Chapter Twenty-One #2
The captain called out orders, bringing the ferry slowly around.
The moment the gangplank was extended, she dashed off the ferry, running straight past the sandy-haired boy.
The captain’s curses blistered the air behind her as he realized her deception, but Sam ignored him.
She ignored everything as she sprinted for the Shelbourne, the ravens darkening the sky behind her like a cloak.
Breathless, she pulled herself up the stairs of the hotel, praying the other woman was still there, that she wasn’t too late.
“Hel!” Sam burst into Hel’s chambers. A soft whistle was all the warning she got before a knife thunked into the door beside her head, pinning her honeyed curls to the wood. Sam froze, her heart racing.
Despite how they’d left things between them, Sam’s heart couldn’t help but thrill at the sight of Hel, her scarlet tie undone around her neck, and those cutting eyes, focused entirely on Sam. Her revolver was in pieces on a formerly white cloth, Hel apparently in the process of cleaning it.
“Hel, listen,” Sam began, her chest heaving as she tried to catch her breath.
“What part of the knife made you think I was interested in your apologies?” Hel said, her voice razor edged. She’d donned the mantle of Lady M again, but this time, Sam wasn’t fooled.
“The part where you missed,” Sam said, refusing to drop her gaze.
Hel stalked over to Sam until she was close enough to kiss, looming over her as she grabbed hold of the knife in the wall.
“A mistake I won’t make twice.” Desire shot through Sam.
Heaven help her, but she still wanted Hel.
Even now, after everything. Hel yanked out the knife and turned away. “Go home, Miss Harker. It’s over.”
This. Us. Everything.
Anger flared through Sam at that. She had made mistakes, to be sure, but she was hardly alone in that. How was it that Sam was the only one being held to account?
“You want to know why I didn’t tell you?” Sam demanded.
“Not particularly.” Disinterest dripped from Hel’s every syllable. It was impressive, actually, or would have been, if Sam hadn’t been furious.
“This is why,” Sam said, gesturing at the hole in the wall. They would never be welcomed back to that hotel again. Not after all they’d put it through. It was a miracle they hadn’t been put out on the street. “How could I possibly trust you wouldn’t overreact?”
“Overreact?” Hel bit off a laugh. “You hid my brother’s machinations from me. You might as well have been working for him.”
Rage flowered through her, growing thorns. Of course this was why she was angry. Hel had said she would change, but she was exactly the same as she’d always been. Sam was just a pawn to her in the deadly game she played against her family—discarded the moment she’d made a misplay.
“What was I supposed to do?” Sam said sharply. “You shot the first raven we saw—in a public park!”
“It was my brother’s raven,” Hel said, as if anyone might do the same. “I meant to send a message.”
“You threatened to pull the veins out of M. Voland’s throat and strangle him with them!” Sam continued. “Which doesn’t even make sense. The man would be dead long before he’d choke.”
“He hurt you!” Hel shouted, her calm sheared through at last.
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
“I thought you didn’t care?” Sam said softly. Hel turned away, her jaw tightening. Sam drew in a shaky breath. “This . . . isn’t why I came. Listen, we got it wrong. It’s not my grandfather.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Sam—”
“No, that’s not—I’m not . . . defending him,” Sam said. “What he did is vile, and I still don’t know how to wrap my head around that. But another man was found murdered, his hat embedded in a tree. Which means it couldn’t have been my grandfather.”
“Couldn’t it?” Hel said. “It wouldn’t be the first time in this case ghosts have gotten past traditional deterrents. So, if that’s all . . .”
It couldn’t be all. She needed something more, something Hel, who seemed to want nothing more than to see Sam’s back, couldn’t dismiss.
“I pulled this feather out of my wrist where it was growing,” Sam said.
Hel snorted. “You expect me to believe—”
Sam thrust her bloody wrist and the accompanying feather at Hel, and Hel’s jaw shut. “There was another I pulled from my throat.”
“This . . . isn’t a raven feather,” Hel said, her gaze narrowed. “It’s a crow feather.”
“It’s . . . what?” Sam blinked. “What kinds of birds are those, outside the window?”
“There’s more than one of them,” Hel said, as if it were obvious. Then, when Sam stared at her blankly, “Crows. You’d know if they were ravens. They’re big as hawks—you’re a researcher, Harker. You really want me to believe you couldn’t tell the difference?”
“Former researcher,” Sam snapped, flushing.
But her mind whirled, thinking of all the times she’d seen black birds and thought them ravens.
How often were they simply crows? “And I’m not a—a walking encyclopedia.
It’s more that I know where to look things up.
Besides which, I seem to remember a certain field agent not recognizing a common grindylow! ”
“That,” Hel said, “was entirely different. It was dehydrated and far from its native habitat.”
“Are you going to let me tell you this story or not?” Sam snapped.
“You’d know if I were stopping you,” Hel promised darkly, and embarrassingly, Sam couldn’t help but feel a flutter at what that might look like, at how she might stop her words. Why was it that even furious, Hel consumed her?
“I—I’ve been having these . . .” Dreams seemed inadequate, but they weren’t visions, either, not like she was used to. “Death omens.”
“Death omens?” Hel’s eyes flashed. “And you didn’t think your partners needed to know?”
“You didn’t think your partner needed to know you might have killed her grandfather?” Sam countered. But she looked away. “Anyway, there was nothing you could do about it. It’s a death omen, not a near-death-experience omen. It’s a courtesy, not a way to avert fate.”
“Fate is the coward’s way out of trying,” Hel said. Sam decided to ignore that. There was a certain bravery, she thought, in accepting that which you could not change instead of bailing water until you breathed it. But she had to admit that wasn’t what she had been doing.
