Caitlin Kittredge - The Iron Thorn

“Aoife.” Cal wrapped his long, skeletal arms around himself. “No matter what happens, you’ll be Aoife. I’ll come visit you in the madhouse, if that’s what it takes, but I won’t desert you. I’ll learn a new boy-shape. Draven will never catch me.”

“Why can’t I just go back?” I whispered, ignoring his attempts at comfort. “Erase all of this and go be a student whose biggest problem was a schematic she couldn’t draw?”

“Because,” Dean said, “then you’d lose everything you’ve gained since. Truth, magic. Even the real face of your obnoxious little friend here.”

“You’re calling me obnoxious,” Cal huffed. “If you could only hear yourself.”

I managed a laugh. “At least some things haven’t changed.”

“I’m still the Cal you knew,” he said. “I know you don’t trust me, but underneath I’m the same. I’ll go to the Engineworks with you. If I don’t make it, or the Proctors grab me again—”

“Don’t talk like that,” I said, moving away from Dean and straightening up. “You won’t be coming.”

Cal sighed. “I’m not working for Draven anymore. I swear it.”

“I mean,” I said, “we need someone to meet the airship. To come for us if Dean and I get caught again.” I gave Cal a smile, a whole one, even though it was purely meant to make him cooperate. I guessed I had learned a thing or two from Dean. “I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have looking out for me.” And if Cal did decide that his loyalties lay elsewhere, at least we wouldn’t be together in the Engine when he did.

Dean stayed when Cal crept back to his nest. “I can stay,” he said. “If you want me.”

I moved and made room for him in the hammock. I wanted Dean to stay, badly. I never, I realized, wanted him to leave again. “Please.”

Dean slipped out of his leather jacket and his heavy boots and settled next to me, letting me sink back into the comfort of his chest, wrapping his arm around my waist and resting his chin on the top of my head. His breath ruffled my hair. I stayed still, afraid I might break our comfortable silence like a soap bubble.

Dean spoke, eventually. “Dreams, huh?” he whispered in my ear. “Bad ones?”

“The worst imaginable,” I said. “Ever since I was a little girl.”

“Well,” Dean said softly. “I’m here now. Any bad’s going to have to get through me.” He ran his fingers down my cheek, over my neck and arm, and then kissed the back of my neck before settling his head onto the pillow. “Sweet dreams, princess.”

I knew that no one, not even Dean, could keep the dreams at bay, but I allowed myself to think he might, until I fell back into a fitful, smoke-tinged sleep.

I woke alone, shivering in the chill of a dead fire. Ashes blew softly across the hearth, as if subterranean snow had fallen while I slept.

“Dean?” I whispered, scrubbing vision back into my eyes. I was stiff and sore from sleeping in the crook of the hammock, but I had slept soundly and long. Light fell from somewhere far above, in bars and crosses across the rough earthen floor.

“He went to smoke a cigarette,” Toby’s guttural voice piped from the corner of the hearth. “I don’t understand why you breathe the smoke in willingly. Your city is covered in it.”

“We all have our vices,” I said. Toby grinned at me, his bluish fur almost silver in the early light.

“I said I’d watch you so you didn’t turn into breakfast. Although I am hungry.”

I swung myself down from the hammock, planting my feet with a thud. “We both know you’re not going to do anything of the kind as long as Cal’s around, so why don’t you shove a sock in it?”

Toby laughed. I was beginning to see subtle differences in the ghouls—Cal was slight and skinny no matter what shape he was in, while Toby was larger, darker. Tanner’s voice had been nightmarish, but Toby’s and Cal’s were strange in a way that made me want to listen.

“I sorta see why Carver decided to protect his meat friend,” he said. “You’re not like a human. You’re more like one of us.”

“I wish that were true,” I said, and meant it. If I could fight and hunt, if I were something to be afraid of, none of this misfortune would have happened.

Toby drew something out from behind his back, awkward as any human boy. “Carver said you lost your kit in Ravenhouse. I know humans need things. Even though they just clank and clack, hanging from your bones.” He shoved the object into my hand.

I gasped when I saw Tremaine’s blue goggles. “Where did you get these?”

Toby grinned at me. “Those men following you and Carver and the Erlkin. Some of us went back, went hunting. The fat one had them on his belt.”

Quinn. I’d be lying if I said I was sorry.

I slid them over my eyes and looked at the nest. Toby appeared wavy and insubstantial, only his bones showing clearly. His ghoul spine with its cruel curve that made him able to spring and twist in midair, the long jaw full of teeth, and the knifelike claws.

All around me, the underworld revealed itself, disused pipe and tunnel running off in every direction, a drain that dribbled overhead directly to the river, and the broken, branching chimney that vented the ghoul’s hearth.

Toby panted, itching behind his blunt ear with one long claw as I slid the goggles onto my forehead. “So it’s a fair bargain, yes? For saving Carver’s life?”

“Yes, Toby,” I said. “More than fair. Thank you.” I tried Tremaine’s goggles again. “Now I know what it’s like to be Dean—to see everything that’s hidden.”

Dean poked his head from the nest tunnel to the outside. “I hear my name?”

“Dean!” I waved the goggles at him. “Look what Toby found.”

He took a glance through the lenses and just as quickly jerked the mask off. “That’s Folk trickery. Splits my head in two.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “But they’ll help us get down the vent tunnel. I can watch for the steam, and time it.”

“Assuming we get through that grate,” Dean said.

Toby extended his claws with the sound of daggers being drawn. “Leave that to us.”

CAL AND TOBY went into the hearth pipe in the lead, Toby loping easily on all fours and Cal in his boy skin, walking upright. Dean stayed with me. I was relieved that Cal seemed to have stopped sniping at Dean. It was clear in hindsight why—Dean represented everything Draven was trying to keep me from.

Cal’s clothes now were rags, an old Engineworks jersey and pants tattered about the hem. His feet stayed bare.

“I figured this might make it a little easier for you,” he told me.

“Don’t worry about sparing me,” I said. “Toby’s already laboring under the impression he owes me something for saving your life.”

“You did,” Cal said shortly. “Not in Ravenhouse, but before. You made me realize I didn’t have to be afraid of Draven.”

“Cal …” I’d never find someone as loyal as Cal again. That I knew, in an immutable bone-deep sense.

“I’ll let you into the vent, and we’ll be even.” Cal flashed me a smile, and I saw that he hadn’t bothered to hide his ghoul teeth.

“If she comes back, you two can skip merrily over the ground. If not, someone will have a fine supper.” Toby chuckled to himself and climbed up to walk on the ceiling.

I took the pedestrian route, sticking near Dean and Cal. Tremaine’s goggles dangled from my hand, and across my back I’d strapped a small pack that bore the partially chewed-away logo of the Lovecraft Academy Expedition Club circa 1933, clearly a year where they didn’t teach student members not to go wandering around old sewer mains.