Sam’s lips parted to answer, but Hel cut her off before she could.
“No,” Hel said. “First, we make a deal. A stay of execution.”
Miss Shinagh raised an eyebrow. “You would defend the Vespertine?”
“That’s the problem; it’s not just them,” Sam said. It was Sam and her grandfather. It was everyone who was haunted, for any reason. “Give the Vespertine a week to leave Ireland. What they’re doing, it’s highly illegal in every court in Europe. If we collect evidence, we can ensure they face justice.”
“Justice,” Miss Shinagh laughed bitterly. “My, but your naivety is aggravating and ingratiating all at once.”
“Three days,” Hel offered. “And if they ever return, their lives are forfeit.”
“I could do that without an agreement,” Miss Shinagh said, her eyes narrowed. Then: “They can have twenty-four hours, and my words will not bind anyone but me. I may have influence with her, but...”
“That’s a risk we’re willing to take,” Hel said.
The wind rose around them as the deal tightened, sinking into their bones.
“Right,” Hel said, already turning to the horizon. “Van Helsing?—the Dutchman?—has a knife that can cut through the cage. If we get there before he does, we might convince him to use it to free her. If not...”
“You could have told me before I agreed to your deal,” Miss Shinagh snapped.
“I could have,” Hel admitted, unrepentant. “We need horses. Not a carriage. They’re faster.”
“No,” Miss Shinagh said, determination tightening her jaw. “I have a better way.”
“Stray sod,”Sam breathed. When you wandered into a patch of stray sod, you might come out halfway to Donegal if you weren’t careful. But Miss Shinagh had walked the misty paths of the Otherworld and come out the other side. It occurred to Sam then that what they were doing, there was no going back. She needed to be prepared for every eventuality, no matter how improbable. “Wait! There’s something I need to fetch from the hotel.”
“What could possibly be so important?—” Miss Shinagh began.
“Do you want the Vespertine to face justice?” Sam interrupted. “No one would believe us, not against men like that. We needevidence. Which means we need a camera.” Or two.
In the hotel room, Sam grabbed the Viscount’s box camera and the bowler hat Hel had snagged off the spy, before changing her soaked skirts and corset for her mother’s tartan. Sam had, of course, made her own modifications. She patted her corset. There was a chance they wouldn’t need it, that the box camera would be sufficient. But that wasn’t a risk Sam was willing to take.
Sam emerged from the hotel, holding out the spy hat to Hel. For a moment, Hel just looked at it. Then she nodded and settled it on her head.
“Don’t let go of my hands,” Miss Shinagh warned as she led them to a patch of unnaturally lush grass. “Or I’m not certain where you’ll end up.”
Her hand clamped around Sam’s like a vise. Sam was suddenly certain they’d made a terrible mistake, that Miss Shinagh would abandon them somewhere far from Ashdown Manor and Dublin, in the wilds of Ireland. In a bog, perhaps, to be discovered a hundred years later and thought a sacrifice to some fell god, which, perhaps she would be, if that god was grief and wrath.
And then they were stepping into the stray sod. In other circumstances, Sam might have been taken with scholarly excitement; traveling into the stray sod with no worries about being lost was something vanishingly few ever got to experience. But her curiosity was chased with fear?—that Jakob would get there before them and kill the Mórrígan; that he would get there and the Vespertine would have already finished their ritual; that they would, one way or another, be too late.
The fog thickened around them, whispers and laughter chasing through the white. Sam clung to Miss Shinagh’s hand as shadows swam in the mirrored waters of a milky lake, the ceol Sídhe calling for her to come down into the depths, to drown and dance with them forever. But Miss Shinagh wrenched Sam’s arm so hard, she felt it scrape the socket, and laughter chased them into a forest.
The trees were pressed together so close, Sam couldn’t breathe without bark scratching her skin, until Miss Shinagh opened an oak like a door and pulled them through and out the other side, where a red mountain loomed. Sam looked behind her, but the tree was gone, no sign that a forest had ever been there. Only that crimson mountain, inescapably before them, no matter which way they turned.
But before despair could grip her, Miss Shinagh lifted the skirt of the mountain and took them under its roots, where the walls glimmered with uncut gems and the sound of dancing and music echoed in the dark. Here, at last, Miss Shinagh let go of their hands, instructing them to turn their jackets inside out.
They complied, and abruptly, Sam was blinking alongside Hel and Miss Shinagh in a copse of small, twisted trees, mushrooms nosing out around their feet. The glittering edge of the sun kissed the horizon, drenching the golden hills in shadow. Sam could see the bonfires burning across the countryside for Samhain, smoke rising to the stars, to ward away the Folk and unhallowed dead. And before them: Ashdown Manor.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Ashdown Manor, Skryne, County Meath (Scrín Cholm Cille, Contae na Mí)
Samhain
Miss Shinagh’s breathing was strained. Walking the misty roads of the Otherworld had clearly taken a great deal of her strength. “I’m all right,” she rasped, but Sam heard the unspokenI have to be.The ivy had grown since she’d seen it last, seeming to swallow the English manor whole, as if it were a ruin already. Only the barest sliver of the door was visible through the wild tangle.
The crows that haunted the darkening skies were restless, as if they could sense something on the wind. Sam could sense it, too. The sun was setting on their window of opportunity, quite literally, and the skin of the world felt stretched dangerously thin, as if at any moment it might split like an overripe fruit. Then the Vespertine’s ritual would begin, burning the Mórrígan’s power like a candle to light their own. Once it was complete, they would never be able to free her. Nor did Sam want to find out how the Vespertine would use their newly acquired strength. Not when they used what power they possessed already so poorly.
