Chapter One
The Royal Society for the Study of Abnormal Phenomena, London Field Office
Six Days Before Samhain
Samantha Harker folded her hands on the scarred mahogany table, grateful her emerald-green riding habit would disguise any hint of sweat. Her fingers itched to adjust the tortoiseshell comb half tumbling from her honeyed curls, and she reeked of road dust and warm horse. She wished she’d been given time to change or, if she were wishing, tobathe, but the men who’d accosted her had been... most insistent.
Flickering gaslights illuminated burgundy walls bristling with rowan-wood stakes and silver knives, iron-studded whips and heavy crossbows. Beneath them, hand-scrawled maps and diagrams of monsters fought for space with apothecary cabinets, their hundred tiny drawers brimming with poisons and holy relics.
This was where every hunter in the Royal Society for the Study of Abnormal Phenomena prepared to go on assignment. WhereSamprepared, ever since that business with the Beast in Paris, when she’d first left the haven of her library to venture into the field, chasing the ghost of her grandfather’s numbers.
It was also, apparently, where agents were interrogated about their partners. At least, it was when their partner was the notorious Lady M?—rebel daughter of the criminal mastermind Professor Moriarty.He’s a whisper of information,Hel had said of her father,a nudge on someone’s baser instincts. A finger on a domino whose effects spiral out in unseen designs.
She’d also said Sam ought to punch him in the mouth.
“It’s a simple question, Miss Harker.” Mr. Wright’s chair creaked as he leaned forward. The director for the Society looked every inch the gentleman explorer with his salt-and-pepper beard and flared moustache. His petrified hand, courtesy of a cockatrice, was tucked into his silver waistcoat. He might have come from tea with the king, save for the whiff of blood that clung to his cane, which Sam knew hid a blade.
Sam didn’t know the two men sitting to either side of him, but given the stiffness in Mr. Wright’s posture, they outranked him.
“Did you or did you not witness Miss Moriarty murder Dr. Gastrell?” Mr. Wright repeated, pulling her attention back to him.
“Doctor,” Sam corrected.
“Your pardon?” The man to Mr. Wright’s right was weedy and monocled, in a tweed jacket and tan breeches, as if he were on a brief respite from a fox hunt, which, as far as Sam knew, he was.
“Did I or did I not witnessDr.Moriarty murder Dr. Gastrell,” Sam clarified. “Unless, of course, she’s been stripped of her doctorate?”
Mr. Wright sighed. “Fine. Did you or did you not witnessDr.Moriarty murder Dr. Gastrell?”
Sam smiled. “I didn’t see her shoot him, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Oh, for the love of?—” The man on Mr. Wright’s left looked to be of a height with Sam, but broad as an ox, in a leather duster and black gloves. A part of his jaw had been replaced with a brass replica, and whenever he took a puff on his pipe?—a curved ivory thing that gave the unnerving impression of his gnawing on a bone?—smoke leaked between his metal teeth. “DidDr.Moriarty lock Dr. Gastrell in a basement with vengeful spirits, bar and salt the door, and hold it shut until he stopped screaming, or not?”
“If by ‘vengeful spirits,’ you mean the young women?—”
The brass-jawed man waved a thick hand. “The origin of the spirits is hardly relevant to this deliberation.”
“I’d argue it’s exceptionally relevant,sir,” Sam cut in. “Given there wouldn’tbeany vengeful spirits if Dr. Gastrell hadn’tmurdered them.”
“He washuman,” Mr. Wright said sharply, as if that excused a little murder. But of course, that wasn’t what he meant. He meant Dr. Gastrell’s victims weren’t human anymore, even if they had been once.
At least three young women had gone missing in East London. Three young women who, according to the match girls who worked at the factory nearby, had all answered adverts for Dr. Gastrell’s practice. Sam had seen sketches of them on broadsides plastered to the walls in East London, under hand-scrawled headlines that readMissing.
It was nothing the police were concerned with?—young women of that variety went missing all the time. Besides which, it must be noted that these women were hardly ladies. Who was to say they hadn’t simply run off? Or tried to seduce Dr. Gastrell and, having been rebuffed, fled in shame? That sort of thing happened all the time, according to the police, and Dr. Gastrell was, after all, adoctor.
Sam near bit through her tongue at that. There was a man at the market in Covent Garden who sold suspensions of radium and called it medicine, it didn’t mean it was good for you. And if there was one thing Sam had learned in her encounter with the Beast, it was that when women whispered, you listened, even when the police didn’t. Especially when the police didn’t.
And then the good doctor had the audacity to complain of a haunting.
“Miss Harker,” Mr. Wright said, a warning in his voice, “we have had this discussion before, and I’m not inclined to have it again.”
“But?—”
The foxhunter cleared his throat almost delicately. “No one is questioning the effectiveness of Miss?—Dr.Moriarty’s actions, if, indeed, they were hers, which we have yet to establish. Only the unacceptable loss of human life and deviation from Society protocol. I’m sure you understand. We have a reputation to maintain, after all.”And a budget,Sam thought bitterly. “So if you’ll answer the question: Did Dr. Moriarty’s actions, direct or indirect, lead to Dr. Gastrell’s death?”
Sam closed her eyes. It was always going to come to this eventually. These men knew what answers they wanted, and they wouldn’t stop until they got them. It didn’t help matters that they were right.
“Yes,” Sam admitted at last. “But?—”
