“Hel, you have it,” Sam said, her voice shaking. “You have the mark.”
“What?” Hel’s voice was sharp. “No. It’s not possible. I would have seen it.”
The ghost, she meant. “You might not be haunted. We don’t know that the ghosts are related to the marks,” Sam said. Not for certain, not until they developed the next set of photographs. But if she did, if it had stayed out of Hel’s line of sight... that betrayed an upsetting degree of intentionality. “My grandfather might not even be involved. He probably isn’t. After all, I’m haunted and I don’t have a mark, and you might not be haunted and you have one.”
“You think there’s only one way to haunt someone?” Hel said.
It sounded ridiculous when she put it like that. “I’m only saying we don’t have enough information.”
“What is it?” Hel demanded, pushing herself up, and if Sam weren’t who she was, she wouldn’t have heard the desperation tearing at her voice. “I’m not Vespertine, I shouldn’t have one of their eyes.”
“You don’t,” Sam hedged. “It looks more like something from an illuminated manuscript.”
“Just tell me!” Hel said, a wild look in her eyes.
“A letterM.” Like a brand on cattle. Pressed between her shoulder blades where she’d never be able to reach it. “He must have had it done when you were passed out, being stitched up for one of your wounds, so you wouldn’t notice.”
Hel drew a knife and held it out to Sam. “Cut it out.”
“Me?” Sam squeaked. “I can’t?—I don’t?—that’s not something I can do.”
“You’ll have to go at least an eighth of an inch to be safe,” Hel said.
“How?—”
“About two of your quarters stacked atop one another. Best add a dime, to be safe,” Hel said, as if that were the only objection Sam had.
“Hel, I don’t want to hurt you,” Sam said. It was one thing for Hel to cut a mark off Sam, but for Sam to do it herself?
“I’m asking you to,” Hel said, pressing the knife into Sam’s hands.
The medical bag. Sam needed the medical bag, at least. Sterilization, wound dressing, and all that. She couldn’t just cut a chunk of Hel’s flesh out and let her bleed.
“This mark must have been put on me when I was still my father’s creature,” Hel said. In her panic, Sam hadn’t put it together. Now that she knew Hel possessed one, it seemed all but certain that Hel’s father was behind the marks. If the pictures they developed revealed Hel to be haunted, then Sam’s theory was most likely correct: Her grandfather was tattooing ghosts into people’s skin.
But even if Professor Moriarty and Sam’s grandfather were behind the attacks by the Wild Hunt, they couldn’t have intended that when Hel had been tattooed. Professor Moriarty might have an upsetting degree of foresight, but that was too far, even for him. Which meant they had another use.
“All this time, I wondered how he seemed to know my every move before I did,” Hel said. “How I could never seem to get ahead of him. I thought I just wasn’t clever enough, that he was outsmarting me. But what if this is how?”
“You think your father is using ghosts to spy on the Vespertine... onyou,” Sam said. And why not? For what better spy than one you could neither hear nor see. One that might witness your most intimate moments. It painted a terribly convincing picture. Aunt Lucy had said her grandfather could draw her to him by ringing a silver bell. In Sam’s vision, silver bells had covered a whole wall. “And my grandfather is his spymaster.”
Hel and Sam looked at each other then, and realized there was no hiding how they felt about each other. Not now. Bile rose in her throat at the idea of sharing what had happened between them withhim.
“You have to cut it out of me,” Hel said. “If we burn and salt it, if we return the ghost to its final rest...”
He might not know. At least, not the most recent part.
“Right.” Sam swallowed her fear and ran to fetch the black medical bag. She lined up the iodine and the clean bandages before reaching into a hidden compartment for the clay vessel that held amaranthium, an alchemical healing paste. It wasn’t for open wounds, but Sam didn’t see another option. She popped the cork. The paste inside was thick and yellow, filling the air with the scent of amaranth and something sharper, something that went to her head.
“You’ll need to make an incision first,” Hel said, her voice soft as Sam wet her back with iodine. “Then, pull up the skin and peel, using the knife to cut away the flesh. It’s not that different from skinning a rabbit.”
“Do I look like I’ve skinned a rabbit!” Sam said. Her hands shook as she reached for the knife, cleaning it with the same care she’d taken with Hel’s back. Perhaps more. She was delaying again. She knew it. But...
“Sam.”
Sam bit her lip. “I know, I just?—” Didn’t want to do it, wasn’t ready to do it, couldn’t do it. She drew in a deep breath. Hel didn’t need her panic right then. She needed her to be brave. “Do you need anything to bite on, or...?”
“I’ll be fine,” Hel said, gritting her teeth, and Sam got the distinct impression she’d done this sort of thing before.
