Chapter Twenty-Three #2
It seemed the notorious Lady M—who leapt out of windows without a second thought, whose legs never decided not to work in a fight, who believed her father impossible to defeat but who took against him anyway—was scared.
It looked wrong on her, somehow, foreign.
As if Hel didn’t know what to do with it, so she was shoving it away—and Sam with it.
Sam wet her lips. “Hel, I know I should have trusted you—trusted us—and I know it’s unfair of me to ask this of you. But I just—I need you to trust me when I tell you I can do this.” That she needed to do this, for her own sake as much as the Mórrígan’s.
“Enough.”
“Hel—” Sam said, her voice cracking. Hel didn’t believe her, didn’t trust her. Sam couldn’t precisely blame her, but still, she’d hoped . . .
“We’ll do it your way,” Hel said, and Sam’s heart leapt. “But if you die—”
“You’ll pull the veins out of my neck and strangle me with them?” Sam said lightly, and was gratified when Hel barked a surprised laugh. “You won’t lose me,” Sam added softly, reaching out for Hel’s hand. It was cold and calloused and bleeding. Sam gave it a squeeze.
Hel drew in a shaky breath. “Any idea how we can track her down?”
Sam eyed the crows, the song whispering in her mind. If the Mórrígan truly had her hooks in Sam, that meant she ought to be able to reach the crows. She reached out hesitantly toward the black birds, felt their touch lick against her mind like flames. “I think so. But you’re not going to like it.”
Sam and Hel followed the crows to Saint Stephen’s Green.
The skeletal trees scraped the sky, and the black birds huddled on their branches like candles burning down to stumps.
So close to curfew, the park was empty save for one woman, who had never paid much attention to the rules, anyway: Miss Shinagh.
Sam’s woolen skirts dragged against her legs, cold and sodden as they squelched through the water to the island where the other woman waited, kneeling with her back to them in a circle of mushrooms that Sam could have sworn weren’t there before.
Some that dripped black from their caps like gems, others that seemed like lace petticoats, and one that was a white spongy material with beads of what Sam might have sworn was blood.
Miss Shinagh didn’t bother to turn around. “You’re braver than I thought, to come here after murdering my fiancé.” Her voice was no longer smooth, but raw and husky.
“You mean your ticket into the Vespertine?” Hel said, crossing her arms. Miss Shinagh’s hands twitched violently. “We know what you’re after.”
“Then you know you shouldn’t have interfered.
” Miss Shinagh didn’t bother with the usual protests, that she didn’t know what they were talking about, that it was someone else murdering everyone.
“If I can’t free her, I can at least ensure the Vespertine don’t get what they want.
You can try to stop me if you like. But I don’t recommend it.
” Not on Samhain, with the power of the Mórrígan flowing through her.
“We’re not trying to stop you,” Sam said. “We’re trying to help you.”
“You had your chance,” Miss Shinagh said dismissively. The Folk were famous for their grudges. Miss Shinagh looked over her shoulder, eyeing Sam. “Leave if you want to survive. Or don’t.”
Sam let out an impatient breath. “We know how to free the Mórrígan.”
Miss Shinagh was on her feet in an instant, her eyes lambent and her too-sharp teeth bared. She had never looked so like a fox. “Explain.”
Sam’s lips parted to answer, but Hel cut her off before she could.
“No,” Hel said. “First, we make a deal. A stay of execution.”
Miss Shinagh raised an eyebrow. “You would defend the Vespertine?”
“That’s the problem; it’s not just them,” Sam said.
It was Sam and her grandfather. It was everyone who was haunted, for any reason.
“Give the Vespertine a week to leave Ireland. What they’re doing, it’s highly illegal in every court in Europe.
If we collect evidence, we can ensure they face justice. ”
“Justice,” Miss Shinagh laughed bitterly. “My, but your naivety is aggravating and ingratiating all at once.”
“Three days,” Hel offered. “And if they ever return, their lives are forfeit.”
