The Iron Thorn

an antique static board using glass breakers filled the tiny recess in the library wall.

I approached it, wondering at the artfulness of the construction even as I felt trepidation build. Hidden rooms and hidden panels that controlled hidden things never boded well.

Dean let out a breath, his fists uncurling. “That’s a new one. What d’you suppose it’s for?”

“I have no idea,” I said. The panel reminded me of the controls on the Berkshire Belle, except these were older, more archaic, and there were a lot more switches and keys than a simple airship flight board.

“Don’t touch it!” Cal cried when I took a step toward it. I cast a glare back at him.

“Cal, it’s brass and wood. It’s not going to grow teeth.” I was cautious, but not scared. Machines were what I was good at.

I approached the hidden panel with its rows of switches labeled with painfully neat, handwritten placards: Library, Front Hall and Cellar Traps among at least a dozen others, all in an orderly, masculine hand on yellowed vellum squares.

Conrad had told me to fix the clock and in doing so I’d revealed Graystone’s secret heart. Conrad had vanished before he could perform whatever task he needed this panel for himself. But he’d had the forethought to send me the letter, to hide the note. He knew I’d come if he asked.

What I knew ever since that awful day in my dormitory room a year ago came true when I realized that Conrad had been planning for me to come here, to carry on where he couldn’t.

My brother wasn’t mad.

And if he wasn’t mad, then he was in a world of trouble.

14 The Iron Bones

DEAN JOINED ME at the panel, examining the controls. “Slick setup. Dare you to press one of those switches.” He reached for the closest lever, marked Kitchen.

“Don’t,” I said. For some reason I couldn’t define, I wanted to be first. It was my father’s house, my father’s device, and I wanted to be the one to discover how it worked.

Bethina peered around the library door. “Miss, what was that awful racket? Are we safe?”

“For the time being,” I murmured, touching each dial. Every facet of Graystone somehow connected to these antique controls.

“Awful shaking and shivering,” Bethina continued. “Like the Great Old Ones returned from the stars. My mum was raised in a Star Convent, and she told me—”

“That’s all mumbo jumbo,” Cal told her. “This is engineering.”

“Flash work, too,” Dean said. “I don’t think Bethina’s that far off, cowboy. This thing Miss Aoife woke up ain’t just cold metal and gears. Houses have blood and gristle and bone, just like a person. Houses have souls.”

Cal jerked a thumb at me, at Dean. “Aoife, are you going to let him just babble heresy all day long?”

I rather liked Dean’s heresy. Graystone was like a living thing, old and dessicated, but alive still.

“Give it up,” I told Cal. “Let’s see if we can piece these controls together.”

At the top of the row of knobs, there was a dial marked Front Hall. “For what it’s worth, Dean,” I continued, “I don’t think you’re just speaking heresy.” Because Graystone did talk. It had warned me away like a wounded animal; when I’d fixed the clock, it had come into the open and showed me its face. Graystone wasn’t like any house I’d ever stepped foot in, and I knew that it had more secrets to give up, secrets that would lead me to my brother.

I put my hand on the dial. “I’m just going to turn it on and see what happens. If anything harmful was in the workings, it would have gone off when I fixed the clock.” Giving what I hoped was a reassuring nod—because in reality, I had no idea what would happen—I ran my fingers over the row of knobs, then settled back on Front Hall. If something in Graystone’s bones was malicious, the front entry was far enough away that we’d probably be safe.

“So you said, miss. I’m having no business with that thing,” Bethina said, scuttling away. Cal backed off too. Dean stayed where he was, hands in his pockets. His pale storm-sky eyes were implacable as thunderheads.

The Front Hall dial was inlaid with tiny darts of onyx, pointing to the four stations of the compass, labeled in stamped brass with Open, Shut, Lock and Trap. Lock was engaged, and the dial was sticky when I tried to turn it. There was a squeak of rust as I put force behind the motion, and then the dial came free and flew all the way to the left, to Open.

A cool wind rushed over my cheek and blew back my hair, darting from the entry along with a flock of oak leaves. Cal hurried to the library door and peered into the front hall. “Door’s open,” he exclaimed. “I’ll be a shoggoth’s uncle.”

“Cal, please don’t talk about shoggoths,” I said. I read the rest of the dials. Master Bedchamber, Attic, Widow’s Walk, Crypts. Lastly, on its own at the bottom of the panel was a pure ivory dial with a large black spot of onyx in the center. Lockdown.

Lockdown sat bookended by two valve dials that connoted pressure of some kind. PSI, wrought in proper brass script under the glassed-in dials, most likely meant steam. It was, I thought, probably an elaborate setup for a simple water and boiler shutoff. Even the stately homes that made up Lovecraft Academy had two large valve wheels, deep underground in their basements where the boilers resided.

“I think it’s just a setup for the mains,” Cal said, voicing my thought. “And maybe a release for the doors. Kinda frilly for that sort of work. And why plunk it in the library where the Master Builder and everyone can see it?”

“It’s an old house,” I said. “I guess they built things differently in those days.” My disappointment at the ordinary nature of the hidden panel was vast, and I stroked the controls once more. It looked like it should be able to fly to the red planet and back, like the vessels the Crimson Guard were rumored to have.

“If it is only shutoffs,” I said, “why link it to the clock? Why hide it so you can only open it by turning the clock-hands to ten?”

“This place doesn’t make any sense,” Cal grumbled. “It’s all passages and shoddy layouts. It’d never pass muster with city architects.”

“Maybe that’s the point,” I whispered. The panel vibrated under my fingers, and a little static from the circuits pricked me. Graystone was still talking to me.

I turned Front Hall to Shut. The door slammed with a whirr of gears. “Maybe these aren’t just shutoffs and door locks.” I turned the dial to Lock. The door locks snapped into place along with a pair of iron rods that extended on rotating arms to lock in an embrace, securing the doors.

I turned the dial to Trap. There was a shriek of little-used, rusted metal from outside and then a great clang, like someone had slammed a metal coffin lid into place over the whole of the house. The crows took flight outside the library windows with a chorus of caws, their black silk wings flickering in the pale sunlight.

“Eyes of the Old Ones,” Cal exclaimed, peering out the front library window. “Aoife, you have to see this.”

I joined him and saw that a pair of iron plates had slid into place over the front doors of the mansion, knitted together at the seam with a series of spikes like the jaws of a Venus flytrap that would imprison any intruder trying to break the locks.

“The whole house is alive,” I whispered. “Rods for nerves and gears for bones and an iron skin to hide it.”

I went to the panel and clicked the dial back to Lock. The metal plates retreated with irritable clanking and rumbling, opening Graystone to the world once again.