Caitlin Kittredge - The Iron Thorn

People in Lovecraft had been sent to the Catacombs or to a burning for far less than idle drawing. Proctors didn’t delineate between a rational person having a fancy and a heretic stirring dissension. I knew that the Proctors were doing their best to protect us from ghouls and from the encroachment of the necrovirus. Viral creatures and infected people swarming in the streets were a true nightmare, more than the specter of witches or their craft. If it weren’t for the Proctors, Lovecraft would become another Seattle, just a ghost town overrun with madness and horrors like the nightjar.

The shame of my family was the price we paid to keep ourselves safe. Professor Swan hammered the facts home time and time again, but I couldn’t seem to stop dreaming.

Perhaps if the professor were less of a toad about his Proctor-mandated lectures, I’d be inclined to listen.

Heat warned me that the ghost ink was close to combusting, and with a small pop of displaced air the entire letter disintegrated, the ash swirling around me like darkling snow. The ink of the HELP lifted off the page, suspended in the smoke, corpse-pale. As the smoke dissipated, the ink stretched and re-formed, spelling a new phrase in its ghostly hand, the encoded message the ghost ink had kept hidden.

Go to Graystone

Find the witch’s alphabet

Save yourself

A string of numbers followed, and I grabbed a fountain pen from my pocket and scrawled the entire message on my hand before it blew away on the draft.

31–10–13

The ink bled into my skin, like a scar.

Cal was waiting for me outside the library. “Knew you’d be here,” he said. “You always hole up in that worm factory when you’re sour.”

“It’s not a worm factory, it’s a library,” I sighed. “And what business of yours, exactly, is my mood? Worried I’m going to lose my marbles before my birthday and embarrass you in front of Marcos and his pals?” I ducked around Cal and started for the dormitories. Conrad, and the words in the smoke, dominated my thoughts.

Cal stopped me with a hand. “All right. What’s wrong? This spitfire act isn’t like you.”

“Can I trust you?” I questioned Cal. I wanted to trust him. He was the only one I could trust.

He blinked and ran a hand through his hair. A bit fell into his eyes.

“Of course, Aoife. Is it something with your mother? She acting up?” His thin eyebrows drew together and his face tried to form a frown. Cal couldn’t look dour to save his life, but at least he was trying.

“Not my mother,” I said, walking. “Conrad.” The words whispered to me. I felt as if I’d crack open if I didn’t give them voice.

“Conrad?” Cal’s eyes widened. “You can’t just leave me hanging with that, Aoife. Can’t just drop your crazy brother’s name …” He paused, and swallowed. “Sorry.”

“Like I haven’t heard worse.” I showed him the writing on my skin. Cal frowned.

“I don’t get it.”

“Conrad sent that to me,” I said. “In a letter. He needs my help.”

I didn’t expect Cal to grab me by the wrist, sliding his big bony palm to cover the writing on mine. “Are you trying to get sent to the madhouse, Aoife? Is what everyone’s saying true?”

My wrist burned under his grasp, flesh heating, while my face matched it at his words. Out of all students in the Academy, I’d hoped Cal wouldn’t buy into the rumor. I squirmed, but Cal didn’t let go. “What are they saying this time?”

Cal’s jaw worked. “That the Grayson line has bad blood. From the first infected on down. They say that you all go mad sometime around sixteen … that you’re dangerous.”

Tears burned behind my eyes, but I shut them, so the tears wouldn’t betray me by falling. “Cal, I thought you were my friend.”

“I am,” he said. “I’m your only friend right now, Aoife. I don’t believe any of it, but you know what they say. You know what Conrad did.”

My throat went tight. I remembered the point of the knife warmed to the temperature of skin, Conrad’s tears wetting my hair as he held me close. “I don’t want to, Aoife, but they whisper and watch and they lap up the blood. I don’t want to listen, but they won’t stop, until there’s blood on the stone.…”

“Conrad didn’t mean to hurt me,” I told Cal. “Dammit, Cal, you know that.” I pulled away then. If Cal thought that I carried the necrovirus in me, then I’d never be more than a thing to be pitied in his eyes.

My school scarf covered up the crooked scar most days, unless it was getting near the end of the year, when the wet breath of summer on my skin made wool unbearable.

“He went mad on his birthday, Aoife, and he tried to cut your throat. Your birthday is coming and now you’re talking about helping him. Like it or not, that sounds mad.”

“Conrad was your friend too,” I whispered. My only friends: Conrad and Cal. Cal and Conrad. I had thought nothing could change that.

Cal grimaced. “Yeah, and when he snapped, how stupid do you think I felt for believing he’d fight off the madness? This—this gibberish he’s feeding you—is just a delusion. Same as the fairies and demons that your mother sees.”

I didn’t think, I just lashed out and slapped Cal across the cheek with my free hand. He recoiled, hissing in pain. “I’m sorry,” I said instantly, though my blood still pounded through my ears and I didn’t feel sorry. At all.

“Dammit, Aoife, you really clocked me.” He wiggled his jaw.

“Conrad isn’t like my mother,” I insisted. Conrad had never showed any signs of madness. He never told me his dreams. My brother had to be different. Because if he wasn’t, then there was no hope for me. “He needs my help,” I told Cal, “and I thought you just said I could trust you.”

Cal sighed and scratched at the top of his ear, a habitual gesture that meant his nature was warring with the rules of the Academy and the Proctors. “What do you want from me, Aoife?”

“Read it,” I said, putting my palm under his nose. Cal frowned.

“What’s Graystone? What are these numbers?”

“Graystone is my father’s house. It’s upstate, in Arkham,” I said. “At least, that’s what my mother told me.” I sighed. “The numbers … I don’t have the faintest idea.”

Truthfully, I hadn’t the faintest idea about my father, either. I had his name—Archibald Grayson—and my mother’s rambling about his strong hands and moss-green eyes. They were my eyes, and they caused Nerissa by turns to be doting and furious toward me. Most days, I wished the bastard had kept his eyes to himself.

But if Conrad had evaded the Proctors long enough, if he’d made it to Arkham … he could have found our father. A man who’d fall for and get a woman with the necrovirus in a family way, twice, unafraid of madness. A man who might help him.

“Please, Cal,” I said when he hesitated. “I just need someone to believe that this might not all be madness.”

“I can’t believe I’m helping him again —or you,” Cal sighed. “The Proctors could have me in the Catacombs in a heartbeat.”

I nudged his shoulder. “Not if you don’t run up to Ravenhouse and confess to them.” Relief lightened me and stopped my heart from thudding. Cal wasn’t going to turn me in. He was still the boy I’d met on Induction Day.

“Ravens are wise, Aoife,” Cal said. The rain was coming down in earnest now, and I dug my collapsible umbrella out of my satchel while we walked back to the common house. “The Proctors use them for a reason.”

“Ravens are too busy chasing real live heretics and Crimson Guard spies down in the Rustworks,” I said, hoisting the umbrella over Cal’s much taller head. I left out the rumor that Conrad had told me, that the Crimson Guard were witches who could do impossible things. Cal was sensitive enough. “Ravens have bigger worries than a couple of Academy students.”