Sam pressed the edge of the knife gently to Hel’s back, her hand trembling as she remembered the force and the speed it had taken to open that shallow cut on her finger.
“Not like that,” Hel said. “Like you mean it.”
Resisting the urge to squeeze her eyes shut, Sam carved her knife into Hel’s back. The other woman grunted, shuddering under Sam’s touch. It took a moment for blood to well in the cut, as if the flesh were surprised. Then, it welled, sheeting down her back.
“Good,” Hel managed, her voice uneven. “Now pull it up, and scrape.”
Chapter Eighteen
Trinity College, Dublin (Coláiste na Tríonóide, Baile Átha Cliath)
The Day Before Samhain
Sam and Hel and Van Helsing set off for Trinity College at daybreak, the sun bleeding over the horizon in a way that, after the night’s activities, couldn’t help but turn Sam’s stomach. Broken branches littered the cobblestone road, the resinous scent of sap in the brisk morning air. Soldiers clotted the streets, shouting, their uniforms in disarray. Apparently, the Dearg-Due, or someone like her, had taken to haunting the barracks, leaving bloodless soldiers on the doorstep of Dublin Castle the way a cat might leave a mouse.
Sam and Hel had to bodily restrain Van Helsing from pursuing. The soldiers claimed they had it well in hand, and it was the day before Samhain?—they were running out of time.
At Trinity, they split: Hel to the chemistry department to develop the photographs and ascertain whether or not she had a ghost, Sam to the library to research mediums. Van Helsing went along with her, though what he was researching?—if, indeed, that was what he was doing?—he wouldn’t say.
Sam glanced over at Van Helsing, who leaned against a bookcase in an open-collared shirt and brown slacks, scrutinizing a hand-inked sketch of a sluagh in a traveler’s leather-bound journal?—its strengths and weaknesses, the details of its anatomy. Sam was just opening her mouth to ask how he’d managed to smuggle a bestiary out of the Society library, particularly what looked like a primary source, when she realized she recognized the intense line work, the composition.
“You didn’t stop sketching,” Sam said, surprised despite herself.
Van Helsing flushed and snapped the bestiary closed. “How did you know it was mine?” Sam wasn’t sure what to make of the fact that he hadn’t thought to lie.
“It’s the line work,” Sam said. “It’s less formal than a usual bestiary?—”
“Well, I don’t have any formal training,” he said defensively.
“As if it captures the essence of the creature, instead of its image,” Sam finished.
“Oh,” Van Helsing said, embarrassment written in every line of his body. It was as if Van Helsing didn’t know what to do with her. It occurred to Sam then that his father’s insistence on forging him into the perfect field agent might have had consequences, that Van Helsing might not know how to interact with anyone outside the bounds of the hunt. Her heart ached. What a wretched thing, to lose out on your humanity in order to protect it.
Sam wanted to say as much, but Van Helsing was off again. She frowned. It seemed as if he was spending more time talking to people than doing proper research.
“Anything?” Van Helsing asked when they regrouped sometime later between the stacks. Sunlight limned the mahogany shelves in gold, catching on the dust in a way Sam had always thought of as magical.
“All known members of the Vespertine were haunted,” Hel said, tossing a photograph of the remembrance on the spread of books between them.
“We knew that already,” Van Helsing grumbled.
“So is Sam,” Hel said, before drawing another photograph out, this one ostensibly of Mr. Pearse, but which happened to catch Hel in the frame. And behind her?—the smear of a crooked-looking ghost in a tailcoat. “And so am I.”
Van Helsing cursed. “It’s spreading, like some sort of contagion.”
“No. It’s not,” Sam said. She looked up at Hel, waiting to see if she would trust him.
Hel looked as if she’d really rather not. But she nodded.
Sam pulled out a book on mediums she’d found, bound in what felt uncomfortably like human skin. Flipping the pages, she located a formula for ink using the ground-up bones of human remains. The writer had intended it to be romantic, that you might be bound to your beloved forever. Sam thought it sounded like a good way to get haunted. So, apparently, had her grandfather.
“My grandfather is a medium,” Sam said, and with a deep breath, she explained their theories. How her grandfather worked for Professor Moriarty as both medium and spymaster, using the selenic tattoos to anchor hauntings and then using the silver bells to summon his spies to report.
She didn’t know how he’d convinced the Vespertine to get the tattoos, but with the love secret societies had for their hidden symbols and the difficulty of concocting an ink that only showed itself in the light of the moon, Sam thought it possible they had even gone to him. They probably thought themselves clever.
“But then how is it you are haunted?” Van Helsing said suspiciously. “If you don’t have a mark?”
Sam shrugged helplessly. “It might be anything. Something important to an unquiet ghost, their bones or artifacts, or?—” Sam’s hands flew to her throat. “My necklace.”
