Sam eyed her warily. The other woman was winding a key on the back of a black cardboard-and-leatherette box. That click. It was a Kodak Brownie No. 2 camera.
“Do you always take pictures of women undressing?” Sam said sharply.
The woman laughed. “Not always.” Her voice was smooth and melodic and distinctly lower than the voice she’d heard in the fog.Human, then.Probably. It was said pookas had amber eyes. “Only when they look like you.”
Sam’s cheeks burned, certain the woman couldn’t mean what she thought she meant. “Utterly lost? In need of assistance?”
The womanhmmed, and there was a vibration to it that Sam felt all the way to the tips of her toes. It was practically indecent.
“Like a maiden in a fairy tale,” the woman said, bending her head to keep eye contact with Sam in a way she found inexplicably alluring. “Turning your coat inside out against Themselves.”
“Perhaps because that’s exactly what I was doing,” Sam said tartly as she clutched her jacket together. “I trust you can hold off on more photographs until I’m properly dressed?”
“I’ll try to restrain myself,” the woman said, sounding amused. Sam set about righting her jacket before anyone else could come along and deepen her embarrassment. “I have to say, you’re not at all what I expected, Miss Harker.”
Sam’s fingers froze on the buttons of her jacket. “I’m not?—” she began, but caught sight of the gleam in the other woman’s eyes. Sheknew. Sam didn’t know how, but she did. She was only waiting to see what Sam would do with it.There is nothing he does not see in Ireland, no whisper he does not hear.“How do you know who I am?”
“Why, from Themselves, of course. They whispered it in my ear at night. How else did you think I heard?” the woman said, before adding, conspiratorially, “Also, the tall Dutch fellow is very loud.”
Sam winced as she pulled on her gloves. She couldn’t disagree with that. “I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage.”
“Ah, of course, where are my manners. Allow me to introduce myself.” The woman slipped down from the tree, brushing her hands on her skirts. They left dark, wet streaks on the fabric?—however she’d gotten to the island, it was honest.
“I’m Róisín Shinagh,” she said, stepping closer and offering her hand. Sam took it instinctively.
“Not the unnaturalist?” Sam said, a fluttering in the cage of her ribs, like wings.
“You’ve heard of me?” Miss Shinagh said, a look of pleasure crossing her face.
Heard of her?—Sam had read all of her work. Her writings on the seasonal aspects of the Otherworld in Ireland were legendary amongst librarians of abnormal phenomena, her dissertation on the locational variations in common Folk without comparison. It was said she’d been lost to the Otherworld for twenty-seven years, and that in escaping, she’d uncovered the tangled workings of their passage and could slip through the veil and back again whenever she pleased.
Rumor had it, she’d gone a little Other herself. Sam believed it. If this was truly Róisín Shinagh, she didn’t look a day over twenty-three.
“I’ve read all your work,” Sam said, feeling flustered. There was talk that Miss Shinagh was the muse of the infamous poet Thomas Keene, whose yearning poetry was steeped in the Otherworld. He’d proposed to her three times, and each time she’d turned him down. He’d been unable to ask a fourth, his tongue tying itself in a knot whenever he summoned the courage to try. Sam had always thought it an exaggeration. Seeing her, Sam wasn’t so sure.
Miss Shinagh tilted her head, her lips quirking. “And here I thought hunters couldn’t read.”
“Oh, I’m not really a hunter,” Sam confessed. “I’m a researcher who escaped into the field.”
“Escaped!” Miss Shinagh laughed. “You make it sound like some sort of purgatory.”
“Not at all,” Sam rushed to say. “I love the library. It’s just...”
“I understand,” Miss Shinagh confided, conspiratorial. She stepped closer, and her scent slipped around Sam like a secret, velvet as night-blooming jasmine. “I never could leave the stories to the books, either.”
Sam swallowed, suddenly unable to look at her. “It’s that, but also, there are people who need my help.”
The Viscount and the Duke. Her grandfather. Hel, even if she was too stubborn to admit it.
“Ah,” Miss Shinagh said, leaning back. “The Society field agents who disappeared. They were friends of yours?”
Friendswas putting it a bit strong. “They were kind to me.”
“A pity.” Miss Shinaghhmmed again, before hefting the camera. “Well, I suppose you’ll be needing this, then.”
“Yes, please,” Sam said at once, remembering the photo of her undressing. Except, of course, that wouldn’t be why Miss Shinagh was offering. “Wait, why do I need your camera?”
“Because it’s not mine,” Miss Shinagh said. “I liberated it from a sycamore tree the morning after your friends disappeared.”
