Chapter Twenty #2
The thing inside her grandfather howled, throwing books and bones and beetles that scattered in a spray of wings and dirt, but the barrier was of iron and not salt, and he did not have the power to break it.
Nor could he flee the relentless assault of Latin.
Her grandfather whined, trying to block his ears with his hands, to scrabble at the walls, before finally collapsing to the ground, coughing and retching.
The spectral form of a young man burst from his throat, his face twisted, his hands outstretched as if he’d tear their hearts from their chests, before winking out like a blown light as Hel shot him. The bullet embedded itself in the wooden board, the silver bells ringing as if in mourning.
Her grandfather moaned in a heap on the ground.
“Grandfather!” Sam cried, rushing over. If he’d hit his head, if he’d been hurt—
Sam fell to her knees, cradling his head, taking off his blood-spattered spectacles. He opened his eyes—pale blue and troubled, as if he could see something the rest of them couldn’t, which, Sam supposed, he could—and they were just as she’d remembered. Recognition lit in his eyes.
“Sammy?” he mumbled, sitting up and blinking blurrily.
“Yes,” Sam said, choking back tears.
His eyes widened as he took in the scene: the knife, gory with gristle; the partially dismembered corpse; the blood on his hands. “No, no, no, no, no.”
“It’s all right,” Sam said, patting his hand. “You’re all right. We’re going to get you out of here.”
“He’s gone, I can’t see him anymore,” her grandfather cried. “Where has he gone?”
Hel and Jakob exchanged a meaningful look.
“What—what do you mean?” Sam stumbled, trying to understand.
“The spirit that was possessing me,” her grandfather said urgently, grabbing her shoulders. “What did you do with him?”
“We dispersed him,” Sam said gently. “He can’t hurt you anymore.” Not for three days at least.
“You silly girl,” her grandfather groaned, burying his face in his hands. “You have no idea what you’ve done.”
“Then explain it to us,” Hel said flatly. “Use small words, if you must.”
But Sam’s grandfather wasn’t listening. He was digging through the strange junk on the bookshelves, holding each item up to his ear and listening the way one might a shell at the beach. Shaking them as if to get out the sand and muttering to himself.
“I have to have another spirit around here somewhere, with his skills, his particular proclivities . . .” her grandfather mumbled, and the pieces of the puzzle rearranged themselves in her head, into a terrible new picture.
“You—you were possessed on purpose?” Sam said. It hurt, the idea that he would choose such a thing, that he continued to choose it, over being there for his granddaughter. “But why?”
“What are you still doing here?” her grandfather said, looking startled to see her. He moved toward her, as if to shoo her out, but Hel stepped forward and Jakob scowled, and her grandfather cringed back. “You can’t be here. It isn’t safe.”
Sam shook her head. “Was it even you, listening to”—she couldn’t say Aunt Lucy, not with Hel and Jakob listening—“the ghost you set on me?”
“Oh, Sammy, of course it was,” her grandfather said, his face crumpling. “Is, I mean. Yes, is. I only use him for the things I can’t bear to do. I love you. You must believe that.”
“Then you have to help us,” Jakob said. “Something is killing everyone haunted by one of your ghosts, and Samantha—”
“Oh, that’s easy. She just has to take off her—” His eyes searched her neck, and his expression fell. “Your necklace . . . you’re not wearing it. But you’re still haunted. Oh no, oh dear.”
“What does that mean?” Sam demanded. “What’s happening to me?”
“It seems that after so many years in close proximity, the haunting has transferred to you,” her grandfather said.
“What?” Jakob exclaimed.
“What exactly is she supposed to do with that?” Hel demanded.
The haunting was a part of Sam, as much as her heart or lungs.
Because Sam had become her Aunt Lucy’s unfinished business.
She’d watched Sam grow up for ten years, the daughter of her best friend, practically her niece.
She’d been waiting for Sam to give Jakob a piece of her mind for a decade; had gotten invested in her relationship with Hel, teasing her and offering advice.
“She needs to get out of here, while she still can,” her grandfather said urgently. “Leave Ireland. Get as far away as you can. Oh, you never should have come. Why didn’t you listen to my message? I told you not to follow me.”
“I knew you couldn’t mean that,” Sam said. Except it seemed as if he had. She tried again. “That you were only saying that because you felt like you had to, to keep me safe. But I’m here now, and I’m all right. We can leave, together.”
He wrung his hands. “I can’t. You must understand.”
“But I don’t.” Sam’s throat felt as if it were closing in, and her world closing in with it.
