“I should go,” Sam said as they came upon the foyer. Sam didn’t even want to guess what Hel would do to M. Voland this time if she caught wind of what he’d done. Or rather, what he’d tried to do. “My friends... They’ll be looking for me.”
“It was a pleasure meeting you,” Alice said warmly, and she handed Sam her calling card. “You should come by sometime. It’s been so long since I’ve had the opportunity to chat with another channel.”
Sam yearned to take her up on that. There was so much she didn’t know about being a channel. But she would have to be careful. The Society would never allow it if they knew, would claim it was too dangerous for her to know the truth about herself. Van Helsing would say it was the pride before the fall. Hel would say she didn’t need anyone to tell her who she was.Whatshe was.
But Sam found she was tired of other people deciding what she was allowed to know about herself.
“I will,” Sam said.
Chapter Twelve
Ashdown Manor, Skryne, County Meath (Scrín Cholm Cille, Contae na Mí)
Three Days Before Samhain
Sam hardly recognized the foyer. Blood streaked the serene faces of the caryatids holding up the ceiling, their feet strewn with ruined asphodel and the splinters of what had once been chairs. Black crepe drifted down from brassy mirrors. Mourners huddled together with makeshift bandages. And yet, there were no corpses, no grievously wounded. Either the hellhounds were uncommonly incompetent or they hadn’t meant to harm anyone.
Sam picked her way through the wreckage, leaving a trail of footprints behind her in the ash. She found Hel and Van Helsing crouching, heads bent together, staring at something on the floor.A paw print,she realized.
“The heel pad has two lobes, and the front toes?—two of them are positioned ahead of the others,” Hel was arguing. “And look here. The claw marks are accounted for, but dull, rounded. We’re dealing withCanis familiaris.”
Which was to say, a dog.
“That much is obvious.” Van Helsing snorted. “They’re hellhounds.”
“Hellhounds have sharper claws,” Hel countered. “And their dewclaws are long enough to leave an impression behind the heel pad.”
“For God’s sake, Moriarty,” Van Helsing said, exasperated, “there was fire dripping from their jaws! What more do you want? A signed affidavit from the Devil himself?”
“What happened?” Sam asked. She’d never known Van Helsing to not murder a bit of abnormal phenomena before. It was possible hellhounds returned to Hell when sufficiently perforated with holy gunfire, but in that case, Sam imagined Van Helsing would be in a better mood.
“Someone called the hellhounds off,” Van Helsing said, scowling. “Where have you been?”
“Mr. Ashdown’s office. I found?—” Sam began, only to spot M. Voland receiving first aid for that nose of his. Shehadbroken it then. She felt a rush of pride, only for M. Voland to look up. Their eyes met. He’d spotted her, withHel. His face twisted as he realized he’d been had. “Do you have Heathcliff? We need to leave. Now.”
“What?” Van Helsing said suspiciously as Heathcliff squeaked in Hel’s pocket. “Why?”
Sam started for the door, glancing over her shoulder to see M. Voland shouldering his way through a group of gentlemen, his eyes full of hunger and fury.
“She means,” Hel said, close on Sam’s heels, “that whatever she found, she can’t share it here.”
“Well, why didn’t she say so?” Van Helsing grumbled. M. Voland did give pause then, with Van Helsing by her side, and she hated him more for it?—that Sam hadn’t been sufficient, thatHelhadn’t been sufficient, despite displaying an uncanny ability and an absolute willingness to shoot the last time they’d met. Still, Sam had to admit, it had worked.
M. Voland ought to count himself fortunate. Sam wasn’t sure what Hel might have done to him.
It wasn’t until they were huddled in their hired carriage, wending its way back to Dublin, that she stopped looking over her shoulder. Their knees were close, their heads bent, their words occluded by the jingling of harnesses, the clopping of hooves. Road dust hung in the air between them, illuminated by the afternoon light.
“Well?” Van Helsing demanded. “What did you find that’s so important?”
“All those people, they’re part of some Golden Dawn offshoot called the Vespertine,” Sam said. “They came to Ireland to try to access, er, lunar powers? To pierce the veil to the Otherworld. This must be what Mr. Bishop was talking about. He must have been expelled, and he means for Lord Lusk to do something about it.”
“Where did you hear that?” Van Helsing demanded.
“In Mr. Ashdown’s office,” Sam said, and she told them of the sympathetic ink and the selenic sigil; of Alice rescuing her and her suspicions regarding Mr. Enfield and Lord Lusk; of M. Voland and the factions in the Vespertine.
“Turn back,” Hel growled, her eyes dark. “I’m going to murder him.”
Sam shot Hel a scandalized look.“Hel!”
