The Iron Thorn (33 page)

“Indeed, you do not,” Tremaine agreed. “I will return for you in one week. Use your days well.” He raised his hand to me. “Fair luck, Aoife Grayson.”

The worst bit was, I could tell that he was being sincere.

The Lore of the Weird

M
ORNING HAD ROLLED
around while I’d vanished into the Land of Thorn, and the apple orchard was painted with crooked light and shadows.

Blue light wound through the trees, along with Cal and Dean’s voices.

“Aoife! Aoife Grayson!”

“Stop that racket,” Dean said. “You want to bring down every ghoul living under the mountain?” His lighter snapped and smoke hissed into the morning air. “Aoife! Call out, kid.”

“I’m here,” I said. I was standing on the spot where the
hexenring
had snatched me, and I moved away from it with all haste, stuffing the goggles Tremaine had gifted me into my pocket. One less thing to try and explain. “I’m here!” My voice ripped out of me, echoing loud and earthly. My knees trembled with relief to be free of the Land of Thorn.

Aether lanterns bobbed around the corner of the house, from the orchard, and Cal came running. “Where in the
stars have you
been
?” he snapped. “You just ran off again. What am I supposed to think?”

Dean followed, slower, his cigarette ember trailing smoke spirits after him. “Got all your fingers and toes, princess?”

“I’m sorry,” I said to Cal, folding my torn sleeve under so he wouldn’t notice. The mornings had gotten colder since we’d been away from Lovecraft, and I could see my breath. “I was walking and I lost track of the time. My chronometer’s in the library.”

“You silly girl!” Cal’s face contorted. “You could have ruined
everything
. What if a Proctor or someone from Arkham saw you?”

Cal’s worrying would be endearing normally, but right now it just sparked irritation. “Ruined? Cal, this isn’t anything to do with you.” I was shivering, and I put my arms around myself, shrinking away from him. “I’m sorry I worried you,” I said. “But it’s all right. And stop calling me silly.”

He tensed, fists curling, and then released, as if someone had cut his strings. “I thought I’d lost you, Aoife.”

“Far be it from me to interrupt this little reunion,” Dean coughed. “But it’s freezing out here and I’d just as soon we were discussing this over a breakfast and a hot cuppa.”

“He’s right,” I said in relief, stepping around Cal so I didn’t have to look at his shattered face. “Let’s all go inside. I’m starving.”

We trooped back to Graystone, where Bethina waited in the doorway, twisting her striped apron between her hands. “Oh, miss!” she cried when I was close, and flung her arms around me.

“I …” I patted her back as well as I could, crushed between her plump arms. “It’s all right, Bethina.”

“When your bed hadn’t been mussed and Dean hadn’t seen you for hours, I knew you were lost for good this time, miss. Knew it.” She sniffled deeply.

“It’s good to know all of you have so much faith in me,” I grumbled with a smile. No one returned it. I extricated myself gently from Bethina’s grasp. “If you’re up to it, I think we’d all like some breakfast.”

“Of course,” she said, dabbing at her eyes. “I’ve got some oatmeal and store-bought pancake mix. Should still be good. Pancakes and porridge all around.”

While Bethina bustled in the kitchen I went to my room and changed into a pair of toreador pants and a silk blouse that I tied up around my waist. My hair was hopeless, but I managed to comb out the moss and leaves and lily petals.

Dean found me as I descended the stairs, stopping my path. “What’s the word, kitten?”

“Exhausted,” I said, glad he’d found me and not Cal right then. “Hungry. Pick one.”

Dean tipped his head to the side. The light caught his eyes and turned them liquid silver. “You going to tell me what really happened after you went AWOL last night?”

I worried my lip. “I’m too cold to go up on the roof again.”

“When the sun warms things up, then,” he said. “We’ll walk and you’ll talk. Sound fair?”

Tremaine’s words bubbled up in my thoughts, scornful and sharp.
That’s the last bargain I’m to give you
.

“All right,” I said. On an impulse, I grabbed Dean’s hand and squeezed. He was warm, alive and solid and I clung longer than I needed to. “I’m glad you stayed.”

Dean squeezed in return. “Right back at you.”

“Breakfast!” Bethina’s shout echoed from the kitchen. “Pancakes! Come and get ’em if you’re able!”

Dean sighed and let go of my hand. “Stale johnnycakes and mushy oatmeal. The stuff dreams are made of.”

“Dean …,” I started as he thumped down the stairs. He stopped at the bottom.

“Yeah, princess?”

I waved him off. Dean seemed willing to accept my flights of fancy about the Weird, but telling him I’d visited a land where the Folk watched their cursed queens sleep could only be asking for even more trouble than telling Cal about the library.

“Nothing,” I said. “Forget it.”

“I won’t, but I’ll be patient,” Dean said. “Hungry enough to eat a nightjar raw.”

I waited until he’d gone and then went to the library above and got my father’s journal. I needed it near me. I needed to know that in shouldering the burden of Tremaine and his cursebreaker, I wasn’t alone.

Cal shoved his third pancake into his mouth, rivulets of syrup coating his chin. “I don’t understand why you read those musty things,” he said, pointing at my father’s book. “I’d kill for a copy of
Weird Tales.
”

“I like books,” I said, tucking it under my elbow. “We always had books.”

“That one doesn’t even have a proper picture on the cover,” Cal snorted. “Give it here, let’s see what the fuss is about.”

“No.” I jerked it away from his sticky fingers. Cal frowned.

“See, this is what happens when you read too much. You
get bad manners and bad habits. You’ll need glasses before you know it.”

