable to tear her gaze away from the window as a black shape cut past, wings of smoke singeing the sky.
This time, there was no Mr. Enfield in the streets, no Lord Lusk in the field.
No one else the Wild Hunt might have come for but her.
She ought to have had more time! Lord Lusk wasn’t even cold.
Withered fingers that sharpened into bone scraped down the glass with an earsplitting screech that cut right through her, until the window was covered in black taloned hands, scrabbling at the glass like a swarm of locusts.
They couldn’t come inside, she reminded her galloping heart as she stumbled back from the window.
You were supposed to be safe if you made it home and stayed there until the break of dawn.
Mr. Hayes might have been pulled from the folly, but that was only because he’d opened the window—
The window burst. A shriek tore itself from Sam’s throat. “Hel!” Desiccated arms groped through the breach, like cats pawing a mouse in its hole, bringing with them the musky, acrid scent of rotting meat.
It seemed the Wild Hunt wasn’t playing by the rules anymore. Sam cast about for something, anything she might use as a weapon, but all she had were books and clothes . . .
And us, the song whispered, curling around her heart like a vine, begging to be let in, or was it out? It was getting harder for Sam to tell. It frightened her, how sorely she wanted to listen. Even Hel hadn’t been able to save Lord Lusk. If Sam had listened to the song, then—
“Sam!” The door slammed against the wall.
“Oh, hell,” Aunt Lucy said, before Hel’s iron knife sailed through her and she snuffed out.
If Sam had any lingering doubts that it was the mark and not the ghost that doomed her, they dissipated as the horrors of the Wild Hunt clawed through the broken window, scrabbling across the walls and the ceiling like spiders.
Sweat pricked on her brow as the room grew thick with the smoke of their wings.
“Sam, get out of here,” Hel ordered. “Find somewhere safe and stay there until I come to fetch you. I’ll handle this.”
Guilt twisted in Sam’s gut. Even Hel knew there was nothing Sam could do but run. She was helpless.
Are you truly? The song skirled in her mind, rising along with the wind. Or are you afraid?
Sam shrieked, flinching back as one of the desiccated horrors lashed out at her, its talons smoking through the air, only to crumple to her knees under the weight of another—its touch clammy and cold as the grave. Ash spattered over her, hot as blood, as Hel’s second knife split its face.
Hel yanked her knife out of the wall. “Go!” she shouted as Sam scrambled to her feet.
This time, Sam listened. But it was too late. Halfway to the door, her feet peeled off the ground, just as Mr. Enfield’s and Lord Lusk’s had before her, a heady weightlessness claiming her, as if she were already a ghost.
Sam squeezed her eyes shut. You can no more suppress a thing’s true nature than you can hold back the tides.
And this time, when the tide of the song pulled at her heart, she couldn’t bring herself to resist, no matter how monstrous that made her.
The song cut through her like shards of glass, singing through flesh and blood and bone, filling her up until she flitted at the edges of consciousness, struggling to hold on.
Strangest of all, the Wild Hunt stilled, mouths gaping, as if to scent her.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, she was aware Hel was shouting at her, but her words tumbled past like autumn leaves.
Instead, Sam focused on the tenuous connection she felt with the Wild Hunt, the sense of . . . recognition.
Then, as quickly as it had come, the Wild Hunt was gone, the desiccated horrors swept out of the window like so much smoke.
“Sam—Sam!”
Sam came back to herself to see Hel’s face tight, her arms gripping her shoulders so hard Sam feared she might bruise.
Or perhaps that was only because she felt so raw, fresh born, like a calf on trembling limbs.
There was a tenderness behind her sternum, a feeling that something waited within her, biding its time before it emerged.
It had worked, Sam thought uneasily. The song had done what it had promised, leaving her to wonder at the price she’d paid. She resisted the urge to glance at her shadow.
“What did you do?” Hel demanded.
“I—I don’t know.” It wasn’t entirely a lie. Sam had barely clung to consciousness, had no idea what the song had done in her stead. She turned to Hel, desperation unraveling the edges of her words. “I don’t . . . Those marks, what if I have one?”
“You don’t,” Hel said dismissively. “Listen, whatever you did—”
“You can’t know that,” Sam protested, her eyes brimming with tears.
“Do you know how long it takes to get a tattoo?” Hel said with what Sam now knew was more patience than she would have had for anyone else. “Or how much it stings? It’s not the sort of thing that happens without your noticing.”
