“You couldn’t have waited until it was your turn on watch?” Sam asked a little breathlessly, looking up at Hel’s face limned in the moonlight. Though the idea that Hel couldn’t wait had its own not entirely insignificant appeal.
“I did it for you,” Hel said, her voice low. “This way, you can go back inside when it’s my turn on watch.”
That long! Sam wasn’t even entirely certain how they might keep themselves occupied for the hours that entailed. Though, she supposed one might... revisit the same subject.
“Aren’t you worried about him seeing?” Sam pressed. Not certain if she meant Van Helsing or Ruari or both.
Hel gave Sam a crooked smile. “I’ll tell you a secret. Ravens can’t see in the dark.” But still, she let Sam go, leaving Sam cold and wishing she hadn’t said anything at all.
“So, um.” Sam tucked her curls behind her ear. “Where are we going, that we had to sneak out in the middle of the night?”
“Breaking into Mr. Enfield’s apartments,” Hel said.
“What,” Sam said flatly. She looked back up at her window, but there was no going back. Her biceps weren’t having it. Nor could she go back in through the front door?—not without explaining what she’d done to Van Helsing.
“We need to uncover what Mr. Enfield was so desperate to tell Lord Lusk.” Hel cocked her head. “Why, what did you think we were doing?”
“What did I?—” Sam squeaked, before she drew in a deep breath. Hel had invited her not for a romantic tryst, but for a little breaking and entering. “You can’t just break into people’s houses!” Not with Sam in her frothy, diaphanous nightgown!
Hel frowned. “How else are we supposed to go through his things?”
She had a point, to Sam’s chagrin. They were there undercover. Which meant there was no one they could flash their papers to and get access to crime scenes. They would have to do this the, shall we say,unofficialway.
“Yes, well,” Sam said as she followed Hel into the abruptly unromantic night, “next time, be sure to put whatever illegal activities you have planned in the note.”
“Why?” Hel frowned. “What would that change?”
“My clothes, for one thing!” Sam said. Her expectations for another. “I stand out far too much.”
Hel looked at her sidelong. “You’d stand out anywhere.” Sam, it turned out, couldn’t flush anymore. Her cheeks were all flushed out.
So much for sleep.
The extent of Sam’s distraction was such that it took her several minutes before she realized they were going in circles around Saint Stephen’s Green.
“Are you certain this is the right way?” Sam asked, quickening her pace.
“Yes,” Hel said, keeping her head down. The streets were eerily still, the only people they passed were officers of the law patrolling for people breaking curfew and those hiding from them: a family hurrying into the night with all their things in a wheelbarrow; a man huddled in an alley. Sam and Hel ducked into the shadows, too, when the officers passed, Sam wishing she’d worn anything but her sea-foam and heels.
“I only ask,” Sam said when the last set of officers had gone by, “because we seem to be going in circles.”
Hel slid her a sidelong glance. “See that man over there?”
“Where?” Sam said, following her gaze, for she’d thought them alone.
“Too low,” Hel murmured. Sam looked up and saw the glint of glass on a rooftop. A man with a spyglass. Or a rifle. Heat pricked the back of her neck. “There’s another lingering two streets back. It would seem Detective Lynch doesn’t entirely trust us. We need to lose them first.”
Sam felt a chill?—how hadn’t she noticed? She ought to have known he’d be spying on Hel. Detective Lynch thought Hel was responsible for her father’s crimes. In those circumstances, Sam would spy on Hel too.
It took nearly half an hour before Hel was satisfied, and turned, leading them at last toward the Merrion Square gardens. There, in a Georgian townhouse of red brick devoured by ivy, was Mr. Enfield’s last known residence. The door was exquisite: powder blue with brass fittings, surrounded by windows with starlike designs. A white iron streetlamp stood guard outside, delicate as spun sugar.
With a deftness born of long practice, Hel slipped lockpicks into her fingers?—bent bits of metal that looked almost like dental instruments.
“Let me know if someone’s coming,” Hel said. Sam nodded and turned, scanning the shadows for signs of motion. Hel’s instruments had barely scraped the lock when she frowned. “Someone’s already been here.”
She pushed; the door creaked open into a darkened house.
“Do you think they’re still inside?” Sam asked, a flutter of panic working through her.