“Oh, rabbit,” her grandfather said, his eyes watery.
“Once he has something, he does not let it go. If I tried to escape, he would take everything from me before taking my life, and when a man has done the sorts of things I’ve done, heard what I’ve heard of Hell . . . he doesn’t easily go to Death.”
But it seemed as if he couldn’t bring himself to live, either. For at the reminder of his own inevitable end, he turned, tearing wildly through the shelves of mortal detritus again.
“Was it you?” Jakob demanded. “Are you the one behind the Wild Hunt?”
“I—I don’t know,” her grandfather said. “I could be. I don’t know what he does.
” Hel and Jakob exchanged a look, and Sam knew what they were thinking: This operation, this spectral spy ring, was more extensive than they’d known.
It would be no great loss to set the Wild Hunt on those who stood in the way of Professor Moriarty’s conquest of the Vespertine, and to continue spying on all the rest. Convenient, even.
A whispered word, and it would be done. After all, what were the Wild Hunt but ghosts?
That would explain why none of them had come for Hel, despite her mark. Her father would strip everything from her before he came for her. Whereas Sam, well. She was the fatted calf.
“Do you recognize these ghosts?” Hel demanded, thrusting the pictures they had of the first victims at him.
Her grandfather nodded wordlessly, his fingers brushing the page, before mumbling, “Yes, yes. Yes, these are mine.”
“That’s it?” Sam said, wishing he would say something in his own defense. But he only turned away, back to the shelves, mumbling to himself as he discarded a bit of scrimshaw, a rusted pot of pomade, a dirt-encrusted wedding ring. “Don’t you care what it is they’ve done?”
Her grandfather’s hands slowed. “What good would that do?” His hands closed on a dented harmonica, his gaze hungry, his conversation with Sam not important enough to hold him. “Ah, this one might do.”
One way or the other, Sam was losing him all over again, right in front of her eyes. She swallowed her despair and tried, “We can go somewhere far away, somewhere he’ll never find us.”
“No, he can’t,” Jakob said sharply. “He might be your grandfather, but he’s also the spymaster and assassin for Professor Moriarty. He’s coming with us.”
Her grandfather choked out a bitter laugh, not even seeming to hear Jakob.
“It does not matter where I go, he will find me. You of all people should know that, Sammy. The—the feathers, the black feathers you keep finding in your breakfast scones and bedsheets, the little notes. They’re his way of letting you know he can get you, no matter where you go. ”
“The what?” The betrayal in Hel’s voice cut through Sam like a knife. “Sam?”
But Sam couldn’t face Hel, not there. “Then we’ll fight,” she whispered to her grandfather. “If we stand together—”
Her grandfather shook his head, clasping the harmonica. “Have you learned nothing? You can no more fight James Moriarty than you can fight a hurricane. You can only survive it. I will do what I must.”
He was a coward. It was somehow worse than the unmitigated immorality of Hel’s father. At least he did what he felt was right. It was as if her grandfather was afraid to feel anything at all. And that’s when she realized that the man she knew and loved was gone, if, indeed, he’d existed at all.
At the same time, Sam recognized herself in him. The way he played his part in Professor Moriarty’s story, did as he was told, to keep himself safe. Except he wasn’t safe, and he’d already lost everything worth having.
“You should have listened when Mr. Wright told you to go back to London,” her grandfather said, spilling more secrets he had no right to. Jakob’s eyes narrowed, locking on Sam like a target. “He wants you, and what he wants, he gets, and he never lets go.”
“Grandfather, don’t do this,” Sam said as he whispered to the harmonica. It began to play “Banks of the Ohio” of its own accord, a folk song so innocuous sounding that it took Sam a moment to remember it was a murder ballad from Appalachia.
“I’m sorry, Sammy. I need this, in a way I hope you never have reason to understand,” her grandfather said, his eyes drinking in the harmonica as if it were salvation, as if he were already gone.
“You’re going to want to get out of here.
Quickly. There’s a reason this spirit wasn’t my first choice. ”
Her grandfather started mumbling to the harmonica as it played.
“Stop right there!” Jakob ordered, bulling forward, but he was too late. They all were.
Her grandfather gasped, his back arching, his eyes rolling back in his head.
As they watched, his body shifted, as if every bone and muscle in his body were animated by a much younger man.
The face that had once belonged to her grandfather took in the corpse before him, a smile spreading like an oil slick.
The look in his eyes was something Sam would recall in her nightmares.