“Same reason you are, I suspect.” Miss Shinagh gave a liquid shrug. “I am an unnaturalist, after all, and something unnatural has happened.”
“Mr. Pearse,” Van Helsing said.
Miss Shinagh’s lips curled. “Just so.”
“And how exactly did you hear of him?” Hel demanded.
Miss Shinagh cocked her head. “I’d thought you’d figured it out, the way you were talking about the fog.”
A flicker of movement snagged her attention. Sam tensed, her chest tightening?—but it was only another fox, there and gone again, before she could so much as unstring her nerves. Sam wondered if it was the same fox as before, if it was following them. Van Helsing raised an eyebrow at her; she shook her head.It’s nothing.
“It’s the weather. The fog and the wind,” Miss Shinagh said. “It makes the sluagh easy to track.”
“We didn’t say it was the sluagh.” Van Helsing’s eyes narrowed with suspicion.
Miss Shinagh laughed. “My dear Dutchman, I’m an unnaturalist. This is what I do. The greater surprise is that you managed to figure it out.” Van Helsing’s ears went a deep red. “I don’t know as of yet why some they take keep walking and others wither. It’s one of the things I’m studying. You could say Mr. Pearse is one of the lucky ones. Or unlucky. Depending on how you look at it. So, if you’re quite finished interrogating me...”
Miss Shinagh picked up her lantern. Sam’s attention snagged, caught on something that glittered on her left hand in the shifting light: a ring, two stones twisted around each other, one emerald and one diamond. Her stomach tightened.
“Almost,” Sam interrupted apologetically. “I just have one more question.”
“Just the one?” Miss Shinagh said, that velvet in her voice again, making it terribly hard for Sam to focus. She wondered if that was the point.
“Who are you engaged to?” Sam asked.
“Is that all?” Miss Shinagh said, a twinkle in her eyes. “I’m engaged to Lord Lusk. Why else would I be here?” On the land the Viscount and the Duke had taken a photograph of, the land on which the bodies had been uncovered.
All at once, the details of the investigation began to take on a different cast.
Hours before Mr. Enfield’s death, Mr. Bishop had warned Lord Lusk he had no idea what “she” was capable of?—not worried about Lord Lusk butforhim. On account of a woman.
Mr. Enfield’s affections weren’t reason to break curfew. No, Mr. Enfield must have uncovered something urgent, something that had driven him out into the unforgiving night. Something so dangerous he’d written it down in sympathetic ink and sewn it inside a squirrel in case something should happen to him, only for someone to break in and burn it. Someone with uncanny knowledge of the Otherworld and an affinity for its many monsters, who had reason to want Mr. Enfield dead and the English out.
Someone who was looking a lot like Lord Lusk’s fiancée.
“Is that why you were in Mr. Enfield’s apartments the night after his murder?” Sam asked, ignoring the sharp intake of breath from Van Helsing.
“Would you believe I was there to call on him?” Miss Shinagh said. Sam noticed the cleverness of the wording?—not that this was, indeed, the reason, only would they believe it. It was rumored the Folk could not lie, that they could only deceive through misdirection and your assumptions.
It was not the first time Miss Shinagh had evaded a direct answer, either. Sam recalled the unnaturalist’s careful language when Sam had first suspected her of being behind the attacks.I’m not the one who disappeared them, if that’s what you’re wondering.
Because she wasn’t?—that was the Wild Hunt.
“Given the state of Mr. Enfield’s apartments, no,” Hel said dryly.
“Don’t tell me you haven’t heard what they’re saying about me,” Miss Shinagh said.
“What do you mean?” Van Helsing demanded. “What is she talking about?”
“She’s saying,” Hel said, “that she partook in the company of Mr. Enfieldin additionto that of Lord Lusk.”
Van Helsing went red as ripe fruit. Sam was scarcely better, her own cheeks pricking with heat.
Only Hel was unmoved, crossing her arms. “That still doesn’t explain what sent Mr. Enfield running out in the middle of the night.”
“I’m afraid he could be... possessive,” Miss Shinagh said.
Sam thought of how you were never to eat food from the Otherworld or all other food would taste of ash. It was said you would become obsessed with it, unable to do anything but think of it, until you wasted away for want. Running out in the middle of the night to argue for Miss Shinagh’s hand didn’t sound quite so far-fetched.
