Hel unholstered her revolver. “Wait here.” She eased inside. For a moment, Sam could have sworn the darkness swallowed her, sworn black vines lashed out like the tongues of some monstrous beast, leaving her with nothing but horrible, wet ripping sounds; and the next, it was simply an empty doorway and Sam standing alone in the streetlight. She let out a shuddering breath.
Van Helsing’s jibe about her screams teased her thoughts. Sam thought she ought to get more credit for all the times shedidn’tscream. If he had to see what she saw, she doubted he’d be able to stop.
At least having a vision meant they were likely on the right track, even if it hadn’t told her anything of use. The song unfurled in her thoughts like a lullaby.You could know more,it whispered.You could knowall.
Hel’s pale face appeared at the door, and Sam shoved the song down.
“We’re too late,” Hel said. “Whoever it was, they’re gone.”
Relief and disappointment warred in Sam’s heart. “You think they had something to do with Mr. Enfield’s murder?”
“I think they had something to hide,” Hel said, and this time when she went inside, Sam followed.
The remnants of a fire smoldered in the fireplace?—the embers cracking, the shadows making monsters of the chairs and the coat on its hook. By its inconstant light, it was immediately apparent that Mr. Enfield had a thing for taxidermy. Not bears and stags, as you might expect amongst the leisure class, but squirrels and rats and the odd pigeon.
It was also apparent that the house had been ransacked, the cabinet tossed over, glass glistering on the cold marble floor, the bellies of the taxidermized animals sliced open, their stuffing yanked out.
Sam bent to pick up one of the sadder-looking squirrels, its tail threadbare and one of its arms gone wrong. With the stuffing removed, there was a little hollow within it, just big enough to hide something.
“Whatever it was they were looking for, it was small,” she said.
“Something written.” Hel was over by the desk, whose every drawer and secret compartment had been found and left gaping, correspondence scattered. It looked indecent somehow, and Sam felt oddly embarrassed, as if her witnessing the state of it was somehow wrong. “A letter perhaps, or...”
“Paper!” Sam gasped. The fireplace. Why else would a thief bother to start a fire? Dashing over and falling to her knees in the ash strewn before the hearth, she searched the heart of the flames until she saw it: the curl of what she’d taken for a piece of newspaper used to start the fire.
Sam reached in and immediately regretted it.
She cried out, but still managed to grasp the charred remnants of... a letter.
The words were too hard to make out in the dancing shadows, the brittle paper curled and blacked around the edges. She dropped it, hissing, holding a hand pinked with ill-thought-out ideas. Hel picked it up. It was strange, Sam noticed, as Hel held it to the light. The words?—they looked almost as if they’d been burned into the paper.
“It’s addressed to Lord Lusk,” Hel said.
And above his name, there was the corner of that sigil she’d seen on Mr. Enfield’s forehead in her vision: the entangled crescent moons with the full moon between them, like a selenic eye. It had to mean something. Even if she didn’t know what.
“Do you think it’s why Mr. Enfield was murdered?” Sam said.
Hel frowned, checking the back. “Possibly.”
Whatever it was, it was important enough to break into his apartments. Important enough to burn.
But before she could bend down to examine the ashes, Hel’s eyes widened and she pivoted, forcing Sam hard against the wall, a hand clapping over her mouth before she could scream. The paper drifted to the ground as Sam’s heart galloped in her chest. Hel held Sam’s eyes as a shadow passed over the streetlight outside, accompanied by the soft scuff of shoes on cobblestones. There was someone out there, and whoever it was, they were trying to be quiet.
Cold coursed through her. Detective Lynch’s men. It must be. But her mind raced with other possibilities: Whoever had ransacked Mr. Enfield’s home. Van Helsing. The eyes and ears of the Moriartys.
After an age, the shadow passed. Sam was abruptly aware of the heat of Hel’s body pressed against hers in her frothy, flimsy nightgown. She tilted her head back, her lips parting against the other woman’s palm. “Hel?—”
Hel jerked back, leaving Sam cold.
“Come on,” Hel said, the hand that had been over Sam’s mouth spasming into a fist. “There’s one more thing we need to do before we return.”
Sam swallowed her questions, uncertain she’d be able to speak without her feelings leaking out around the edges.
Walking too swiftly for conversation, Hel led Sam off the well-lit boulevards of Merrion Square, with their ornate doors and spun-sugar streetlamps, and down avenues drenched in shadow. The cobblestones, which were always uneven, were buckled and pocked. Lines of laundry swayed between the buildings overhead, and the houses, while still Georgian, stood with their doors gaping.
It was strange how close this crumbling part of town was to the promenades of the gilded set, and yet, how far apart. Sam glanced into one of the open doors and saw dozens of eyes gleaming back at her. She startled violently.
Cats, Sam told herself as one yowled. It was only cats.