“Nothing wrong with a pair of cat’s-eyes,” Dean said. “They can do favors for a pretty girl.” He dropped me a wink while Cal’s face pinked.

“We won’t always be schoolkids, Aoife,” Cal piped up. “What will a husband think of this bookworm habit?”

“Cal, why do you care?” I slammed down my plate, appetite gone after half a bowl of oatmeal.

“I’m helping,” he muttered. “You—you don’t have a mother to tell you these things.”

I grabbed my father’s book and shoved my chair back with a screech. I loved Cal like another brother, but right then I felt like I did when Conrad teased me once too often—like I wanted to slap him and tell him to go jump off a bridge. “Cal, unless you want the job, lay off. Stop being my fussy aunt and just be my friend.”

“You’re misunderstanding …,” he started, and then scrubbed at his chin with his napkin. “No, you’re right. I shouldn’t have spoken up.”

“You shouldn’t,” I concurred. Cal’s jaw twitched.

“Aoife, what’s gotten into you? You’re rude and short and you disappear for hours on end. Is there something you want to tell me?”

I tightened my grip on the journal. “Not a thing,” I gritted and turned on my heel, storming into the library.

The orderly rows of books were soothing, familiar. After the alien landscape of Thorn, it was a larger relief than I’d imagined.

Alone after I’d climbed into the attic space, I felt a deep, fathomless cold envelop me. Tremaine had threatened Cal and Dean if I disobeyed him. He knew what had happened to Conrad and he would keep the secret eternally, I had no doubt, if I crossed him.

Even believing that there was more to my world than the School, the necrovirus and life with the stigma of madness was still difficult in the light of day.

To think that I now had the task of serving the Kindly Folk in my father’s place made my chest tight, my heart beat too fast. I sat down, or rather folded over, and put my head on my knees. I breathed until it wasn’t difficult anymore. I might not have known my father the way most children did theirs, but I was still his daughter. The truth was inescapable, after what Tremaine had shown me—my father and I shared a duty, and I would not let him down while our odd blood still flowed in my veins.

I opened his journal. The ink swam for a moment before it settled onto the page when I touched it. I paged through my father’s more recent entries, but found nothing of much use.

my father wrote. Before my geas-bewitched eyes, he paced a vast bedroom, rain lashing the night beyond.

I heard glass shatter somewhere beyond my view, and my father’s head whipped around, then he turned back and continued pacing.

Breathless, I read on to see what became of him.

My father put his pen down quickly, then ran from his bedroom, and I rubbed my fingers over my eyelids. Sighing, I flipped to the most recent entry in the diary.

No further mention of Strangers leapt out at my eyes. They came in shadow, and shadow had taken Conrad.

Not for the first time, or even the hundredth, I wished that I’d known Archie sooner. If I’d grown up with a father who’d prepared me to take the reins of Minder, I would know where Conrad was already. I wouldn’t owe Tremaine my end of the bargain.

“I could use some help,” I told the diary. “Not that you appear to care one bit.” I turned my eyes back to the ink.

A few months before I’d gotten Conrad’s letter. Such a small amount of time, when you put it on the vast line of the universe, yet so large when it was the gulf separating me from using my Weird and staving off the Folk from my friends.

I paid full attention to the page for the first time that evening. My father was, if anything, as verbose as he was cryptic. His normally bell-clear handwriting was jagged, too, jumping all over the page and leaving behind a snowfall of ink drops from where he pressed down too hard with his fountain pen.

My throat was dry in the warm air of the attic and my fingers rattled the vellum paper as I turned the page.

The journal hit the floor with a muffled
thwack
as I pressed my hand over my mouth. Shivers racked me, the air suddenly icy. But not the air—just my skin. Chills crawled over me, digging in their thorny claws.

My father knew I’d come looking for him. He’d tried to warn me about the very thing I’d agreed to do for Tremaine.

What had I done?

A creak sounded at the foot of the ladder and I composed myself. “Cal …,” I sighed, turning to the hatch. “I just need to be alone for a bit, all right?”

“Not Cal, I’m afraid.” Bethina’s copper curls crested the ladder, eyes roving over the unruly shelves, the dust, my cross-legged seat on the floor. Anywhere, I noticed, but my face. “May I come up, miss?”

I composed myself, running a hand over my face to erase the anger and fatigue. “It’s a free country,” I said. “ ’Less you’re a heretic.”
Or a madwoman
.

“I don’t talk so, you know.” Bethina hoisted herself over the hatch, puffing. “The gals from Arkham—the nice ones—don’t spit out whatever they’re thinking.”

“It’ll be the bane of my imaginary husband’s existence, I’m sure,” I said bitterly.

“I like it, actually.” Bethina ducked her head. “You’re frank, miss. Like a boy.”

I tucked the journal under my knee. I didn’t want anyone reading it, especially not an ordinary girl like Bethina. She wouldn’t understand and I didn’t have the words to explain.

“Truth is the only constant thing we have,” I said. “My mother used to say that.” Like Nerissa would know a real truth if it bit her. There were the things my father wrote about, and then there were my mother’s ramblings.

“She sounds like a whip-smart lady, miss,” Bethina said.

“She’s not.” My curt tone made me even more disgusted
with myself. Useless to find my brother or my father, and now snooty on top.

“Mr. Cal speaks highly of her. He says that she did a fine job of raising you.”

I worried the edges of the journal, surprised that he’d actually said that out loud after our fight, and to Bethina, of all people. Cal thought girls were a different species. “Cal’s kind,” I said aloud. “He … he prefers to see things as they might be.”