“I could do that without an agreement,” Miss Shinagh said, her eyes narrowed. Then: “They can have twenty-four hours, and my words will not bind anyone but me. I may have influence with her, but . . .”
“That’s a risk we’re willing to take,” Hel said.
The wind rose around them as the deal tightened, sinking into their bones.
“Right,” Hel said, already turning to the horizon. “Van Helsing—the Dutchman—has a knife that can cut through the cage. If we get there before he does, we might convince him to use it to free her. If not . . .”
“You could have told me before I agreed to your deal,” Miss Shinagh snapped.
“I could have,” Hel admitted, unrepentant. “We need horses. Not a carriage. They’re faster.”
“No,” Miss Shinagh said, determination tightening her jaw. “I have a better way.”
“Stray sod,” Sam breathed. When you wandered into a patch of stray sod, you might come out halfway to Donegal if you weren’t careful.
But Miss Shinagh had walked the misty paths of the Otherworld and come out the other side.
It occurred to Sam then that what they were doing, there was no going back.
She needed to be prepared for every eventuality, no matter how improbable.
“Wait! There’s something I need to fetch from the hotel. ”
“What could possibly be so important—” Miss Shinagh began.
“Do you want the Vespertine to face justice?” Sam interrupted. “No one would believe us, not against men like that. We need evidence. Which means we need a camera.” Or two.
In the hotel room, Sam grabbed the Viscount’s box camera and the bowler hat Hel had snagged off the spy, before changing her soaked skirts and corset for her mother’s tartan.
Sam had, of course, made her own modifications.
She patted her corset. There was a chance they wouldn’t need it, that the box camera would be sufficient.
But that wasn’t a risk Sam was willing to take.
Sam emerged from the hotel, holding out the spy hat to Hel. For a moment, Hel just looked at it. Then she nodded and settled it on her head.
“Don’t let go of my hands,” Miss Shinagh warned as she led them to a patch of unnaturally lush grass. “Or I’m not certain where you’ll end up.”
Her hand clamped around Sam’s like a vise.
Sam was suddenly certain they’d made a terrible mistake, that Miss Shinagh would abandon them somewhere far from Ashdown Manor and Dublin, in the wilds of Ireland.
In a bog, perhaps, to be discovered a hundred years later and thought a sacrifice to some fell god, which, perhaps she would be, if that god was grief and wrath.
And then they were stepping into the stray sod.
In other circumstances, Sam might have been taken with scholarly excitement; traveling into the stray sod with no worries about being lost was something vanishingly few ever got to experience.
But her curiosity was chased with fear—that Jakob would get there before them and kill the Mórrígan; that he would get there and the Vespertine would have already finished their ritual; that they would, one way or another, be too late.
The fog thickened around them, whispers and laughter chasing through the white.
Sam clung to Miss Shinagh’s hand as shadows swam in the mirrored waters of a milky lake, the ceol Sídhe calling for her to come down into the depths, to drown and dance with them forever.
But Miss Shinagh wrenched Sam’s arm so hard, she felt it scrape the socket, and laughter chased them into a forest.
The trees were pressed together so close, Sam couldn’t breathe without bark scratching her skin, until Miss Shinagh opened an oak like a door and pulled them through and out the other side, where a red mountain loomed.
Sam looked behind her, but the tree was gone, no sign that a forest had ever been there.
Only that crimson mountain, inescapably before them, no matter which way they turned.
But before despair could grip her, Miss Shinagh lifted the skirt of the mountain and took them under its roots, where the walls glimmered with uncut gems and the sound of dancing and music echoed in the dark.
Here, at last, Miss Shinagh let go of their hands, instructing them to turn their jackets inside out.
They complied, and abruptly, Sam was blinking alongside Hel and Miss Shinagh in a copse of small, twisted trees, mushrooms nosing out around their feet.
The glittering edge of the sun kissed the horizon, drenching the golden hills in shadow.
Sam could see the bonfires burning across the countryside for Samhain, smoke rising to the stars, to ward away the Folk and unhallowed dead. And before them: Ashdown Manor.