Chapter Twenty-Six
Montpelier Hill, County Dublin (Cnoc Montpelier, Contae Bhaile átha Cliath)
The Day After Samhain
Sam made her way to Montpelier Hill alone, save for Heathcliff, walking through the gorse in the midday sun, listening to the wind rattle the branches of the linden trees.
The trapdoor at the Hell-Fire Club was swung wide.
From that alone, Sam ought to have known what was to come.
But still, she clung to hope, her palms stinging on the cold iron struts of the ladder.
There had been an incident, Sam had been told, when they’d gone to Dublin Castle to see her grandfather.
That morning, he had been absent from his cell.
He’ll be here, she told herself. He’ll have changed his mind. He’ll remember how much he misses me. How much he loves me. Enough to try.
Sam dropped down. It was dark, the candles all stubs. She shivered. There was a ringing in her ears that wouldn’t stop, as if her grandfather’s bells were trying to summon her.
“Are you all right?” Hel said, stepping out of the shadows. Heathcliff squeaked. Sam gasped, whirling.
“Hel!” Sam exclaimed, willing her heart to stop trying to escape her chest. “Don’t sneak up on me like that!”
“I wasn’t sneaking.”
“How did you even know I’d be here?” Sam said.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Hel said, extending a hand to help an impatient Heathcliff up to her shoulder. “Your grandfather escaped custody. I assumed you’d want to see if he was still here. If he’d left anything for you. After you got some sleep. I know how regimental you are about your sleep.”
“Oh, obviously,” Sam said faintly. Hel could be a little scary sometimes, when she let her Moriarty out. Then it hit her. “Wait, you’re here, that means they let you go, unless—”
Hel pulled out a newspaper. On the cover was the headline “The Notorious Napoleon of Crime Captured on Camera.” A welcome headline, even if it was a bit too alliterative for Sam’s taste.
Beneath it was a circular photo ringed in black.
The details weren’t phenomenal, but the man was clearly recognizable as Professor Moriarty.
They’d won. They’d gone up against Professor Moriarty and actually won.
He may have gotten away, but now everyone knew his face.
He would be hunted, no matter how far he ran.
Better still, Hel had been exonerated. According to the article, she was to receive a commendation, which meant the Society couldn’t let her go, even if they wanted to—not without a great deal of trouble.
“I knew switching the cameras would work!” Sam said. It was always the way with men who thought themselves cleverer than you: Show them what they expected, and they never looked for anything else.
“It’s not over yet,” Hel said, but there was a new layer of self-assurance beneath her words, where there had once been doubt. “My father spent years without being spotted. He can spend years more.”
“Yes, but those were by choice,” Sam said. “You did this to him.”
“We did this to him,” Hel reminded her.
She looked ahead into the darkness. Toward where Sam’s grandfather waited . . . or didn’t. To whatever token he’d left her with this time, if he’d left anything at all.
“Are you ready for this?” Hel asked.
“Not remotely,” Sam admitted. She wondered why she was even there, when he’d made it so clear she was so easy to abandon. “But I need to know.”
She sparked her lantern, sending shadows skittering across the walls as they ducked under the narrowing ceiling, holding her breath as they turned the corner, somehow certain that he would be there, waiting.
He’d apologize, she told herself, and hold her tight, telling her how he didn’t have to be scared anymore, how she’d shone the light on Professor Moriarty and now he was free.
She needn’t have bothered; there was nothing to see. Her grandfather was gone, along with all his things. The bells, the bed, the books. The eclectic collection of lanterns that had hung from the ceiling. The radiotelegraph and half-repaired phonograph.
The teeth, all those hundreds and hundreds of teeth.
Only the candle wax remained, the clove-and-smoke scent of him, and a small pile of books—not forgotten in some corner, but in the very center of the room, as if they were waiting for her.
A book on channeling. A familiar book of Greek myths that he must have kept with him all those years.
And a bell inscribed with the name Samantha Harker.
She picked up the bell. It was, Sam understood, an apology, but not one she was ready to accept.
