“It’s... strange. There was no end to it.” Sam’s visions mostly concerned endings, as if death were what birthed them, like the fire-following hollyhock that only blooms from the ashes. She shook her head. “It felt almost as if Mr. Enfield was dead before he hit the ground. But that’s impossible.”
“Is it?” Hel said. “He fellten feet. None of his bones were broken. The back of his skull was intact. There was minimal bruising.”
Which meant that whatever had killed him, it had done so after he stopped screaming and before he hit the ground. Sam thought again of the ghost?—of what might have happened if she hadn’t woken Sam, if they hadn’t all been gathered by the broken window when Mr. Enfield screamed.
They might have missed it entirely.
It’s your assumptions that blind you,her grandfather had said. The things you don’t even think to question, that you presume can’t change.
Her grandfather?—there was another puzzle. Usually, Sam liked puzzles, but after so many years of searching, she would rather just have her grandfather.
“Come,” Hel said. “Let’s see if the library can give us any insight into what kind of monster might have murdered Mr. Enfield, before it comes for you.”
Chapter Eight
Trinity College, Dublin (Coláiste na Tríonóide, Baile Átha Cliath)
Four Days Before Samhain
The Long Room at Trinity College didn’t hold the rarest books in Ireland?—that honor went to Marsh’s Library near Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, where they locked readers in cages with their chosen reading so they might not escape with it. Nor did it hold the most dangerous books in Ireland, which were sealed in the medieval Record Tower at Dublin Castle, where they allowed no readers at all. But its collection was amongst the oldest and most extensive in the United Kingdom.
It was also the most magnificent library Sam had ever seen, a thrill coursing through her as the doors opened. Stretching two stories high and nearly two hundred feet long, the aptly named Long Room had a ceiling like the inside of a barrel and floors the color of warm honey. Mahogany bookshelves ribbed its length with spindly ladders scraping the heavens, punctuated with marble busts from Socrates to Shakespeare.
The symmetry was such that when first Sam walked in, she had the dizzying impression that the library was perched atop a lake, the lower level little more than a reflection in still waters. She imagined, giddily, needing a boat to get from one side to the other, stacking it full of books, and poling it down to a nook where she might read by puddled candlelight.
Then Hel brushed past her, and the illusion broke. Sam hurried after, unwilling to be left behind. The dusty scent of old books and wood warm with gaslight hooked into her chest. Sam closed her eyes, wishing the scent didn’t still make her think of Arsène Courbet.
Hel shot her a look.Are you all right?
Fine,Sam nodded firmly. She had to be. She didn’t want to let him take this from her too.
Van Helsing joined them shortly after they arrived. Hel leaned against the stacks nearest the tall window, silhouetted against the falling light.
They had taken over the space between two of the bookshelves?—the librarian being unwilling to let them abscond with their selection into one of the reading rooms. It would be, in his words, practically impossible to watch over what chambers they might enter, let alone how long they might linger and withwhom.
It had taken Sam a moment to realize he wasn’t worried about their loyalty but the virtue of the young men in his charge. They passed by in their black robes, gazes lingering on Sam in her blue capelet and dress, until inevitably, the scowling librarian found his way into the students’ field of vision like a disgruntled imp, and the students startled, Adam’s apples bobbing as they lowered their eyes and hurried past.
“How did the business with Lord Lusk go?” Hel asked without looking up from the book she was paging through.
“It didn’t,” Van Helsing scowled, his crossed arms flexing at the memory, as if strength alone could force it into compliance. “Lord Lusk had the temerity to be offended, claimed he had been too overcome with grief to even notice a ring.”
Sam chewed her lip. Thatwasodd. The ring had taken up nearly half Mr. Enfield’s pointer finger. It was singularly hard to miss?—and even if he had, he ought to have felt it, having clasped the man’s hand. But the fact remained, the man was innocent. At least of theft.
“Perhaps I was mistaken?—” Sam ventured.
“No, he’s hiding something. I can feel it,” Van Helsing said, and Sam couldn’t argue with that. “Tell me you found something here, that you know what we’re up against.”
“Unfortunately,” Sam said, “until the recent efforts of Anglo-Irish unnaturalists such as W. B. Yeats and Lady Jane Wilde, little of the Irish and Otherworldly has been recorded in writing. There are oral accounts, but?—”
Hel cut her off. “Research takes time.”
“We don’thavetime,” Van Helsing said.
“Why didn’t you say so?” Hel said, pushing off the wall with a feline motion. “I’ll inform the monster we’re in a bit of a rush?—”
It was Sam’s turn to cut Hel off. “What she means to say,” Sam said, with a hard look at Hel, “is that it will go faster if you help us.”
Van Helsing scowled. But still, when Hel went back to the darkroom to finish developing the photographs, he joined Sam in pulling down books, skimming through the pages, looking for anything that might be of use.
