Chapter Eighteen
Trinity College, Dublin (Coláiste na Tríonóide, Baile átha Cliath)
The Day Before Samhain
Sam and Hel and Van Helsing set off for Trinity College at daybreak, the sun bleeding over the horizon in a way that, after the night’s activities, couldn’t help but turn Sam’s stomach.
Broken branches littered the cobblestone road, the resinous scent of sap in the brisk morning air.
Soldiers clotted the streets, shouting, their uniforms in disarray.
Apparently, the Dearg-Due, or someone like her, had taken to haunting the barracks, leaving bloodless soldiers on the doorstep of Dublin Castle the way a cat might leave a mouse.
Sam and Hel had to bodily restrain Van Helsing from pursuing. The soldiers claimed they had it well in hand, and it was the day before Samhain—they were running out of time.
At Trinity, they split: Hel to the chemistry department to develop the photographs and ascertain whether or not she had a ghost, Sam to the library to research mediums. Van Helsing went along with her, though what he was researching—if, indeed, that was what he was doing—he wouldn’t say.
Sam glanced over at Van Helsing, who leaned against a bookcase in an open-collared shirt and brown slacks, scrutinizing a hand-inked sketch of a sluagh in a traveler’s leather-bound journal—its strengths and weaknesses, the details of its anatomy.
Sam was just opening her mouth to ask how he’d managed to smuggle a bestiary out of the Society library, particularly what looked like a primary source, when she realized she recognized the intense line work, the composition.
“You didn’t stop sketching,” Sam said, surprised despite herself.
Van Helsing flushed and snapped the bestiary closed. “How did you know it was mine?” Sam wasn’t sure what to make of the fact that he hadn’t thought to lie.
“It’s the line work,” Sam said. “It’s less formal than a usual bestiary—”
“Well, I don’t have any formal training,” he said defensively.
“As if it captures the essence of the creature, instead of its image,” Sam finished.
“Oh,” Van Helsing said, embarrassment written in every line of his body.
It was as if Van Helsing didn’t know what to do with her.
It occurred to Sam then that his father’s insistence on forging him into the perfect field agent might have had consequences, that Van Helsing might not know how to interact with anyone outside the bounds of the hunt.
Her heart ached. What a wretched thing, to lose out on your humanity in order to protect it.
Sam wanted to say as much, but Van Helsing was off again. She frowned. It seemed as if he was spending more time talking to people than doing proper research.
“Anything?” Van Helsing asked when they regrouped sometime later between the stacks. Sunlight limned the mahogany shelves in gold, catching on the dust in a way Sam had always thought of as magical.
“All known members of the Vespertine were haunted,” Hel said, tossing a photograph of the remembrance on the spread of books between them.
“We knew that already,” Van Helsing grumbled.
“So is Sam,” Hel said, before drawing another photograph out, this one ostensibly of Mr. Pearse, but which happened to catch Hel in the frame. And behind her—the smear of a crooked-looking ghost in a tailcoat. “And so am I.”
Van Helsing cursed. “It’s spreading, like some sort of contagion.”
“No. It’s not,” Sam said. She looked up at Hel, waiting to see if she would trust him.
Hel looked as if she’d really rather not. But she nodded.
Sam pulled out a book on mediums she’d found, bound in what felt uncomfortably like human skin.
Flipping the pages, she located a formula for ink using the ground-up bones of human remains.
The writer had intended it to be romantic, that you might be bound to your beloved forever.
Sam thought it sounded like a good way to get haunted. So, apparently, had her grandfather.
“My grandfather is a medium,” Sam said, and with a deep breath, she explained their theories. How her grandfather worked for Professor Moriarty as both medium and spymaster, using the selenic tattoos to anchor hauntings and then using the silver bells to summon his spies to report.
She didn’t know how he’d convinced the Vespertine to get the tattoos, but with the love secret societies had for their hidden symbols and the difficulty of concocting an ink that only showed itself in the light of the moon, Sam thought it possible they had even gone to him.
They probably thought themselves clever.
“But then how is it you are haunted?” Van Helsing said suspiciously. “If you don’t have a mark?”
Sam shrugged helplessly. “It might be anything. Something important to an unquiet ghost, their bones or artifacts, or—” Sam’s hands flew to her throat. “My necklace.”
Her grandfather had given it to her ten years ago, just before he’d left, promising it would keep her safe. Her eyes burned with unshed tears. All these years, she’d taken it as evidence of his love, when he’d used it to spy on her!
