“It’s strange,” Hel mused. Her shoulder seemed empty without Heathcliff, but she hadn’t wanted to risk him. Not at the Hell-Fire Club. “My father loathes Shakespeare.”
Sam’s steps hitched. “Oh?” she managed, pretending to untangle her skirts from a bit of shrubbery.
“He says it was written by a lowbrow, Crown-flattering magpie, and all his best work was stolen from others,” Hel said. Sam, offended on behalf of English literature, bit back her first response, then her second. Hel slid her eyes to Sam. “How curious that he used it for one of his apian messages.”
“It must be another clue,” Van Helsing said, oblivious. “Some sign of his displeasure.”
“Perhaps,” Hel allowed.
“Or perhaps it wasn’t sent by him at all,” Sam offered, once she was certain she could control her voice, “but someone working against him from the inside.” Her grandfather, she meant it to appear, because Sam had not, in fact, told them. About the vision. About Aunt Lucy. About any of it.
The Hell-Fire Club remained a shell of its former glory, with tufts of grass growing between blackened stone, the hollows of the windows half drowning in earth. He might not even be there anymore, Sam told herself, even as her heart tangled with all the words she wanted to say to him.
It didn’t matter. Even if it was only a slim chance, Sam had come too far to let a lead on her grandfather slip through her fingers. Not after years of being haunted by the numbers he’d left her. Not when there was a chance she might see him again, even if she didn’t know whether she wanted to hug him or punch him in the mouth. Slap him in the mouth, she corrected herself, and wondered if Van Helsing would be proud.
“Hello.” Sam near leapt out of her skin. Hel’s revolver was out and aimed at the wind-racked linden tree behind them, its barren branches clawing at the sky. But there was no one there. Only the wind shaking the gorse. Hel fired, the shot ringing out over the empty hills, and a raven flew out of the tree, cackling with an all-too-human laugh.
“My brother,” Hel said tersely to Van Helsing’s questioning look.Ruari.
“Your brother’s a raven,” Van Helsing said flatly.
“Yes, yes, that’s exactly it,” Hel said, holstering her revolver. “No, he trains them. He’ll know we’ve been here.”
Her Aunt Lucy had been right. There was something here. She could feel it.
Putting a hand on the stone, cool even through her gloves, Sam ducked into the Hell-Fire Club, after Hel and Van Helsing.
The floor had gone to dirt, muffling their footsteps. The ceiling was rounded and blackened with soot, the scent of char lingering in the air, giving the unnerving sense of being inside a kiln. A flight of stairs rose up to nowhere, the remnants of a wooden frame hanging above like a skeleton from where there had been another floor. And all around them, the air vibrated with the sound of bees.
Sam toed through the ash, unearthing flattened, blackened coins, melted into slag. She traced the walls for hidden switches and secret passages, stumbling back when a bee wriggled out of a hole in the stone. But found nothing.
Checking to ensure Hel and Van Helsing were nowhere to be seen, Sam tugged off one of her gloves with her teeth and knelt, brushing her fingers through the ash. A frustrated noise broke free of her throat. Why could she never have a vision when she needed one? She snatched off her other glove, thrusting both hands into the ash. This time, she felt the faintest stirring on her skin, like the echo of a flame, before it faded, leaving only the whisper of char.
At last she had to admit the truth: There was no one there. The Hell-Fire Club had been abandoned, a long time ago by the looks of it.
Panic slid through her, cold and slippery. She’d gotten so close. But if her grandfather wasn’t there, then where was he? If her Aunt Lucy couldn’t help, she had no way of finding him. It was over. Sam had done everything she could; she had to let him go.
Except...
Not everything,whispered that song.
Alice had said that channels might do more, that they mightcontroltheir power, rather than let it control them. And she remembered how her mother, Mina, had wormed her way into Dracula’s mind, seeing visions of the vampire’s passage across the ocean.
It wasn’t as if she hadn’t done it before, Sam reasoned. Given in to the song and come out the other side. Without the song, she never would have found Mr. Ashdown’s office. Without the song, the Wild Hunt would have taken her the previous night.
In the end, it wasn’t a decision at all. She curled her fingers into the ash, feeling again for the flicker of flames, and this time when it came, she didn’t flinch. Instead, she just... let go, let the song fill her with music and fire until it smoked from her eyes.
Show me,she demanded.
It was easier than she’d expected. Like all this time, she’d thought she had to learn to fly, when all she had to do was fall. The visions came?—so fast Sam could scarcely follow. They coursed through her, horrifically sensual and saturated with power. The copper tang of blood filled her mouth as she walked through the flames and did not burn.
For perhaps the first time in her life, Sam wasn’t afraid. Not of getting caught, not of what other people thought, and not of the monster inside her. In fact, she didn’t feel anything at all. She could see why her Aunt Lucy had found it seductive?—how it might lead to temptation.I can feel things and still deal with them,Sam had said. But that was painful, exhausting. The world was so broken, the sharp edges cutting you open every time you tried to touch it. It was so much easier when nothing mattered.
Only, why was she here again? It had been important, had feltall-consuming.
Grandfather,a small voice murmured. Right. Her grandfather had been here once. What had happened to him? She dredged his face up through the murky waters of her memory, saw the flicker of his reflection through a glass, darkly, his brows knit in concentration as he bent over some contraption or another.Yes?—that was it...
“Sam,” Hel interrupted; the black mirror shattered at the sound of her voice.
