overtaken me just before Tremaine’s
“Just a boy and a girl,” I agreed. My fingers locked tighter in his of their own accord, and I was reassured when Dean squeezed.
“Walk,” he whispered, lips against my hair. “And don’t look back until we’re inside the house.”
Soon enough we reached the doorway, devoid of a door, and ducked inside. An ancient, moldy table and chairs still stood in front of the fireplace, as if rot had overtaken the house at terrible speed, forcing the inhabitants to flee.
Dean let go of my hand, flexing his fingers. “You’ve got a grip, princess.”
“I do when I’m nervous,” I agreed. “You don’t think I’m nutty for any of this? For saying I saw the Kindly Folk, and that—”
Dean pressed a finger to his lips. Around the house, I could still hear the crows, scrabbling and fussing in the trees.
“I know it sounds crazy.” I lowered my voice so our conversation didn’t reach outside. “But I met one of the Folk, talked to him. His name’s Tremaine. He was awful.” I shivered.
Dean nodded, as if he’d been listening for something. “The black birds are watching out. For now. As for this Folk, I suppose he wanted something.”
“I … Why would you say that?” I blinked at him.
“The Folk always want something,” Dean said. “It’s the magpie nature. They see shine in someone or something and they have to steal it and keep it.”
I decided I could pry how Dean knew so much about the Folk out of him later. For now, it was enough that he believed me.
“Well,” I continued, “we made a bargain. He said he’d tell me where Conrad’s gone if I used my Weird for his ends. I’m going to do it, and then I’m going to find Conrad. There doesn’t have to be anything sinister about that.”
“Aoife …” Dean took both my hands and sat in one of the chairs. The floor of the farmhouse creaked ominously. “You trusted me to tell this much and I’m going to give you the same trust now, right?” Dean peered outside again. “What I’m saying, Aoife, is that in all the stories I’ve ever heard, you can’t trust the Folk. Treacherous, tricksy, terrible, every one.”
“Those are stories,” I said. “You’ve never met the Folk. I have. I don’t really have a choice but to do what they say.”
“
“You’d say that if I were dating anyone.” I smiled. Dean didn’t return it.
“Listen, princess. No one’s debating your smarts. Those, you’ve got in spades. But I maintain, you shouldn’t deal with the Folk. Nothing I’ve ever heard tells they want to do you a good turn.”
“I have no choice.” My good mood dissolved like the sunlight as more mist rolled in over the farmhouse. “He threatened you, and Cal, and if I don’t do as he asks, I’ll never find Conrad.”
Dean’s jaw twitched. “I ain’t afraid of virals and I sure as gears grind ain’t afraid of some grody paleface who skulks in mist.”
“I am,” I said frankly. “I don’t have a family, Dean, except for Conrad and I don’t have any friends in Lovecraft if I go back, besides Cal and you. I’d never forgive myself if you ran afoul of the Folk on my account.”
“Tremaine, that’s his name?” Dean grumbled. “At least I know which one of those pasty bastards asked for a boot in his ass.”
I’d thought I was alone for my entire life, and more so when I discovered the truth about my family and its Weird. But Dean’s angry, twitchy insistence on hearing stories of the Folk and his accepting my words without a thought weighed on me.
I could fret about what his reaction would be to a suggestion that he was something more than a simple heretic, or I could ask him his truth in return for mine. My throat tightened, but I stilled my hands and looked at my reflection in Dean’s hard, silvery eyes. They were like hammered steel, steady and unwavering. You’d think twice about messing with a gaze like Dean’s.
“Dean,” I said, rushing out the words before I lost nerve. “I know that you’re like me.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Like you how, princess?”
“You can find lost things and you never get lost yourself,” I said. “You can make lamps light without fire. You know about the Folk and you don’t say boo to the idea that I might have powers every normal person in the world insists are impossible. You’re uncanny, Dean. You see the world the way it really is, not like the Proctors tell us it is. You see it like my father did.”
Dean shied away with a jerk, dropping my hands. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Aoife.”
“I do,” I whispered, holding back the sharp jab that his pulling away gave me. “Dean, tell me the truth. Please tell me that I’m not alone.”
“I want to say I can help you, princess,” Dean told me. “But I can’t. All I can say is turn back, forget this and go home. But you won’t, because you’re you.”
“Do you have a Weird, Dean?” I’d had an inkling when he’d done the trick with the lamp, and his behavior since hadn’t changed my suspicion, only strengthened it. The question hung between us, filled up by the sound of sirens and the yelling of the crowd. I wished he’d just answer me, even if he was furious—his quiet was agonizing.
“I have a knack, I guess,” Dean said at last. “I know true north wherever I am and when something’s lost and needs finding it calls out to me. But tricks like what your old man has—no. I’m not a special kind of guy, Aoife.”
Rain had started, stippling the floorboards of the old house and drumming on the half-ruined roof. “So you knew all this time the Weird and the Folk were real and you just stayed quiet and let me thrash around on my own. Some pal you are, Dean Harrison.”
He rubbed his forehead with his first two fingers. “Listen. You can’t force it out of the blood. Either it wakes up or it doesn’t. You can wish and dream all you like but the Weird chooses you, not the other way around.” Dean jammed another cigarette in his mouth and lit up. “If I’d’ve said something, you would have had Cal bash my face in as a heretic loony before we’d taken two steps outside Lovecraft.”
My anger at Dean’s withholding nearly made me smack him, but I restrained myself. Dean was right, even if he infuriated me. Before I’d found the journal, I would have thought him mad, as everyone said I was. “I suppose,” I granted him, glaring. “But that doesn’t make lying to me all fine and good.”
“I was just trying to—” Dean started, but I hushed him with a gesture.
“Look, I know,” I said. “I know and I understand. But promise me you won’t ever do something like that again. Promise me you’ll trust me to handle it.”
Dean still didn’t move, staring into my eyes as if he could see the secret origin of the universe in them.
“This world …,” he sighed finally. “It ain’t a nice world, Aoife. It’s not clean or easy or kind. In a lot of ways, it’s worse than living with Proctors marching over you.”
“My life wasn’t so great before I came here,” I muttered. “Trust me.”
“You accept this, you can never go home,” Dean said. “You can never work with those machines you love. You can never be anything but a heretic to all of those nice, rational folks back there in Lovecraft. Because trust me on this, princess: they will turn on you faster than ghouls fighting over a corpse. That something you’re willing to give up?”
I drew back, feeling like he’d slapped me. But I knew, even as I felt my eyes get hot and wet, that he was telling the truth. I could never go back. The Proctors would arrest me. I’d be
I couldn’t be inside even half a house for another second. I bolted, out into the rain, nearly turning my ankle several times as I raced through the forest.
Dean caught me easily enough, his long strides carrying him along with the heavy thump of steel-toed boots. “Aoife, for the love of grease and gears, hold up. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have laid it out so bluntlike.”
I slowed, reluctantly. “You’re right, Dean. That’s the whole problem. I wrecked my life over a fantasy.” Just like everyone had always insisted I would. “I should just give up this ridiculous notion of the Weird and everything now before I get you and Cal executed in Banishment Square.”
