“I don’t think she’s through with you yet,” Sam managed.
Jakob’s ears pinked. Securing the bells on his spurs, he descended next. Then came Sam, Hel and Jakob wincing at the rustling of her skirts.Sorry,Sam mouthed in the flickering candlelight. But the humming continued?—along with a new sound, this one skating down Sam’s every nerve and setting her teeth on edge. A horrible, wet, sawing sound, like tearing meat.
The air pressed against her skin, unexpectedly humid, and there was an odd smell?—that sweet, coppery scent Sam was beginning to associate with blood, but also notes of something acrid and chemical, and a musk Sam had come to think of as death.
Carefully, they picked their way closer to the humming, and that wet ripping. Enormous slabs of rock canted toward one another in place of walls, candles melting down the irregular ledges, guttering in the wind of their passage. It was so narrow at the top that even Sam had to duck in places, leaving her with the unnerving impression not that the rath was too small, but that she was too large?—that she did not belong.
Was this truly the place where the Folk held feasts so delectable that all other food tasted of ash, where they played music so irresistible people danced their feet bloody? Perhaps its glory had melted from it, like fat from bones, when it had been claimed for the mortal world. Or perhaps it had never been. Sam remembered hearing whispers of the kitsune from Japan, how men would swear they’d been hosted in grand houses, enjoying the finest delicacies, only to find they’d been scrabbling about in the dark recesses beneath a house, eating mice with foxes.
It was always best to assume that with the Folk, not all was as it seemed. The same held true with Professor Moriarty as well, and it struck Sam then how very like the Folk Hel’s family was.
The passage opened into a chamber clotted with stalagmites of haphazardly stacked books. Strangely, it wasn’t on account of a lack of bookshelves. The walls were, in fact, covered in them, only they held no books. Instead, they brimmed with oddments: a music box with a broken dancer, a worn-looking key, a tin soldier, a hand-carved Christmas ornament... and teeth. Jars upon jars of teeth, with their long, snaking roots, some cracked and yellowed with age, others still crusted with gore.
A will-o’-the-wisp orbited a worn radiotelegraph on the desk, casting eerie blue-green light over the notebooks piled up all around, making it appear almost as if the desk were adrift on a sea of ink and paper. Over it hung dozens of small silver handbells on a mahogany board, with names written beneath them. Samantha Harker. Mary Priory. James Moriarty.
Not?—that... couldn’t possibly be Hel’s father’s name, could it? But Hel had said Moriarty was a common name. It might be anyone. A cousin. An uncle. An urchin of no relation.
Then all thoughts fled. For standing in the center of the room, in jagged shadows cast by an assortment of gas lamps, was her grandfather. He was hunched over a corpse splayed out on a heavy stone table, like one might find in a crypt. Those strong hands of her grandfather’s, which had taught Sam how to catch moths and work a radiotelegraph, were sawing into the corpse’s chest cavity with a long, straight knife, peeling back the ribs one by one.
A vision, it had to be. This wasn’t her grandfather. She couldn’t believe it, she wouldn’t?—sheknewher grandfather. But if it was a vision, it stubbornly refused to fade, and then her grandfather was snapping off a rib and tossing it, like the bone from a chicken wing, into an urn beside him that seethed with the orange-and-black carapaces of carrion beetles.
Jakob cursed, drawing his revolver.
“Jakob, no!” Sam whispered, pulling his arm down, unable to wrap her mind around the fact that this was real, that Jakob saw it too. “At least let me talk to him. He’s still my grandfather.”
“And that’s Detective Lynch he’s carving up,” Jakob spat.
Horror soaked through Sam as she realized he was right. “But... you just spoke with him this morning.” It seemed impossible that he should be alive and speaking one moment and carved up on the table the next.
The humming stopped, and there was a squelch as her grandfather snapped the last rib, tossing it to the beetles, and reached inside for Detective Lynch’s heart. If he knew they were there, he didn’t care.
“Excuse me,” Sam ventured, half afraid to draw his attention, half afraid she wouldn’t.
Sam’s grandfather didn’t even bother to look up. “You’re early.” There was something odd about the way he spoke. His voice was his all right, but his accent... It wasn’t Roscommon Irish, butRussian. “This one won’t be ready for hours yet.”
Sam felt dizzy. Had she ever truly known her grandfather? Or had he always worn a mask? He’d abandoned Sam’s mother so young, she’d scarcely recognized him when he’d waltzed back into her life. Into all their lives.
“Grandpa,” Sam said, her voice cracking. “It’s me. Sammy.” She’d finally found him, the missing piece in her family, who had been gone so long everyone save Sam had given up hope altogether. So why did it feel as if everything was falling apart?
Sam’s grandfather looked up briefly, his spectacles flashing in the inconstant lantern light.
“You know I don’t care to learn your names.”
There was no hint of recognition in his eyes. Not of Sam, the granddaughter he’d set a ghost on to be sure of her well-being, not of Jakob, who’d had occasion to join Sam in listening to his stories, and not of Hel, who had worked for him when she was her father’s creature, whom he must have inked with that illuminatedM.
Sam swallowed against a stone in her throat. She felt as if she were losing not just her grandfather but her entire childhood. She didn’t know what was real anymore. All the memories she had clung to when she was at her lowest suddenly tasted of ash.
“What won’t be ready?” Jakob was demanding. He might have been talking for a while; Sam was finding it hard to listen. “To take where?”
“So many questions,” her grandfather growled impatiently. “You are to take the product to the drop point, that’s all. I do my part, you do yours?—none of this fraternizing, do you understand me?”
Something white dribbled out of his nose. Impatient, he wiped at it with a rag, and that familiar acrid, chemical scent intensified. The scent that Sam’s grandfather used to say heralded a storm. He tossed the rag into a pile of them. It looked almost... familiar.
Ectoplasm, Sam realized, recalling the vengeful spirits. It was ectoplasm.
“He’s possessed!” Sam cried.
Relief tangled with terror in her heart. Relief that this wasn’t who her grandfather was, that this wasn’t his fault. Horror that he had been trapped in his own body, for who knew how many years. Sam still remembered what it felt like when the song had taken her over?—that feeling of being winnowed down until there was nothing left, the terror of not knowing what she’d done, of losing herself... And that had only been for a few minutes.