“The strange thing is, I’m not certain it was my death omen.
” Sam closed her eyes, drawing the dream down.
“The landscape was ashen, a battlefield, swords driven into the ground like tombstones, veined with great cataracts of blood that led to a river. At the river crouched a crone, washing a man’s armor with knobby hands.
Somehow, she saw me, and her mouth opened in a scream, but all that came out were”—not ravens, not given what she knew now—“crows. The first time, I woke up choking on a crow feather. I saw it again while waking, before pulling another out of my arm. The washer at the ford, I know, but—”
“That,” Hel said, “isn’t the washer at the ford.”
“What else could it be?” Sam said. “A crone, bent backed, washing . . .”
“Armor. The washer at the ford washes clothing,” Hel said with finality. “Tell me, what did you do to snag the attention of the Mórrígan?”
Sam went cold at the name. The Mórrígan.
One of the greatest of the Tuatha Dé Danann—one of the old gods, or the Folk, or whatever you named them.
By some accounts a triplicate goddess, by all accounts a shapeshifter, associated with battle, destiny, and death.
A goddess of the land, whom kings married to bind themselves to Ireland and gain the right of kingship.
She was also the queen of demons, known as the phantom queen, associated with crows, the triple moon, and Samhain.
And suddenly, it seemed impossible she hadn’t realized it before. This was the her from Mr. Bishop’s ranting. You have no idea what she’s capable of, he’d said.
“The Mórrígan is the one behind all this, isn’t she?” Sam breathed.
“And the Vespertine are her targets,” Hel said grimly. Not the rich, though they were that. Not the Protestants or the Unionists, though most of them were those things as well, and not those who stood in Professor Moriarty’s way.
“But why?” Sam protested. “What have they done?”
“Whatever it is, Mr. Bishop knows about it,” Hel said.
“We have to stop her,” Sam said. The dozens of bells on the wall of her grandfather’s workshop—the ghosts the Mórrígan seemed to be using to track her prey. How many of those people were actually Vespertine? How many were like Sam and Hel, merely impediments to Professor Moriarty’s plans?
Without taking her eyes from Sam, Hel raised her voice. “Van Helsing!”
There was a muffled shouting from the room next door, and a few moments later, Jakob burst jingling into the room in his brown duster, his revolver in hand.
“What is it? Where—” His eyes fell on Sam, and his face bent into a scowl. He holstered his revolver. “You. You aren’t supposed to be here.”
“I—” Sam began, but Hel cut her off.
“Grab your kit,” Hel said, slinging her long tan coat over her shoulders. “We’re going to Bishop’s.”
Jakob’s eyes narrowed. “Why on earth should I want to do that?”
“Because it’s not her grandfather,” Hel said shortly. “And if we don’t act quickly, an unholy number of people are going to die. Including Miss Harker.”
“Miss Harker wouldn’t be at risk if she’d just followed orders and gotten on that ferry!” Jakob said.
“Just listen,” Hel said, and she caught him up on the other Otherworldly incursions, the feathers, the Mórrígan. Bishop.
“You were pulling feathers out of your throat, and you didn’t think it worth mentioning?” Jakob exclaimed.
“And you can’t think of any reason why I might not have felt entirely comfortable confiding in you?” Sam echoed Hel.
“Fuck,” Jakob said with feeling, slamming his fist on the door. “Fuck! All right, I’m coming. But not until I’ve seen Miss Harker board that ferry.”
“Miss Harker has managed to catch the attention of the Mórrígan,” Hel said. “And until we know why, she stays.”
“What? No,” Jakob exclaimed. “That’s the opposite of what we should be doing.”
“Jakob, trust me—” Sam started, reaching out for his arm, but Jakob pulled out of range.
“I did,” Jakob said, that past tense pulling through her like fishhooks. Which was absurd. When had he ever trusted Sam? When had her lying to him been anything but survival?
“Look on the bright side,” Sam said, “this way, you can always put me down if I go wrong. Hard to do that when I’m on a ferry back to England.”
Jakob’s jaw clenched. If Sam didn’t know better, she’d think he didn’t actually want to put her down.
Jakob shook his head, as if at his own seeping corruption.
“I will see you on that ferry if I have to truss you up and toss you on myself. I will not take the blame for your insubordination, or your death. I have worked too hard to lose everything—just because you couldn’t follow orders if they were embroidered on the backs of your eyelids! ”
It took Sam a moment to recognize herself in his comment. When had she stopped believing in the Society? That justice came from following its orders?
“What will it take for you to understand?” Sam seethed. “You are not responsible for my actions: I am. And if you won’t tell Mr. Wright as much, I’ll tell him myself.”
“Fine!” Jakob threw up his hands. “Do what you want. But if you get yourself killed—”
She’d have no one to blame but herself. “Understood.”
Jakob squinted into the sun—not yet setting, but entirely too low for comfort. “I’ll requisition a carriage. If what you say is true, there’s no time to waste.”
He turned on his heel and left. Heathcliff raced over from where he’d been hiding behind the bed. Sam knelt to scoop him up, smiling as he nuzzled the palm of her hand. “At least someone missed me,” Sam murmured.
Hel stopped her with a look, reclaiming Heathcliff and depositing him on her shoulder. He was, she remembered with a pang, Hel’s rat. Another thing she’d lost.
“Miss Harker,” Hel said. A part of Sam died at those words, at the sheer formality of them—even after everything. “So that you understand. This doesn’t mean we’re partners.”
Sam swallowed against a tightness in her throat. “I know.” Had they thought they were pretending to be at odds? The reality was so much worse.
“Good.” Hel shouldered past her and into the hall, leaving Sam to chase after her one last time.