Sam crept into the room where he’d meant to bleed her, afraid to look in, more afraid not to. Her gorge rising as she lined up another photograph. The stains on the splintered wooden chair. The restraints. The fleam. Then she hurried after the others.
At the end of the hall was a heavy iron door in stark contrast to the yellow wallpaper, bleeding rust onto the ground. There were no keyholes or knobs. Instead it was set with an abalone rendition of that selenic eye.
“Why isn’t there a lock?” Miss Shinagh demanded. “Did they wall her in there?” Sam had heard of such things?—the vestal virgins of ancient Rome were immured in walls, bricked in and left to die slow and miserable deaths as punishment if they broke their vows of chastity. But the Mórrígan wouldn’t die. Couldn’t die. Not like that.
If that were the case, there would be nothing they could do. No acid that would eat through the door before the sun set.
“It’s a puzzle.” Hel frowned, running her fingers over the door. Carefully, she rotated the crescent moons until they arced away from the full moon. The eye shifted to the triple moon?—one of the symbols of the Mórrígan.
“Oh, they must think themselves so clever,” Miss Shinagh said bitterly.
The crescent moons clicked into place, and the door shuddered open with a sound like the cracking of a tomb.
The chamber within was lined with stones far older than the manor into which they’d been laid?—the grey stones ancient and hoary with moss, carved deeply with great spiraling lines. Only the ceiling looked modern?—a domed spiderweb of glass and iron over a natural aperture. Sam wondered if the stones had been removed from a rath, stealing another bit of wonder from the world.
In the heart of all those swooping lines was a shimmering dome, like a Fata Morgana. Within sat a barefoot woman, clutching her knees to her chest. She was pale as bleached bone, her face shadowed, her long dark hair hanging, shroud-like, around her. Even as Sam watched, she realized she was wrong; her hair wasn’t black at all, but the visceral red of blood. She was younger than Sam had thought, too?—no, older, her grey hair scraggly, her fingers gnarled as the roots of trees.
Miss Shinagh let out a cry at the sight of her, and the figure looked up, her face a symphony of angles, at once sharp and soft, her brows fierce, her black eyes burning like stars. The same eyes that had somehow seen Sam in her dreams. A frisson of electricity lanced through her as their eyes met.
The Mórrígan. The phantom queen.
It was unspeakably wrong to see her this way.
“Ceol mo chroí.”Miss Shinagh’s whole face changed. “Song of my heart.” The words left her lips without her even seeming to notice. She rushed over to the barrier, pressing her hands to the shimmer only to hiss and recoil, tendrils of smoke wafting up with the scent of cooking meat. The Mórrígan’s lips moved, but Sam could not make out what she said.
The Mórrígan was the great queen, and yet for all her terrible power, she was unable to breach the barrier that contained her. Sam knew that feeling all too well. What it felt like for your fury, which seemed as if it ought to have summoned storms and leveled empires, to come to nothing. To feel as if there was no way out.
Miss Shinagh spun to them, her features written over with desperation. “We have to get her out of there. Can’t you see how it hurts her, to be reduced to this?”
“We can’t,” Hel said. “Not until Van Helsing comes with that knife.”
Miss Shinagh made a noise of frustration in her throat, looking up at the darkening sky, their time bleeding out with the last of the light. “I was wrong to listen to you. I need to go back, to finish what I started.”
“I’m afraid you won’t be going anywhere.” The three of them turned to see a man standing in the doorway behind them. His face was hidden behind a mask like a wolf’s skull etched in esoteric sigils, scraps of fur still clinging where the ears ought to be, but his voice was recognizable. It was Simon Ashdown, holding a golden puzzle of wheels and triangles in the palm of his hand.
Behind him fanned out men: M. Voland in his cracked deer’s skull, holding his many-bladed fleam; Mr. Keene with a mask like a rabbit’s skull and a cane in one hand; and two more she didn’t recognize, masked with the skulls of a raven and a ram, armed with a revolver and a shotgun respectively. As if the three of them were little more than deer to be hunted, skulls to be worn.
For all Mr. Keene’s pretty words to the contrary, at the end of the day, it seemed he still bowed to whoever wore the crown. Sam wouldn’t have thought it possible, but somehow, the rabbit skull managed to look guilty.
Sam raised her camera and snapped a photograph. The men stiffened, despite their masks. This was what they feared, these men who flourished in the shadows. While she feared them, they feared the light.
Miss Shinagh blistered the air with a string of curses in Irish.“Go ndéana an diabhal cipín dod’ dhá chois. Go ndéana an diabhal dréimire de chnámh do dhroma. Go n-ithe an cat tú is go n-ithe an diabhal an cat! D’anam don diabhal!”
“Oh, come now, Miss Shinagh. Don’t tell me you’re surprised,” Mr. Ashdown said. Sam could just glimpse the helpless look on his face through the ragged orbital sockets of the wolf skull. As if all of this were inevitable, as if the three of them were only making things harder for themselves with their struggle. “You thought, what, that we wouldn’t be prepared for this? That you’d come in and free the Mórrígan without any resistance?” Mr. Ashdown shook his head. “To think we almost welcomed you with open arms. You know, there were rumors Lord Lusk was bewitched, but I never believed them. The man needed no encouragement to be a fool. But now?—”
“He was a better man than you’ll ever be,” Miss Shinagh said, to Sam’s surprise, given that she suspected the man was little more than a key to a particularly recalcitrant lock for the unnaturalist.
“If you liked him so well, perhaps you ought to have considered not murdering him?” Mr. Ashdown said, before turning to Sam and Hel. “You’ve done us a great service. Do you know, we hadn’t the slightest idea who was behind the attacks of the Wild Hunt? I only half believed she existed. She never would have come out on her own. Might have killed us all, if it weren’t for you.”
“I’m beginning to think we ought to have let her,” Hel said, her voice gilded with violence.
“Now, now,” Mr. Ashdown tsked. “None of that. I know the board of the Society well, old friends from university, you understand. If you can bring yourselves to be cooperative, I could put in a good word for you. Perhaps get Miss Moriarty out of their proverbial crosshairs?”
Heknew, Sam realized with growing dread. Must have known everything about them, ever since Sam’s encounter with M. Voland. Maybe even before.
Hel was unmoved. “A generous offer for a man who holds us at gunpoint.”
Mr. Ashdown shrugged. “You may not be the most valuable players the Society has to offer, but you still belong to them. I don’t think they’d appreciate my taking you off the board, and I could stand to have them owe me a favor.”
