The Iron Thorn (26 page)

The Fiery Stars

I
CLIMBED DOWN
from the attic with the dusk, exhausted. The library was dim, but aether light gleamed from the back parlor and I heard laughter.

Dean, Cal and Bethina sat around a low coal fire, Bethina’s round face alight.

“You’re a card, Dean!” she exclaimed. “The way you tell those stories I’d take them for true.”

“They are true.” Dean spun the poker between his palms. “Every word.”

Bethina hooted again, but I’d spent enough days with Dean now to know his face when he wasn’t teasing.

“We have aether. And light,” I said, to announce my presence. It was surprising to see Graystone in the real light of the aether lamps. Cal got up and hobbled over to me.

“We thought you’d died in that dusty attic.”

“Well, the kid thought so,” Dean drawled. “Bethina and I thought that was a tad dramatic.”

“Aether pump had a loose valve,” Cal babbled. “But I fixed it up. Routes into the house and runs a real nice little generation globe for heat and light.” He jerked his thumb at the hi-fi in the corner. “And I guess Dean got that antique working, not that we get any reception up here.”

“I’d die for some dance music,” Bethina cried. “The aether hasn’t been working since … well, since the unpleasantness with your da.”

“Cal,” I said, ignoring her. She hadn’t spent the afternoon seeing what I’d seen. “Cal, I have something to tell you.”

He cocked his head. “Spill.”

“Alone,” I elaborated. Cal was my confidant and he should be first to know what I’d found. I didn’t think Dean would call me crazy, but I didn’t know him as anything except a criminal guide who wanted me to tell him secrets. With Cal, I knew, there would be no price attached.

“All right,” Cal said, his grin vanishing.

“The hallway,” I told him, stepping out beyond the door, where we’d be out of earshot.

Behind me, music filled up the parlor, scratchy and antique across the tenuous connection of the aether.

Cal folded his arms. “I don’t like the way you just let him act as familiar as he pleases, Aoife. He’s basically a member of the help, you know.”

I slid the pocket doors shut on Dean and Bethina dancing awkwardly. Dean was liquid-graceful. Bethina was stumpy, her face red and her curls loose. I hoped I’d never looked like that in dance class.

Cal sighed. “Aoife, I’m serious. It’s not right to let someone like that run away at the reins.”

“Cal, I’m not one of those spoiled Uptown girls,” I said. “And even if I was, it doesn’t mean people who work for their living are less than human. You sound like Marcos.” I mimicked his stern gesture.

“You’re better than Dean Harrison,” Cal grumbled. “At least
I
know that.”

“This is emphatically not what I wanted to say to you,” I said, trying to steer the conversation back on track. “Cal, listen … I found something in the attic.”

Cal’s face lit like a lucifer match. “Bootlegger’s stash? A secret chamber, like for a blood cult? I read about one in
Black Mask
once—”

“I found a … a book,” I said, trying to pluck up the courage to tell him the exact nature of said book. Cal sighed.

“Oh. Just like school, then.”

“Not exactly,” I said, my voice going soft and shivery of its own accord. Cal was my friend, but I was about to ask him to believe a whole lot. “Cal, I found it. I found the book Conrad wanted me to use. It’s a … journal, I guess you’d call it.”
Journal
was a poor descriptor of the grimoire I’d found, but it was the one that would placate Cal. “My father kept it since he was eighteen or so.”

Cal spread his hands. “So?” I’d never noticed how pale his hands were. They were long and knobby and soft—gentleman’s hands. By comparison, my scar-traced knuckles and callused fingers were rough and unwieldy. But Cal had always excelled at being delicate and careful during classes, while I nicked and cut myself on metal and hot soldering lead every time we did shop.

“So.”
I stepped closer, going up on tiptoe to get close to
his ear. “The ink in the book, I touched it and it … marked me. It touched me like it was alive.” I extended my palm. “Look.”

Cal’s eyes dipped, then came back to mine. A frown made a black line between his eyebrows. “Oh, Aoife. It’s started, hasn’t it?”

I glanced at my own palm. Bare, it stared back at me. The mark had vanished.

