As for Miss Shinagh’s curious detachment, the Folk had a different sort of morality, and a different understanding of relationships as well. Less... monogamous.
Van Helsing crossed his arms. “That still doesn’t explain what you were looking for.”
“I had reason to suspect that Mr. Enfield might have kept some compromising correspondence,” Miss Shinagh said. “You understand, I expect, why I might not want it discovered. And yes, before you ask, I burned what I found. So, if that’s all?”
“Just one more thing,” Van Helsing said. “It rained the night the Viscount and the Duke were taken, but the camera you found is made of glorified cardboard. Which means you didn’t happen to come across it the next morning, hours after the fact?—you werethere, weren’t you?”
He was right. Sam’s fingernail slid beneath the splitting cardboard of the box camera, swollen just from the spray while crossing the Liffey. A whole night in heavy rain and it would have disintegrated utterly. Certainly the film wouldn’t have been useable.
It occurred to Sam that she’d been dangerously underestimating Van Helsing. He didn’t always confess what he’d uncovered; he waited to see what you would do first.
“It seems you have it all figured out,” Miss Shinagh said, as if this were all a bit of a game. She tilted her head back to look at the twilit sky, the fierce wind tugging her hair free of its bun. “I should warn you. It’s going to get worse before it gets better.”
“And how exactly would you know that?” Van Helsing said, his voice velvet with violence.
Not at the sky?—at thestars. “It’s almost Samhain,” Sam breathed.
Miss Shinagh smiled. “You’re wasted with the Society, Miss Harker. Do let me know if you’d ever consider a change of occupation.”
“What do you mean?” Van Helsing demanded of Sam.
“It’s the eve when the veil between the worlds is thinnest and the gates of the Otherworld are blown wide,” Sam explained. “Every rath and mountain ash.”
If the veil was thinner in Ireland, on Samhain, it would be lifted, the Otherworld melding with the mortal realm. Reach your hand out in the dark, and it might not be your neighbor who took it. Venture out at night, and you might never come home. There was a limit to how many people the Wild Hunt could run down in one night. But at sunset on Samhain, any limitations would blow away like ash on the wind.
“It means,” Sam said, “that we have two days to solve this, before?—” A harrowing scream shredded Sam’s thoughts.
“Are those... foxes?” Van Helsing asked, sounding confused.
Sam turned to catch a flicker of movement in the brush?—a fox, just as Van Helsing had said. But it wasn’t alone. The dark was alive with movement, amber eyes kindling behind half-tumbled rock walls and thorny bushes, creeping closer.
There was another hair-raising shriek. Hel swore. “We’ve wasted too much time. The Wild Hunt has chosen their quarry.”
“How could you possibly know that?” Van Helsing asked.
“There are stories told about the Lusk family,” Hel said. “That their founder rescued a vixen from a hunt, and ever since, when the head of the Lusk household is about to die, foxes come from all of Ireland to pay their respects.”
“But he’s a separatist!” Sam exclaimed. A separatist, she realized, but a member of the Vespertine.
Van Helsing rounded on Miss Shinagh. “What have you done?”
Miss Shinagh didn’t hear Van Helsing?—didn’t seem to notice him at all. The color had drained from her face, her notes falling from her nerveless fingers. She rounded on Sam, her eyes bright with desperation. “Miss Harker, you owe me a favor.”
They all heard the echo of the Otherworld in her words.
Van Helsing looked at Sam sharply. “Youwhat?”
“Come with me,” Miss Shinagh pleaded. “Help me save my fiancé, and your debt will be paid.”
“Sam, you can’t,” Hel said, but she knew Sam had no choice. There were consequences for breaking a promise to the Folk, and while Miss Shinagh wasn’t Folk, she was close enough. “It’s a trap, it’sobviouslya trap.”
“You can’t still believe she’s behind it!” Sam said. They’d been right there, with her, the whole time.
“I absolutely can,” Hel snapped.
“I know I was a fool to promise a favor,” Sam said. “But how much more a fool would she be to spend it this way if she were the one calling them down? Besides, what’s the alternative? Let the Wild Hunt take Lord Lusk? This is what we came here to do.”
“Not like this,” Hel urged. But Sam was already turning back to Miss Shinagh.
