We need to trust each other, or there’s no point to any of this.
Hel trusted Sam, but Sam hadn’t trusted Hel. She’d told herself that trust didn’t mean telling your partner everything, but that was just an excuse. Sam hadn’t told Hel because she’d known what she was doing was wrong, because she’d been afraid Hel would stop her, and Sam couldn’t let that happen, not when it was the only way she’d see her grandfather again.
What exactly do you think will happen,Van Helsing hissed in her memory,when the monsters are more than ink on old paper? When you are stuck on some enigma, and can’t resist the pull of their voices?
Van Helsing had been right to be afraid.
“Why did you do it?” Hel asked.
“I just?—I’m so tired of being helpless,” Sam said as she tied off the stitches and cut the thread. Tired of being struck by visions when she least expected them and abandoned by them when she needed them most. Tired of Professor Moriarty winning. She’d wanted to stop caring. To stop hiding. To be the monster, if that’s what it meant to be herself. “I don’t know how to fight. All I have is my channeling. So this?—I thought, maybe I could...”
“It’s true I only invited you along because of your channeling,” Hel said. “But I was a fool. You are more than a channel. You’re clever, empathetic, and fearless.”
“I’m afraid all the time!” Sam protested.
“But you do what needs doing anyway,” Hel said. “And you do fight. You just do it differently.”
“I don’t, though,” Sam said, frustrated. “I just give people what they want.” Playing her part in their stories, as if that would keep her safe.
Hel raised an eyebrow. “So Mr. Wrightwantedto be coerced into sending you into the field?”
“Well, no, but?—”
“And Mr. Ashdown, he wanted you to snoop around his office?” Hel pressed.
“Now that’s not fair?—”
Hel shook her head. “Not all fighting need look the same.”
Hel’s breath caught as Sam’s fingers slid down the taut muscles of her back, wrapping a bandage around her ribs. When at last she was done, Sam closed her eyes against a sudden stinging. She had done this to Hel. This was her fault. She had done the unthinkable, given in to temptation, and the person she loved most had suffered for it. Just as everyone said she would.
Sam was a monster.
“You know, it’s not what my father did,” Hel said quietly, “that keeps me up at night. It’s what I did.”
Sam stilled. She remembered the knowing way in which Hel had asked Officer Berchard if he knew how long it took to dismember a corpse. The uncanny ease with which she broke into buildings. The offhanded mention of gas lamps and poison.
Hel had never spoken of the things she’d done before she signed on to the Society. But Sam could guess enough.
This, she understood at last, was why Hel hadn’t wanted Sam to follow her to Ireland. Not because Sam was in danger, though she was, but because she was ashamed of the things she’d done. The person she’d been in that place that had been and could never be home.
“Whatever you did, it wasn’t your fault,” Sam said. “You were a child. You were just trying to survive.”
“Tell that to the victims,” Hel said, but her attention wasn’t internal, but on Sam. Sam leaned back as she realized what Hel was doing. The equation she was trying to draw.
“That is not the same,” Sam said flatly. “You’re not a monster.”
“Neither are you,” Hel said. “You’rehuman.”
An odd thing to call the woman who had just... what? Abandoned the husk of her body to possess a monster? That couldn’t be right. The feeling wasn’t one of mastery, but of being out of control?—of losing herself.
Who was she kidding? She’d been losing herself for days.
“At least give yourself the same grace you give the monsters we fight,” Hel said quietly.
“I’m not sure I’m ready to face my grandfather,” Sam whispered. “If what you said is true...”
Hel twisted toward Sam, still holding her hand. “No matter who he is, he still loves you,” she said as she traced the silver scar across Sam’s palm. Sam shivered. “He’d be a fool not to.”
