“You know, I used to live here,” Hel said, her breath clouding the air.
“Here?” Sam said. Somehow, she’d imagined life as a Moriarty to be more... decadent. “With... your father?”
“After,” Hel said, looking away. “Between the factories and the landlords, no one had time to worry about my last name here.”
Sam remembered hearing something similar in England, when Spring-Heeled Jack had been terrorizing East London. In West London, horrified socialites had gossiped ghoulishly about the corpses of the poor women from East End, found mutilated in the streets. In East London, the women marched in the streets?—not against Jack, but against the match factories, who killed far more of their number than dear old Jack.
Strangely, the wealthy hadn’t been particularly keen on helping with that problem.
They stopped in front of a ragged brick building with long, weatherworn boards holding up one side of it. The apartment next door appeared to have tumbled down entirely, the stones blackened and charred.
“They said it was an accident,” Hel said, kneeling by the rubble. “A gas leak. A terrible tragedy, but no one’s fault. But the doors were chained from the outside?—no one could get out?—and when I combed through the ashes, I found a single black feather waiting for me.”
Cold breathed down her spine. Sam should tell Hel about the feather she’d found in her scone, about the one she’d pulled from her throat.
“Hel?—” Sam said, her heart cracking.
“You asked me who I was,” Hel interrupted her. “This is who I am.”
She will be alone,Ruari had said,without allies or lovers or friends, until the day she comes home. Father will make sure of it.This must be where that had all started. Why Hel didn’t fight what others said about her when they blamed her for her father’s crimes. Because she believed them. It didn’t matter how clever, how resourceful, how dogged she was in fighting back?—to Hel, she would always be the girl whose curse destroyed everything she touched.
And now, unless they caught her father, his shadow would devour her whole.
“This isn’t who you are.” She couldn’t tell Hel about the feathers. Not when it would only make things worse. “This is what was done to you.”
“It wasn’t done tome,” Hel said, as if that would have been preferable.
“We’re going to stop him,” Sam said.
“I know,” Hel said. But she wouldn’t look at Sam. There was something else?—something she wasn’t saying. Sam could feel it, like a splinter beneath her skin. If it were anyone else, Sam would have picked at it. But Hel, Sam knew, was of a more feline nature. When she trusted you enough to show you her belly, it didn’t mean she wanted you to touch it. It meant she trusted you not to.
Besides, Sam thought guiltily, Hel wasn’t the only one with secrets.
It appeared that the reason for their detour wasn’t strictly social. Hel knelt at the edge of the building, wiggling one of the bricks loose from the ragged wall where it had joined the other. There was a handful of envelopes and coins behind it. Pulling an envelope from her suit jacket, Hel added it to the others and wriggled the brick back into place.
“What was that?” Sam asked, shivering a little in her flimsy nightgown.
“A donation,” Hel said, dusting her hands on her suit pants. She glanced up at a cracked window, where an older woman was looking down at them steadily, smoking her pipe. Sam wondered how many other places Hel left donations?—how many of her father’s victims she tried to make good for. “Come on. We don’t have much time before I have to relieve Van Helsing.”
Chapter Ten
Ashdown Manor, Skryne, County Meath (Scrín Cholm Cille, Contae na Mí)
Three Days Before Samhain
Sam yawned, peering through her cage veil at the dusty window of the carriage and beyond, to rolling green hills and tumbledown ruins of rural Ireland. It seemed she’d barely closed her eyes the night before, when Van Helsing was hammering on her door again, telling her to dress for a funeral. For a sleep-drenched moment, Sam had thought he’d meant her own, before she’d remembered: Mr. Enfield.
Lord Lusk.
While Sam and Hel had been sleeping off their misdeeds, Van Helsing had uncovered the location of Mr. Enfield’s funeral, which was to say, he’d read a newspaper. Except it wasn’t a funeral, as Mr. Enfield’s body had been shipped back to his family in London for burial. This was some sort of remembrance for his friends still in Ireland, to be held at Ashdown Manor. Though why Ashdown Manor was so far from civilization, Sam didn’t dare imagine. She couldn’t recall the last time they’d passed so much as a town. It was as if the house itself were a secret.
The event would be their chance to corner Lord Lusk and get some answers, or at the very least, glean some off his associates, hopefully figuring out what Mr. Enfield had risked the curfew to tell him?—and what Lord Lusk might have broken into Mr. Enfield’s house to burn.
They’d have to be clever about it, for they had no evidence other than a half-charred letter they couldn’t admit to. Which was Sam’s specialty, when she’d enjoyed more than two hours of sleep. Sam yawned again.
“What are you tired for?” Van Helsing grouched. Van Helsing had changed his brown suit for a black one and shaved his scruff, his cheeks still pinked from the razor’s burn. The green scent of witch hazel wafted off him, reminding Sam uncomfortably of knives in Parisian alleyways, of blood loss and alchemy. “You’re the only one of us who got a proper night’s rest.”
“Bad dreams,” Sam said, grateful for the corseted jacket of her black silk mourning dress. It was the only thing keeping her upright.