“N-no …,” I stuttered, confusion making my voice hitch. “The ink … it tattooed me. An enchantment, and my father did a geas on the journal, so I could see memories that he’d wrapped up in the words.…” I trailed off, my hand dropping as I realized what—who—I sounded like.

“I don’t know what you think you saw.” Cal put his hand on my cheek. “But there’s nothing on your hand, and no enchanted book in the attic.” His skin was cold against my flushed cheek, and damp like the fog that surrounded Graystone. “Magic isn’t real, Aoife. It’s placebo for fools.”

I should believe the same thing, but I couldn’t explain away the diary that easily.

Cal swiped a hand through his unruly nest of hair. “I knew reading all of those books wouldn’t lead you anywhere but fancy. Aoife, you have to stay rational. You saw what happened to your mother. You know that believing in magic opens the door for the necrovirus.”

My fingers curled, nails cutting my palms, and tears I’d been holding down stung the corners of my eyes. Cal was supposed to believe me. Out of everyone from my old life, he was supposed to trust me. “It was there, Cal. It was.”

“It wasn’t, Aoife,” he returned. “This is a dusty old house
full of dusty old things, and with your father gone it’s making you a little hysterical.”

I slapped Cal’s hand away. “
Hysterical? That’s
what you think of me?”

Cal’s jaw jumped, and then he grabbed my shoulders tight, his fingers like wire. “This is for
you
, Aoife,” he whispered. “If you go back to the city saying these things, you’ll be all done. But if you say your head’s a little light and you got overexcited, no Proctor will lock you up as a madwoman.” He ducked his chin. “Your birthday is in two weeks, Aoife. The infection—”

“You think I forgot?” My voice echoed off the scarred oak paneling around us, and I wriggled free of Cal again.

“That’s not …” Cal pressed his hands together, drew in a shaky breath as anger warred with calm on his face. “Talking to you is like tap-dancing on claymore mines, I swear.”

“I don’t care,” I said, hot prickles of anger overriding my natural inclination to hold my tongue. “I don’t care what you meant. It was an awful thing to say. Stay far away from me, Cal Daulton, because if I do go mad, you’ll be the first person I turn on.”

The heels of my borrowed boots echoed like a rifle shot as I left Cal and ran to my room, where I locked the door and let myself cry. Half because I wanted Cal to believe me, and half because I didn’t know if I believed myself.

After I’d spent an hour by the mantel clock alternately sniffling and silently cursing Cal and his fumbling, ill-thought comments, a knock came at the door.

“You in there, Aoife?” Dean’s low voice was welcome. If Cal had come and tried to apologize, I probably would have socked him in the mouth.

“I suppose,” I sighed, crumpling my handkerchief and throwing it in the general direction of my school clothes, which still occupied the floor by the wardrobe.

“Let me in?” he cajoled.

I snapped. “Don’t you and Bethina have more dancing to do?” Passed over for a servant girl. It really was a fairy tale.

“Aoife …” The name held sweet resonance through the oak of the door. Then Dean sighed. “I can take a hint. Sweet dreams, princess.”

After a few ticks of the clock I realized I didn’t want Dean to go away. I jumped off the bed and unlocked the door, opening it just an inch.

Dean was still there. His smile crept to the surface, and I felt marginally less wretched. “That’s more like it. What’s got those teardrops of yours flowing, kiddo?”

“I wasn’t crying.” The words were my reflex against teasing. Engineers didn’t cry. Especially girl engineers.

“Then I take your word for it.” Dean winked at me and offered his bandanna. “For your complexion.”

“Thank you,” I said softly, taking the kerchief and scrubbing at my eyes. They were gritty, as if I’d looked into the maw of a sandstorm.

“You want to talk about it?” Dean moved closer, so that he filled up my slice of doorway, not as a shadow would but solidly, something I could grab hold of.

“Not here,” I said, glancing back at my room, contained by the iron nerves of the house. Dean cocked his head in
confusion. “The walls have ears,” I explained. Bethina could be around any corner, and I didn’t believe that the house itself wasn’t echoing my words down into its bones, storing them for its own eldritch uses.

