“And you didn’t report it?” Sam exclaimed. If the Viscount and the Duke had been using a camera, it might hold clues that would allow Sam and Hel to pick up their trail. To find them, wherever they were, and bring them home.
Miss Shinagh shrugged. “Why would I help the English? If enough of them disappear, perhaps they’ll take the hint and stop coming. They’re terrible houseguests, you know. Always taking all your things and redecorating your house to suit themselves. As if the whole world were merely a mirror in which to admire their reflection. Look how much trouble you Americans had shoving them out the door.”
This, Sam realized, was precisely the sort of person Detective Lynch had meant them to look out for. A woman with uncanny knowledge of the Otherworld and an affinity for its thousand monstrous faces. A woman with a tinderbox for a mind and a reflexive dislike of the English.
She had the motive and the opportunity. There was the question of means, of course, but if anyone could figure out how to set a monster on someone, it would be the woman who had spent so many years amongst them. Sam ought to question her, but without Hel, the thought was perilous. Subtlety wasn’t one of her strengths, and Miss Shinagh already knew what Sam was about.
“I’m not the one who disappeared them, if that’s what you’re wondering,” Miss Shinagh said, and Sam flushed. Was she truly so transparent? “I would have, of course. But I don’t have to.”
“Because Ireland is rising up in defense of her people?” Sam asked carefully, remembering the verses from Keogh’s. The Irish had, as Hel might say, reason to be upset with the British Empire.
“If you’re a poet, perhaps,” Miss Shinagh said, and she paused, her gaze catching on a Georgian townhouse across the lake, workers scrambling over it like bees on a hive, repairing what appeared to bebite markstaken out of the stone. She nodded with her chin. “Do you know, it used to be the custom to seek out the approval of the Otherworld before building a house? Where I grew up, you would pile stones at the four corners and see if any of them were knocked over by morning. If they were, you picked a different plot.”
“And if you didn’t,” Sam said, “you had to build special doors in your house to let the Otherworld through, or else suffer for it.”
“That’s right,” Miss Shinagh said approvingly. “But the English see the Otherworld not as a part of nature, but as an infestation of sorts. The houses they build ask no permissions, and if the Otherworld objects? Well. The English send people like you to beat it back into submission. Is it any wonder it is finally fighting back?”
“They build no doors,” Sam said softly.
“They build no doors,” Miss Shinagh confirmed, and Sam had the oddest impression they weren’t talking about Ireland anymore, but about magic. About wrath. About Sam.
“But giving it a door is dangerous,” Sam said carefully. “People might get hurt.”
Miss Shinagh shrugged. “People are already hurt. Sometimes they just forget because they’ve been holding on to it for so long. Besides, building a wall around something does not make it go away. You can no more suppress a thing’s true nature than you can hold back the tides. It will out. Better you give it a door than force it to find its own.”
“I don’t understand,” Sam protested. “Why are you helping me?”
“Who says I’m helping you?” Miss Shinagh said, raising an eyebrow. She laughed, breaking the spell, the strange intensity gone as if it had never been. “Let’s just say I haven’t given up on you, yet. Besides,” she said with a sly smile, “it’s not like I’m just going to give the camera to you.”
“Oh. Right. Of course.” Sam pulled out her purse. She wasn’t certain how much a camera cost these days. “Is five shillings sufficient?”
Miss Shinagh cocked her head. “Is that all your field agents are worth? I could pay you five shillings right now to go home.”
“It might just be pictures of flowers,” Sam objected.
“It might,” Miss Shinagh returned. “Are you willing to take that risk?”
Sam wasn’t, and Miss Shinagh knew it. “What about a book? I have access to the Society’s library. There are plenty of rare volumes within.”
“Why, are you offering to steal for me, Miss Harker?” Miss Shinagh said, her voice dropping to a purr.
“I?—I didn’t mean...”
“More’s the pity.” Miss Shinagh sighed, as if the theft, and not the book, was what made the offer interesting?—the compromise of Sam’s values on her behalf. She eased closer, her eyes flicking to Sam’s lips. “Is that all you have to offer?”
Sam blushed, a shiver coursing through her, as she gripped the little silver-and-iron knife Hel had given her hard enough to bruise. It was as if she’d stepped into a fairy tale, and while she didn’t know for certain, Sam suspected her next offer would be her last?—for such things ran in threes.
It was like a riddle: What is the difference between a stolen book and one freely given?
“Well?” Miss Shinagh asked, toying with the camera.I never could leave the stories to the books.
An idea sparked in Sam then. It was dangerous?—Sam couldn’t help but recall the tales her grandfather had told her, of such tricks as the Folk might play on those foolish enough to deal with them. The Folk were notoriously clever, known for slipping through the cracks in promises, when they didn’t weave your words into a noose and hang you with it.
Miss Shinagh wasn’t one of the Folk. Not precisely. But she’d been influenced sufficiently by her time with them that she wasn’t entirely human anymore either. Sam hesitated. She was in over her head.
But Miss Shinagh was losing interest. “Perhaps I was wrong about?—”
“A favor,” Sam blurted, scrambling to find the right words. “So long as it is of equal worth and does not cause harm to anyone by way of my action or inaction.”
