There was a muffled squeak.
“Heathcliff,” Sam murmured in relief. She had never been so happy to see a rat. Her head ached as if it had been stuffed with cold mud. She sat up and immediately regretted her decision. Sleep might be optional for the Moriartys, but it was decidedly less so for a Harker. “What do you have for me?”
Sam turned the key on the gas lamp, flinching at the flare of light, to see her shadow stuck starkly against the wall. Only there was something...wrongwith it. At first, she couldn’t quite parse it?—she was still half drunk with sleep, and it was hard to make anything out against the weedy florals of the wallpaper?—until she went to brush her curls out of her face and noticed the shadow of her left hand.
It had too many fingers.
Sam swallowed a scream, the blood draining from her face. She checked and checked again. Squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for it to go away, like every other vision. Tried not to think about what it might mean. But when she opened her eyes, it was still there, and when Sam froze, the fingermoved.
You’ll get visions from monsters,Van Helsing had said.They’ll lead you astray and everyone you care for will suffer for it.
Which was to say she’d go monstrous, like Lucy Westerna.
Sam’s breath came quick in her throat. What would Hel do if she found out Sam was sprouting shadow fingers? What wouldVan Helsingdo? Except Sam already knew. He’d been telling her since she was eleven years old.
At least Sam thought she knew the cause: thatsong. It had taken her over, like a puppet. Led her through Ashdown Manor, past locks she couldn’t possibly have picked, and through secret passages she couldn’t have discovered.
It had, in a word,helped. A thought that left Sam nearly as uneasy as not knowing what it intended, or what was happening to her, other than that she was breaking. She had to stop channeling. She should, she knew, gohome, where the song couldn’t reach her, leave solving the mystery of the disappearances to Hel and Van Helsing. But that would mean leaving Ireland before finding her grandfather.
Sam drew in a steadying breath. She didn’t have time for this?—Heathcliff was looking at her with as much concern as a rat might muster while holding a rolled-up bit of paper in his mouth. She took it and translated the message, from one of the raciest scenes in the novel. It was as if Hel got some perverse pleasure out of watching Sam squirm!
Ask her...
Sam stopped after two words, the book slipping from her nerveless hands. This message, she realized, her heart racing, was not from Hel. She half expected to see a black feather fall out from between the pages of the book, but there was none. Only that message, sent with the same code, the same book, and the same rat. Still, there was no doubt who it was from.Ruari.
Sam should wait, should tell Hel?—except who knew what Hel might do. She certainly shouldn’t read any further; she knew how manipulative a Moriarty could be. If he sent her this message, it wasn’t for her health, and yet... Sam eyed the book splayed on the floor. It was still a clue, and knowing he meant to manipulate her must mitigate the risk.
In the end, Sam couldn’t help herself. She scooped up the book, paging through it, translating the message:
Ask her how she knew your grandfather.
It wasn’t what Sam had expected. It was almost mundane, the sort of question Sam might have asked at any point, and yet, she hadn’t. Sam did the math. Her grandfather had disappeared ten years ago, four years before Hel defected. Which meant that Hel had been working for her father when he spirited away Sam’s grandfather?—perhaps she’d even helped. Sam wondered if afterward, they’d worked together, until Hel left, burning it all down behind her.
Burning it all down... A chill walked up her spine. Sam hadn’t thought this through.
In Paris, Hel had leveraged her remaining contacts in her father’s organization in an attempt to glean information about Sam’s grandfather, before Sam had even told her about him?—just from the sight of those numbers. Because she cared so much for the partner she’d just met and still didn’t trust? Or because when she’d burned her father’s house down to ash, she’d burned Sam’s grandfather with it?
“Sam?” Hel’s voice came soft through the door. “You all right in there?”
“I’m?—I’m fine,” Sam said. Sam had always known her grandfather might be dead, despite Ruari’s claims to the contrary. But despite knowing Ruari was manipulative, that she couldn’t trust his word on anything, let alone her grandfather again, Sam discovered she had begun to hope.
There was a pause. “All right.”
Sam drew in a shuddering breath. “Actually, could you come in?” she asked, her voice small. “I?—I don’t want to be alone right now.” Couldn’t go back to the dreams of blood and ice and song. Of what Hel might have done.
“Sam, you know I can’t,” Hel said quietly.
Sam squeezed her eyes shut against the sting of tears. It had been a foolish question. It wasn’t as if Sam could confide in Hel about the note. Or the song, or the black feathers she kept finding in her things, or the way her shadow was changing. Not after the way Hel had reacted to her brother’s raven. Hel would lose herself again, get herself arrested or killed, and then Sam would truly be alone.
Besides. There was nothing she could do about it. Nothing to be done.
“My brother has eyes on this?—” Hel began.
Hel didnotneed to tell Sam about her brother.
“Did you know my grandfather?” Sam blurted, the words pulling themselves from her lips before she could stop them.
Hel gave a sharp intake of breath.