Dean lifted himself away from the jamb. “Grab yourself a wrap and come with me.”

“I … all right.” I shrugged into a wool cape I’d discovered with the dress and wrapped my school scarf around my neck. As Dean led us away from the landing, into the warren of hallways that made up the north wing of Graystone, I finally had to ask, “Where are we going?”

“I’m still your guide, I’ll have you know,” Dean said. “Trust me.” He stopped at a thin door at the very end of the corridor, too small to be anything but a closet. “You weren’t the only one who found a hidden surprise today, princess.” He popped open the door and gestured toward the open space. “After you.”

It was indeed a closet, the only contents a ship’s ladder leading up into darkness. A draft caught me and prickled my exposed skin. “Up?” I said, peering into the darkness. The way was black and fathomless, cold as space.

“Up,” Dean agreed. “I’ll catch you.”

I mounted the first rung and looked back at him. “I’m not afraid of falling.”

His mouth curled. “That’s my Aoife.”

I jostled as Dean put his hands on my waist and gave me a boost. Cal had told me to reprimand him for being familiar, but if I was honest I enjoyed that Dean didn’t treat me like I was something that might break. And I wanted to see what was up there.

I climbed, and even with Dean’s added weight the ladder was solid under my grasp, wood polished by decades of hands and feet. Gradually the cold grew sharper, a blade rather than a pinprick.

At last, we crested a platform, rotted wood on a rotating base with a skeleton of iron. The widow’s walk rode the ridgeline of Graystone like a ship in choppy seas, wind humming through the railing bars like water under the prow.

Dean swung his legs up and shut the hatch. We were alone on top of the world, moonlight and mist creating a landscape unearthly as the surface of Mars. I should have been scared to be up so high on an ancient, unstable structure, but the view was too eerie, and beautiful, for fear to reach me.

“Pretty boss view,” Dean said, lighting the cigarette he kept behind his ear. “Nothing like it in the city, that’s for sure.” He offered the Lucky to me after a quick drag. I shook my head.

“Told you, I don’t.”

“Figured I’d tempt you once more,” he said, and exhaled. The smoke formed shapes in the air, crow wings and creeping vines.

“Cal thinks I’m insane,” I blurted, folding my arms around myself to keep warm. Below the mist curled back on itself, a flock of dragons eating their own tails.

Dean looked askance at me.

“You’re about as far from cracked as they make ’em, Aoife. I’ve known brass statues that were crazier’n you.”

I grabbed the railing, letting the dead chill of the iron steel me. “My family has a … reputation. Back in Lovecraft.”

Dean shrugged. I knew because I heard the creak of his jacket. “ ‘Loony’ is just a title they slap on people who don’t fit the gray flannel life we’re all supposed to chase after. Lots of cats back in the Rustworks got the diagnosis, before they ditched out of the middle class and went downside.”

“Cal thinks I’m bound to lose my mind,” I said. Dean wouldn’t get my secret, not yet, but I had to let some of the pressure off before I burst like a faulty boiler, and the fact that he hadn’t just dismissed me as hysterical went a long way to that end. “My brother left me a letter, you know, that told me to find the witch’s alphabet. Well, I found it. It’s my father’s. It’s real as you and I standing here and Cal, he”—I shuddered a breath in and out—“he told me in so many words I was mad, that what I
know
I saw didn’t matter in the least because what he thinks counts more. Because he’s a boy or because … I don’t know. It’s horrid.”

My hands burned from deadened nerve endings in the cold, and it reminded me of the ink’s toothsome grasp, which only made things worse. I glanced at my palm. It was still bare. “Just because I can’t prove to Cal I saw an … an enchantment on the book doesn’t make me a liar. Cal should have trusted me.” That was the real pain of it—I trusted Cal, faithful and absolute. And all he could do in return was wring his hands over my maybe madness.

Dean came to stand next to me and slid his hand over mine. “You ain’t crazy, Aoife. I don’t care if you said you saw the Great Old Ones themselves returning from the stars, no one has the right to sling that at you.”