Sam unfastened the saint medal, her fingers twisting around the tarnished silver chain.
There was a postbox outside the library.
She would send it to herself back in London, and when all this was over, the Wild Hunt and all, she could ask her Aunt Lucy what she wished.
She deserved that much, after so many of her decisions had been taken from her.
“Do you mean to tell me your grandfather works for her father, and Mr. Wright just let the two of you become partners?” Van Helsing demanded.
“As I recall, he was the one who suggested it,” Hel said mildly.
“He doesn’t know about it, does he?” Van Helsing sounded thoroughly exasperated. Hel and Sam exchanged a guilty look. He worked his knuckles in his eyes. “Damn it. Right. I need to check in with Mr. Wright and Detective Lynch.”
Sam felt a flutter of panic in her chest. Mr. Wright had to know she hadn’t made the ferry by now. If Van Helsing talked to him, he’d make her go home. “You can’t mean to tell them.” Not after Sam had convinced Hel to trust him.
Van Helsing gave them a hard look. “You shouldn’t have been keeping such secrets to begin with. It only makes you look guiltier than you already are.”
“Please, Mr. Van Helsing—Jakob. You know him. You grew up listening to his stories,” Sam said. “You can’t believe it’s of his own free will.”
“It’s not about what I believe. We have to tell them,” Van Helsing maintained stubbornly. “If he’s innocent, you have nothing to fear.”
Hel raised an eyebrow at Sam, a look that her brain stubbornly interpreted as asking whether she’d like Hel to do something about Van Helsing. But surely the woman wasn’t offering to murder a man to keep Sam’s secrets . . . was she? No. No, certainly not.
“And you’re sure about that, are you?” Sam pressed, willing him to recall more from their conversation the night before than just Hel’s title. To think, for one moment in his life, about what it was like to be someone who wasn’t him. About what might matter more than the rules.
Van Helsing made an irritated sound in his throat, and for a moment, Sam was certain he was going to tell her in no uncertain terms what he thought of her asking him to deceive his superiors, about how she was succumbing to the influence of evil to ask.
Then: “Fine. I won’t tell them,” Van Helsing said.
Sam felt a rush of gratitude. “Not until we have more information. But I do owe Detective Lynch an update. Especially if what you say about Professor Moriarty is true.”
“What about your research?” Hel asked. “Turn up anything useful?”
“Research?” Sam whirled to look at Van Helsing.
“I’ve been looking into Alice Grey,” Van Helsing said, not meeting Sam’s eyes.
“Why?” Sam demanded.
“I asked him to,” Hel said, and Sam’s cheeks heated. “I knew I’d heard her name before.”
“You were right to be concerned,” Van Helsing said. “She was in an asylum for ten years.”
“That does not signify,” Sam said sharply.
She had been in an asylum, too, in case they’d forgotten—which, they had better not have, seeing as they were the ones who’d had her committed.
“Men throw women in asylums for the crime of having too inconvenient an emotion, for being born a channel, or even just because they tire of them and want another. It doesn’t mean they’ve gone mad or monstrous. ”
“And just because someone’s kind to you doesn’t mean they haven’t,” Hel said.
“Alice Grey was released to a man who shortly after became her husband,” Van Helsing said. “A husband who died a month ago, after seeing ghosts.”
“Because he was murdered by the Wild Hunt!” Sam said.
“Was he?” Hel said. “Because unlike Mr. Enfield, Mr. Grey broke a great deal in his fall.”
“Something must have gone wrong,” Sam said. “It would have been the first of the deaths, whoever is behind them, they must not have worked it all out yet.”
“Which doesn’t mean she’s not the one who did it,” Hel pointed out. It was, in fact, common amongst serial killers for their first murder to be different from the rest, as they perfected their technique.
If Hel and Van Helsing were right, the tattoos might not be Sam’s grandfather.
Alice Grey might be a medium, might be behind everything.
It made a certain amount of sense. After all, the only haunting they knew for certain was Sam’s grandfather was her own, and that wasn’t through a tattoo, selenic or otherwise.
This Alice might have worked with Hel’s father, perhaps even unwittingly, might have been the one to tattoo Hel and the others.
Her grandfather might still be innocent.
It should have made her feel better, but for some reason, it didn’t.
“Was she charged?” Sam demanded.
“No,” Van Helsing said. “There were rumors, but no evidence was brought against her. But in light of recent events—”
“How many years were they married?” Sam cut him off.
“Twenty-seven,” Van Helsing admitted.