the madhouse. Just like I wanted to believe our family wasn’t doomed and like all of the so-called heretics the Proctors chased wanted to believe in something beyond cold, hard rational thought, prison bars and raven spies.
I took the tube, the bits of copper and glass and aether that I’d taken for granted a week ago, with its enamel dial and thin tuning wires running along the inside of the glass, where the cloudy aether swirled, breathing like a sleeping animal.
I could feel the machine slither under my skin. The copper and the dial and the wire binding everything together. The aether prickled my Weird, like static electricity when I touched metal in the cold of winter.
My eyes fluttered closed. I saw all the components in my mind, the switch that sparked the aether to life with a static charge, the wires that reached out into the fathomless distances of the fabric of the universe to receive the signal beamed from one tube to another.
I knew the pressure now, the fullness. The machine coming into my mind, my Weird sliding out to the machine.
The tube came to life in my hands, and a sportscaster broke the afternoon quiet. “It’s the windup … the pitch … strike one for Susce, in a surprising performance.”
“Maybe this is the year for the Sox,” I said. “The curse can’t last forever.”
Cal stared at the tube, at me. “How’d you do that?”
“I told you, Cal,” I said. I pushed at the tuner, the small black slide on the side of the device. The station changed, big band music, the NBC comedy hour, back to baseball. “Take it,” I said, handing it to him. “See that I’m not just doing one of Conrad’s tricks.”
He accepted the tube with stiff fingers, and when it was in his grasp I pushed the static away from my mind, sending it back into the switch.
The tube shut off. Cal started. “Aoife. This is …”
“Unbelievable?” I offered. “Yeah. But there it is.”
“So back there, in the tunnel?” He dropped the tube into the leaves like it was a vial full of necrotic blood.
“Me,” I said quietly.
“The airship crash?”
“Cal, don’t be stupid. The Proctors caused that by blowing big holes in the
Cal moved from the gate, standing between me and the water, twitching like I’d just covered him in ants. “This is … this is bad, Aoife.”
I crushed the leaf between my palms. “It’s me, Cal. You wanted to know.”
The gate creaked, and long shadows crept from beneath the trees and the headstones before Cal spoke again. “You’re my only friend, you know. Those guys back at the School aren’t my friends. I can’t tell them anything the way I do you. After Conrad … you’re it.”
“I still want to be it,” I said. “I wouldn’t have got on at the Academy without you, Cal. Without someone to talk to, a friend …” I stood up and brushed myself off. “I know you’re angry, but I’m afraid that’s all I can offer. You can stay and we can try it, or you can go home and turn me in.”
“Jeez, Aoife,” Cal sighed. “I’d never turn you in. Not to the Proctors.”
For all of his moods, Cal was honest to a fault. He wouldn’t turn me in. I reached for his hand, but he tugged it away. “Thank you,” I said, and meant it, even though my hand was hanging in midair like a fool’s. My face went warm again, Tremaine’s bruises turning rosy.
Cal shrugged. “It’s nothing. But I have something to say, if we’re still friends. That Dean … he’s bad news, Aoife. Conrad would slap sense into you if he saw what I saw.”
“I’m going inside,” I said, holding up a hand to end the diatribe I sensed in my future. “It’s cold and I have a lot of practice to do.”
Cal climbed back onto the gate as I walked away. The hinges spoke in the gathering dark, a dirge for something that we’d both lost.
28
DEAN WAS STANDING in the shadow of the kitchen door when I returned, squinting into the sunset as he blew smoke into bird shapes that flew up and away around his head.
“Everything square?” he asked, flicking his ember into the damp grass.
“I don’t know about square,” I said, the look Cal had given me in the parlor still chafing. “But he’s not running to the Proctors.”
Dean nodded once. “Good.”
I reached forward and pushed the locks of hair from his eyes, smoothing them back into place. Dean leaned into the touch like a cat. “You’ve got soft hands, princess. Soft clever hands.”
“You’d get a lot further if you complimented my brains,” I teased. Dean straightened up from the wall and followed me inside.
“Oh, I plan to. I’m just taking my time so I can compliment everything the way it deserves.” Dean’s grin grew wider at my flush.
I’d never had that much male attention before, aside from stares and whispers, and I shied away from Dean’s searching gaze. “I need to not think about Cal for a while,” I told him.
“You and me both, princess.” Dean trailed me into the library. I knew where I needed to go before I put my hand on the switch, knew the only thing that could truly erase a rotten scene with someone I cared for.
“What do you say we take a look at that stuff we found in the workshop?” I asked.
A portable aether lantern threw more light on the workshop, and I set it on the dusty worktable while I perused the shelves.
Dean put on the goggles, tested them out by staring at the dead specimens under the glass. “This is boss. You know you can see through cloth with these lenses?”
I flipped a hand at him as he turned his gaze on me and waggled his eyebrows. “Stop teasing. You cannot.”
Dean pointed at the gun-shaped thing I’d examined before Tremaine had taken us into the Thorn Land. “Think it’s a disintegrator ray? Heard the Crimson Guard have them. Maybe we can aim it at that pale bastard Tremaine and solve all of our problems.”
I picked it up, feeling the heft of brass and mahogany in the stock. I looked down the silver sight at the end, behind the aether bulb on the tip. “I think this is an invigorator,” I said to Dean. “I’ve seen them in the Engine, when we’d study there.” This one was homemade, nothing like the square, blunt steel tools that the Engine workers used. Still, I’d never had the chance to use one and I ran my hands over it slowly, memorizing the machine.
“Yeah?” Dean said. “What’s it invigorate?”
“It’s for cutting steel and brass and things,” I said. “It can freeze or melt—the barrel vibrates the aether at such a frequency that it can go through all sorts of things.” I’d always wanted to use one, but girls weren’t allowed.
“Neat,” Dean approved. With the goggles, he looked back toward the dim library. “These things can even see in the dark.”
I set the invigorator gently back on the shelf. No use in cutting a me-sized hole in the side of Graystone if my finger slipped. “Too bad I can’t see Tremaine and his cursed
“It’s a real shame,” Dean said, “that you ever had to meet him. This right here”—he brandished the