Sam felt tears threatening and hated herself a little for it. Her grandfather had abandoned her for a second time, because that was what he did: He ran. She shouldn’t be upset over it, it was expected. This was who he was.
“I’m sorry,” Hel said, laying a hand on Sam’s shoulder.
“Don’t be,” Sam said, wiping at her eyes roughly. “It was his choice.” He worked for Professor Moriarty; if she saw him again, they’d be enemies. But despite knowing all that, it hurt.
“He may not have felt like he had much of one,” Hel said.
“How am I going to tell my parents?” Sam asked. How was she going to tell Quincey?
“I don’t know,” Hel said quietly. Sam couldn’t stand that she’d been proud of him, that she still loved him, despite everything.
“All these years . . . I thought maybe he hadn’t died. Maybe he was trapped, trying to get home to us,” Sam said. “But he left because he was a coward, because we weren’t reason enough to fight. And now . . . I don’t recognize him anymore. Was any of that real? Was this always who he was?”
It was as if in his betrayal, Sam had lost part of herself—or found it.
“I worry I’m like him,” Sam said softly.
“I think, sometimes, about how much easier it would be to just let go, to stop caring. And that’s what he did, isn’t it?
He stopped caring about us, about everything.
Let himself get possessed all so he wouldn’t have to feel.
” She turned to Hel. “I said I can feel and still do things, but what if I can’t?
What if I give myself to the song and just let myself be . . . gone?”
“You won’t,” Hel said.
“I already have,” Sam said.
“But you didn’t let it happen again,” Hel said. “Not even when M. Voland tied you up and held his fleam to your throat. The things we’ve been through—you feel everything, and still you fight for what you believe in, even if it’s painful, even if it means you fail.”
She’d tried on the train, though; it simply hadn’t worked.
“When I was thirteen, I . . . learned something about my mother,” Hel said, and Sam stilled.
Hel had never spoken of her mother before.
“Something that contradicted everything I thought I knew about her. Everything she stood for—everything I was coming to stand for. I . . . didn’t take it well.
She defined so much of who I was. When I learned .
. . what I learned, I didn’t know who I was anymore. ”
“Oh, Hel . . . I’m sorry, I should have—”
“That’s not why I’m telling you this,” Hel cut her off. “I’m just saying this isn’t simple. Your grandfather might be someone you don’t recognize, someone you don’t know if you like, but he’s still the man you grew up with, too.”
At Hel’s words, it was as if the world shifted in her mind, slotting into place.
Give yourself the same grace you give the monsters we fight, Hel had said.
And for some reason, she found herself thinking of the vengeful spirits in Dr. Gastrell’s basement.
They were murderers, but first they’d been murdered; they were human, and they were monsters.
One did not erase the other. The Wild Hunt, too.
And Sam, she had done the unthinkable. She had invited the monster in, just as everyone said she would, and those she cared about had suffered for it.
But she was still the person who had risked her life to save Jakob’s—twice—despite his being an utter ass at the time.
She was still the person who had helped save the Mórrígan, and who’d rescued Hel from her worst impulses.
She was still human . . . even if she was a little bit of a monster, too.
Just like everybody else. Hel, and the bloody trail she’d left in her wake to survive.
Jakob, with the cruelty he’d worn like armor.
Her grandfather, with the cowardice that overshadowed his love.
Aunt Lucy, with her unfortunate habit of devouring children.
Well, maybe she was a lot of a monster. But she’d helped Sam as well, and been her mother’s dearest friend, once.
It seemed to Sam that most anyone could prove a monster.
But that it was, for most, a choice, and that meant there was hope.
Hope that she might not turn monstrous, that Hel would not become her father to fight him, and that someday, when Sam crossed paths with her grandfather again, it would be different.
That she might see the man she remembered once more.
“Shall we go back?” Hel asked, and Sam knew that if she said no, the other woman would stay with her until she was ready.
“Yes, let’s,” Sam said, and she followed Hel out of the dark.