“It seems that after so many years in close proximity, the haunting has transferred to you,” her grandfather said.
“What?” Jakob exclaimed.
“What exactly is she supposed to do with that?” Hel demanded.
The haunting was a part of Sam, as much as her heart or lungs. Because Sam had become her Aunt Lucy’s unfinished business. She’d watched Sam grow up for ten years, the daughter of her best friend, practically her niece. She’d been waiting for Sam to give Jakob a piece of her mind for a decade; had gotten invested in her relationship with Hel, teasing her and offering advice.
“She needs to get out of here, while she still can,” her grandfather said urgently. “Leave Ireland. Get as far away as you can. Oh, you never should have come. Why didn’t you listen to my message? I told you not to follow me.”
“I knew you couldn’t mean that,” Sam said. Except it seemed as if he had. She tried again. “That you were only saying that because you felt like you had to, to keep me safe. But I’m here now, and I’m all right. We can leave, together.”
He wrung his hands. “I can’t. You must understand.”
“But I don’t.” Sam’s throat felt as if it were closing in, and her world closing in with it.
“Oh, rabbit,” her grandfather said, his eyes watery. “Once he has something, he does not let it go. If I tried to escape, he would take everything from me before taking my life, and when a man has done the sorts of things I’ve done, heard what I’ve heard of Hell... he doesn’t easily go to Death.”
But it seemed as if he couldn’t bring himself to live, either. For at the reminder of his own inevitable end, he turned, tearing wildly through the shelves of mortal detritus again.
“Was it you?” Jakob demanded. “Are you the one behind the Wild Hunt?”
“I?—I don’t know,” her grandfather said. “I could be. I don’t know whathedoes.” Hel and Jakob exchanged a look, and Sam knew what they were thinking: This operation, this spectral spy ring, was more extensive than they’d known. It would be no great loss to set the Wild Hunt on those who stood in the way of Professor Moriarty’s conquest of the Vespertine, and to continue spying on all the rest. Convenient, even. A whispered word, and it would be done. After all, what were the Wild Hunt but ghosts?
That would explain why none of them had come for Hel, despite her mark. Her father would strip everything from her before he came for her. Whereas Sam, well. She was the fatted calf.
“Do you recognize these ghosts?” Hel demanded, thrusting the pictures they had of the first victims at him.
Her grandfather nodded wordlessly, his fingers brushing the page, before mumbling, “Yes, yes. Yes, these are mine.”
“That’s it?” Sam said, wishing he would say something in his own defense. But he only turned away, back to the shelves, mumbling to himself as he discarded a bit of scrimshaw, a rusted pot of pomade, a dirt-encrusted wedding ring. “Don’t you care what it is they’ve done?”
Her grandfather’s hands slowed. “What good would that do?” His hands closed on a dented harmonica, his gaze hungry, his conversation with Sam not important enough to hold him. “Ah, this one might do.”
One way or the other, Sam was losing him all over again, right in front of her eyes. She swallowed her despair and tried, “We can go somewhere far away, somewhere he’ll never find us.”
“No, he can’t,” Jakob said sharply. “He might be your grandfather, but he’s also the spymaster and assassin for Professor Moriarty. He’s coming with us.”
Her grandfather choked out a bitter laugh, not even seeming to hear Jakob. “It does not matter where I go, he will find me. You of all people should know that, Sammy. The?—the feathers, the black feathers you keep finding in your breakfast scones and bedsheets, the little notes. They’re his way of letting you know he can get you, no matter where you go.”
“Thewhat?” The betrayal in Hel’s voice cut through Sam like a knife. “Sam?”
But Sam couldn’t face Hel, not there. “Then we’ll fight,” she whispered to her grandfather. “If we stand together?—”
Her grandfather shook his head, clasping the harmonica. “Have you learned nothing? You can no more fight James Moriarty than you can fight a hurricane. You can only survive it. I will do what I must.”
He was a coward. It was somehow worse than the unmitigated immorality of Hel’s father. At least he did what he felt was right. It was as if her grandfather was afraid to feel anything at all. And that’s when she realized that the man she knew and loved was gone, if, indeed, he’d existed at all.
At the same time, Sam recognized herself in him. The way he played his part in Professor Moriarty’s story, did as he was told, to keep himself safe. Except he wasn’t safe, and he’d already lost everything worth having.
“You should have listened when Mr. Wright told you to go back to London,” her grandfather said, spilling more secrets he had no right to. Jakob’s eyes narrowed, locking on Sam like a target. “He wants you, and what he wants, he gets, and he never lets go.”
“Grandfather, don’t do this,” Sam said as he whispered to the harmonica. It began to play “Banks of the Ohio” of its own accord, a folk song so innocuous sounding that it took Sam a moment to remember it was a murder ballad from Appalachia.
“I’m sorry, Sammy. I need this, in a way I hope you never have reason to understand,” her grandfather said, his eyes drinking in the harmonica as if it were salvation, as if he were already gone. “You’re going to want to get out of here. Quickly. There’s a reason this spirit wasn’t my first choice.”
Her grandfather started mumbling to the harmonica as it played.
“Stop right there!” Jakob ordered, bulling forward, but he was too late. They all were.