“And you’re saying there isn’t an alchemical solution for that?” Sam said. She knew it was foolish, that it was likely nothing, her fears playing on her overactive imagination, but she needed Hel to listen to her, to at least acknowledge it was possible.
“No,” Hel admitted. “But you’re not Vespertine. How precisely would you have gotten—”
But Sam cut her off. “Hel, my grandfather’s a medium.”
“He’s what?” Hel’s whole body sharpened like a knife, her eyes narrowing. “How long have you known?”
“I don’t think he’d tattoo a ten-year-old girl, and I know the tattoos might just be a mark of the Vespertine and have nothing to do with anything,” Sam babbled.
“But if you’re right about him, if he did, that would be the proof of it, wouldn’t it?
And then we can stop all this from happening, all we’d have to do is cut them out. ”
“Cut what out?” Hel said, alarmed.
“The tattoos, what else?” Sam said, gesturing wildly, realizing even as she said it that few of the Vespertine would consent to having a chunk of their foreheads removed.
Certainly, they wouldn’t be terribly secret anymore, but Sam didn’t care, it would serve them right.
And Sam couldn’t go through that again, couldn’t face down the Wild Hunt and the question of how monstrous she was willing to be. “You have to check me.”
“Sam,” Hel said, her voice aching.
“For God’s sake, I don’t want to hear about your brother right now!” Sam snapped. “Please. I can’t do it myself, and there’s no one else I can ask.”
“All right,” Hel said, clasping Sam’s flailing hands between her own to still them. “All right. I’ll do it.” But the look in Hel’s eyes was as if she were girding herself for war.
“Thank you,” Sam said, and meant it.
“Just . . . wait a moment,” Hel said. Gently, she shut the door. Then she slipped off her suit jacket and laid it out like a gentleman casting his coat over a puddle, only the puddle was broken glass and moonlight. “There.”
Sam knelt on the jacket, the scent of gunpowder and rosin ghosting around her.
The wind sighed through the shattered window, making froth of her diaphanous nightgown.
Fingers trembling, she tried to undo the mother-of-pearl buttons at her neck, but she kept fumbling them, until at last Hel brushed her honeyed curls aside and undid them for her.
The nightgown slid from her shoulders. Sam clasped it over her chest.
“Ready?” Hel said, her voice unsteady. Anyone would think Hel was more worried about what they’d find than Sam.
Sam nodded, then, when Hel seemed to need her to say it: “Yes.”
Hel’s fingers were cool and delicate as they traced down the bumpy arc of Sam’s spine from nape to base, gooseflesh rising in their wake. She turned Sam in the silvery light to catch the shadows on her ribs.
“Anything?” Sam whispered, her heart beating loud enough to drown out the wind.
“Not yet,” Hel managed, her voice rough, her eyes as focused as Sam had ever seen them, as she held Sam’s arms to the pale moonlight, her fingertips whispering down their length.
Until at last, she let her arms drop and stepped so close, Sam could feel the heat of her body, not touching except for the fingers that pulled through her curls.
Sam bit back a gasp at the sensation, so unexpectedly good in a way that tore at the core of her. Leaving her with the horrible, desperate knowledge that she wanted to feel it again, and that she couldn’t want that, that wasn’t what this was, wasn’t what Hel had agreed to.
Hel released her, and Sam let out a shaky breath. Only for Hel to kneel before her. “Stand?”
“Yes,” Sam managed. She stood, clutching her nightgown to her chest as Hel met her eyes, before pushing up the froth of her skirts, exposing her legs.
She trembled, trying not to feel more than she should, to want more than she should, as Hel’s fingers ghosted down her thighs and the long bones of her calves, turning her feet to catch her soles.
Until there was only one place left to check.
Hel gave her a serious look. Are you certain?
Yes, Sam nodded, her heart in her mouth as she let the nightgown slip into sea-foam around her ankles. For a moment, Hel didn’t touch her. Wind gusted through the window, raising gooseflesh over Sam’s bare stomach. Her breath shuddered in her throat. Hel swallowed convulsively.
“Hel?” Sam whispered, suddenly aware that she stood in front of Hel, naked in the moonlight.
That Hel was looking at her with a sharp almost pain in her eyes.
That she wanted Hel to touch her again—needed her to touch her again.
That Hel undid her in ways she’d never known she could be undone, even when she wasn’t trying. Especially when she wasn’t trying.
“I—yes.” Hel’s clever tongue was unexpectedly tied.