“Apparently, it does,” Hel said dryly.
“It came with the storm,” Sam said, and the wind wailed through the broken window as if to underline her words. “I thought at first it must be the same thing that took the Viscount and the Duke, but it couldn’t have been.” For iron had worked to disperse the ghost who had come for Sam.
Then Sam thought it must be Professor Moriarty, striking at last. Which it very well might have been, except the ghost had come for Sam alone, not Van Helsing. What’s more, the apparition hadn’t been very effective, had it? She’d had plenty of time to murder Sam before Van Helsing had come, and yet she hadn’t.
There was one other thing, something Sam didn’t dare breathe, and hardly dared to think. The way the ghost’s mouth had moved silently. It had felt almost as if the ghost had been trying to tell her something.
Sam couldn’t help but think of the dangerous direction of her thoughts the night before, when her attempt at a vision had been thwarted. About how she might invite the monstersin.
“Well, as everything seems in order,” Hel said as she moved to leave.
“Wait.” Van Helsing scowled, moving closer. “What took you so long to get here?”
Hel shrugged. “I’m a heavy sleeper.”
“Is that so?” Van Helsing’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. “What if I hadn’t heard her?”
“One imagines we’d be having an entirely different conversation,” Hel said dryly.
“Stop it, both of you!” Sam snapped, as confused by Van Helsing’s sudden protective streak as she was wounded by Hel’s abandonment. “We have more important things to?—”
But whatever Sam had been about to say was lost as a harrowing scream split the night.
Chapter Six
The Shelbourne Hotel, Dublin (Baile Átha Cliath)
Four Days Before Samhain
Sam hurried to the shattered window, squinting against the howling wind into the star-dusted night, Hel and Van Helsing close behind. The flame-shaped gas lamps guttered, drowning the streets in shades of mourning.
“There!” Sam pointed. In the heart of the storm, a dark shape was cut out against the flickering streetlight, struggling as it was pulled into the air.A man,Sam realized, catching a glimpse of his horror-stricken face. But something was terribly wrong, aside from the unnatural winds and the way the man was being funneled into the air. His face, it looked almost...smeared.
A dark shape winged in front of him, so fast Sam couldn’t make it out.
“There’s something out there with him!” Van Helsing cursed.
Hel leapt onto the window ledge like a gargoyle, the cord from the curtains wrapped around her fist. The man drew even with her, his back arched, auburn hair streaming like blood.
“Catch!” Hel called, and she lashed out with the cord. But if the man heard her, he didn’t move, that scream still emptying from his lungs, as if the wind were pulling it out of him along with his breath. The cord kissed his palm and fell, ribboning into the dark. Hel cursed, pulling it up to try again.
But Van Helsing wasn’t waiting. He stood angled by the other window, squinting, his silk robe snapping around him in the tearing wind as he raised his revolver.
“He’s too high up!” Sam cried, catching his arm. He was ten feet above the ground at least. If he fell from that height...
“He’ll live,” Van Helsing said, yanking away. Sam stumbled into the bed. A shot rang out. Then another.
A second later, the wind died. The man fell, soundless, like a puppet whose strings had been cut. There was a muffledthud. Horror pooled in Sam’s belly. The man had fainted, she told herself, the fall couldn’t have killed him, for then there would have been screaming or at the very least a whimper.
“Come on!” Sam turned to Van Helsing just in time to see him vault out the window, rolling onto the ground to break his fall. Hel followed, using the curtain cord to slow her descent. The rod tore off the wall with a shriek. Sam winced.
Honestly.She pulled on her slippers, gloves, and coat. As an afterthought, she grabbed the camera. Then she raced out the door, threading through the marble hall clotted with people and down the candlelit staircase with its gilt and lacquered rail, where she nearly barreled into Lord Lusk wrapped in a gold quilted robe and brandishing his fox-headed cane as if he’d drive the attackers away himself.
“Sorry!” Sam yelped.
But Lord Lusk barely heard her, sprinting out into the night, leaving Sam to hurry after.
A man was crumpled on the cobblestones beneath the puddled light of one of the Egyptian princesses, like a sacrifice to the gods. The dark clouds parted, and for just a moment, Sam could have sworn the man’s brow shone with a luminescent sigil, like a third eye: two entangled crescent moons with a full moon set between them like a pupil... Then just as quickly, it winked out, and the shadows returned.
