Sam slid the picture out from the pile and nearly dropped it. The man’s flesh twisted and bulged in the still frame of the photograph, as if he no longer had bones, his skin just a shell for somethingelse. Sam bit back a gasp, breathing in a fragrance that was at once hypnotic and nauseatingly sweet.
The song only she could hear thrummed through her, eerie and bewitching. Sam found herself listening closer, felt as if she could almost hearwords?—
Sam wrenched her fingers away. The photograph fell to the table.
“All right, Miss Harker?” Van Helsing said dangerously.
“Yes, it’s just... this is a lot,” Sam said, her voice shaking.
The photograph, she could now see, was of a gentleman posing in front of a Lamplough-Albany steam car, distinguishable by the tightly curled handlebar moustache on his otherwise boyish face and the curl of his lip, which seemed to imply he smelled something rotten.
Reaching into her skirt pocket, Sam pulled on a pair of kid leather gloves she’d bought in London, dyed a vinegarroon black. It was less her color than Hel’s, but the dye was made from cold iron and penetrated all the way through the leather. Sam had a notion that since iron was resistant to enchantment, perhaps gloves impregnated with iron might mitigate her visions, if not prevent them entirely.
“The second,” Detective Lynch continued, pointing to another photograph, “is Alexander Hayes, founder of Hayes Beer here in Dublin, one of the largest exporters of beer in the world, second only to Guinness. A graduating member of the Cambridge Apostles, well connected with Parliament. Just married this year.”
Her fingers drifted over a photograph of a soft-featured man in a morning suit, with one eyebrow raised at the camera, a book held slack in his hand. The slightest of smiles tugged at the man’s lips, as if he found the whole business of photography amusing. Bracing herself, Sam reached out and touched it. But there was no sudden sensation, no rush of feelings. Relief pooled in her gut: The gloves worked.
“As for the third?—”
Sam gave a sharp intake of breath.
The third photograph pictured a stout gentleman with a sweep of pale hair crouched by a bloodstain on the cobblestones. He was dressed entirely in tweed, a pair of ivory-handled revolvers on his hips and a shotgun slung over his back. By his side, angled away from the camera, stood a dark-haired gentleman in a tailcoat and wire-framed spectacles, his rapier extended out to the side like a duelist.
Not just Society field agents?—field agents Sam knew.
“The Viscount and the Duke,” Sam managed.
Unlike most field agents, the Viscount and the Duke hadn’t treated Sam like part of the furnishings when they’d come to file their reports. The Viscount had an infectious laugh and an affection for the same romantic detective novels Sam devoured between bouts of research, and the Duke, who was surprisingly soft spoken, raised ducklings. Not to eat or hunt, or even for their eggs, but just because he liked them. Though there were eggs, too.
And now both the Viscount and the Duke were missing. But they shouldn’t have even been there. They were English nobility, which was about as English as it got?—exceptionally objectionable, as far as the Irish were concerned. So why, then, had they been chosen?
Outside the snug, a man was declaiming poetry to shouts and applause?—she could dimly make out something about a mystic connection the Irish had with their land, about how the Otherworld was rising to chase the English into the sea, like St. Patrick had the snakes. It made for a lovely story, but it didn’t make sense: The English had been in Ireland for eight hundred years. The Otherworld hadn’t cared before, so why would it care now?
“What about the other supernatural attacks?” Sam asked. “The Dobhar-chú attacking English ships?”
Detective Lynch waved a hand dismissively. “It’s not connected. Those attacks aren’t against the English, butindustry?—ships and railroads and factories.”
Iron, Sam thought. All the attacks had to do with an increase in iron.
“England is on the cusp of industrializing Ireland, birthing it into the modern age,” Detective Lynch continued. “The effect on the Otherworld, I’m given to understand, will be... substantial. These attacks are nothing more than the last gasp of a dying world. Unfortunate, but not unexpected, particularly so close to Samhain.”
“Has anyone tried to talk with the Folk?” Hel asked.
“Of course,” Detective Lynch said. “But the fairies have grown hostile and withdrawn from standard methods of communication.”
“Right,” Hel said dryly.
Sam couldn’t shake the feeling that the Special Branch might have cared a little more?—and a bit earlier?—if the monsters of Ireland had been devouring their rich and powerful instead of English sailors and railroad workers.
Detective Lynch tapped the table with his pointer finger. “These disappearances are something different. There’s a pattern to them. They’re not directly involved, and yet they’retargeted.”
“You think it’s political,” Sam said. So that’s why the Special Branch had been called in, and why it was being kept so quiet. They thought the separatists were working the Otherworld up to it.
“If this is part of some separatist plot, we will put a stop to it,” Detective Lynch said. “But we need proof.”
Hel crossed her arms. “There hasn’t been an organized separatist movement in years, and even if there were, I don’t see why that concerns the Society. We’re not spies.”
“I’m forced to agree with Miss Moriarty,” Van Helsing said grudgingly. “It sounds like a kidnapping. Why do you need us?”
