“Hel!” Sam cried, throwing herself on Hel’s arm as she shot. “What are you doing?”
Bark splintered. The shot had missed because of Sam. Cackling, the raven flew off.
Hel whirled on Sam so fast she flinched. “Never do that again!”
“Hey now, you can’t?—” one of the students began, standing up in a swirl of black robes.
“Shh, don’t you know who that is?” one of the other students said, tugging him down.
Hel’s jaw tightened. It appeared she had more of a reputation than she had suggested, even after all these years.
“It’s just a bird,” Sam said.
“A bird that belongs to my brother.” Hel’s teeth ground together, as if she’d have bitten off its head if she could have. She holstered her revolver. “It means he has eyes on this place.”
The raven was a threat?—a warning that the Moriartys knew where Sam was and that they could get to her. She shuddered. To think?—he must have taught the ravensher face.
“He’d know you were here if his raven never came home, too,” Sam argued.
“Yes, but it sends a different message,” Hel said grimly, and she shouldered past Sam to stride deeper into Saint Stephen’s Green. Sam followed, risking a glance back at the students, and found them whispering amongst themselves, their eyes following her?—or rather, following Hel. After Hel’s stunt with the raven, they didn’t let her out of their sight, which the other woman ought to have seen coming.
Sam slid her eyes sideways to Hel. Her body was rigid, her stride almost mechanical. She was less in control than she pretended. Her family was getting to her. Beinghomewas getting to her.
“Hel, I can’t channel,” Sam whispered. Not like this, not with everyone’s eyes following them, waiting to see what they would do. Always before, her attempts to conjure visions had possessed at least the illusion of privacy. Here, there would be nowhere to hide. “If I get caught?—”
“Then I’ll break you out again.” As if being institutionalized were nothing! As if she wouldn’t lose her place in society?—not to mentiontheSociety?—with it.
“We don’t even know where the Duke and the Viscount were taken,” Sam protested. “I can’t...”
Hel looked up, and Sam trailed off, following her gaze. Tangled in the branches of a sycamore tree was the same iron chain as was in the photograph. It looked uncanny hanging out of the fog, as if a ship had dropped anchor in the clouds.
This was where they’d been taken. A chill crept over Sam’s skin. Somehow, it seemed worse than if it had been a bone-strewn abattoir. At least when there was blood, you knew there had been violence. You could see it, could feel it in the air. The scent of it singing to some animal part of you about what it was to be hunted, to be meat. Here, there was nothing but lupins and ryegrass and a thrush singing in the laced branches of a tree.
The song breathed in the cockles of her ears, words just beyond hearing.
“Do you hear that?” Sam asked.
Hel looked up sharply. “Hear what, exactly?”
“The music,” Sam said haltingly. “It’s... strange. Ethereal. There are words, I think? Or maybe it’s just aknowingunder its skin.” She was aware even as she said it that music didn’t have skin, that her voice was fading, her eyes closing, to listen more closely.
Hel cursed. “It’s the ceol Sídhe. The music of the Folk. An enchantment, though you shouldn’t be able to hear it so far from the raths.”
Sam had read about ceol Sídhe?—the song that lured those who heard it beneath the waves or into desolate bogs, when it didn’t compel them to dance themselves to death. Yet this felt... different. She felt no urge to dance, no call to the waves or bogs.
Sam tipped her head back, the wind combing through her curls. “I think... it’s trying to tell me something.”
“It’s a trap,” Hel said. “Don’t listen.”
“But?—”
“Sam.”The strain in Hel’s voice stopped Sam’s words in her throat.
Sam swallowed. “All right,” she lied. She knew without trying that nothing would keep the song from threading her thoughts, heady as fortified wine. But Hel needed Sam to be all right, and so Sam would handle it. That was what field agents did, wasn’t it? They didn’t ask for help with every little thing.
Hel bent to examine the bark of the tree. Even from where she was standing, Sam could see that there was something off about it. Not the bark?—themoss. It was... patchy. Hel scratched at one of the brown spots. It flaked beneath her fingernails. There was, Sam saw, almost a pattern to it. A circular spread of them, like the coat of a leopard.
“Rock salt,” Hel said, eyes grazing the bark. “I should have known. It kills moss. The Viscount must have loaded his shotgun with it.” The evidence would have been washed away with the morning rain. It might explain why people had heard shots but no bullets could be found.
