the Thorn Land, in the mist, was vile, and I”—I swallowed down the lump of shame—“I was scared of you for a moment.”
“I guess I handled that like a rat,” Dean said. “And I’m sorry. You and me … we’re new. The truth is new.”
“I guess you won’t be coming back with me,” I said. “Seeing how you feel about the Folk, and me being bound with them.”
Dean started to speak, but I held up a hand. “I understand, Dean. It’s too much to ask.” I got my carpetbag and stepped out of the shelter. The fog was ready to welcome me, as it always was.
“Aoife.” Dean ran to catch up with me. “You really think after what I just told you, I’m going to walk away?”
“I would,” I admitted, “if I were you. I wouldn’t do a thing for the people that hurt my mother. She’s my mother. I have to look out for her.”
“Our mothers are real different, then,” Dean muttered. “Mine was no prize. I’m proud to be Erlkin, but I ain’t proud to be her son. No”—he shook his head—“I’m going with you, because I know that you can never trust the Folk. A bargain with them is a glove full of thorns. No way you go alone.”
“And the geas?” I was still holding the knot of paper. It still prickled and crackled in my palm.
“That geas binds the recipient to the truth,” Dean said. “I was thinking you could use it on Tremaine.” He folded my fingers around the enchantment. “He’ll call you back after the bargain is done. Probably to gloat. Set a flame to that slip of paper, and a lie couldn’t crawl past his lips if it had turbines and a tailwind.”
“I know you think it’s a bad idea,” I said, secreting the geas in my coat pocket, “but honestly, the Folk haven’t had a good turn either. Someone cursed them, killed their entire world.”
“You’re sure?” Dean’s mouth flattened to a thin line of skepticism. “The Folk have a slippery grip on the truth, at best. I wouldn’t be sorry if their whole land of oak, ash and thorn crumbled up into nothing and blew away.”
I patted the journal, inside the carpetbag. “I’m sure.” Even as I half-lied, my father’s words came back to me. But maybe he hadn’t listened to the truth. My father was hard and certain of everything. And he used the Folk as much as they used him. His Weird wasn’t mine, and I had Cal to consider as well.
A rumble grew from the mist, and twin lanterns pierced the fog like the great eyes of the Old Ones.
The jitney hissed to a stop, steam escaping the vents and tracks chewing up the gravel road. The driver cranked the door open.
“The cowboy better get a move on,” Dean said as he helped me up the steps. “Otherwise he’ll be waiting for the next jitney with no one but ghouls for company.”
“I’m here!” Cal came flapping down the shoulder of the road, hauling his schoolbag in his wake like a ferry towing a rowboat. “I’m coming!”
The driver looked at all of us. “Where are your parents, girlie?” he demanded.
“Back in the city,” I answered without skipping a beat. “My mother will be waiting for us.”
“I don’t like your look,” the driver told Dean. “No trouble on the bus. I’ll toss you off and I’ve got a nightstick to do it with.”
“I’ll behave like I’m in the Builder’s chapel,” Dean said. The driver glared.
“And I don’t like your smart mouth. Go to the back, sit down and shut up.”
He stopped me with an arm. “That’ll be three-fifty apiece, girlie. For my good nature.”
“Three
“Or I could always call the truant officer up here in Arkham,” he said with a grin that dripped venom. “Have him speak to the Proctors about three kids running around the country when they should be in school.”
“You shyster …” Cal started for the driver, but I got between them.
“Cal, it’s fine.” I pulled out eleven dollars from my money roll and shoved it into the fare slot. “He’ll get what’s coming to him.” To the driver I said, “Keep the change, pal,” with a sneer worthy of Dean. He punched my tickets and handed them over, still grinning.
“You’re cute when you’re mad, girlie. You should sit up front by me.”
I darted away from his grasp and followed Dean to the last row of seats. “Why are normal people such scum?” I growled.
“Because scum floats,” Dean answered. He slouched, his hair in his eyes, and glared at any passenger who stared too long at our trio. Cal fussed himself into the seat ahead of me, nearly too tall for the space under the luggage rack.
“Plain highway robbery. I should report him to the jitney company.”
The driver put his fat hands on the levers and spun the steam dial to full, and the coach lurched forward, rattling over the road. I listened to the thrum of the gears and they soothed my Weird, speaking to it and warming it in steam. It still sat uneasy inside my head, but it no longer felt as if it would split my skull.
“We have more important things to worry about,” I said.
“Like what?” Cal demanded, still in high dudgeon. I wiped condensation away from the window and made a small pane to watch the country pass. I would do as Tremaine asked and then I would be free, and I could avenge Conrad, find my father and give him back the job of Gateminder.
I looked back at Cal. “Like how we’re going to gain entrance to the Engineworks.”
We sat in silence until the jitney came off the mountain and was rolling along the broader road through the valley, all conversation of the other passengers drowned in the hiss of steam and the clank of the track.
I’d let the idea grow and germinate in my mind while I’d lain awake the night before. It was a welcome relief from the niggling fear that Tremaine’s lie about Conrad had been only the first of many.
I laid out my plan for Dean and Cal.
“There are plenty of vents under the city,” I said. “And some go out to the river.” I rattled the devices secreted inside my carpetbag. “We can wait until low tide and we can use this to go down to the vent. We can use the invigorator to get through the guard lattice and then we’ll be in the Engineworks.”
“Aoife, the river’s got to be near freezing,” Cal said.
I’d also thought of the contingency plan. “We’ll go to the Academy first. The Expedition Club has cold-water diving suits.” Marcos Langostrian was president of the club, and I’d take a distinct pleasure in using his silly diving suit to infiltrate the Engine.
“That might work,” Cal said slowly. Dean shook his head.
“Dangerous. Just like I said before.”
“It will work.” I pressed my forehead against the glass and watched the mountains turn to hills and the hills turn to frozen fields. “It has to.”
30
LOVECRAFT APPEARED OUT of the dark and mist-wrapped day like the skeleton of a great beast, resting on the riverside, phantom breath rising from the foundry chimneys.
Though it had been little more than a week since I’d left, seeing the familiar spires and rooftops was like returning after a journey of immeasurable distance and time.
As we bumped through the streets, I saw lamps flicker to life and steam vent from far below into the cold, ghost dragons dancing on the wind. The Engine was power, and its great heart turned day and night, creating the steam that powered the aether generators, the jitney lines and everything else in the city.
From our class visits to the Engine, I knew that it was guarded, by Proctors no less. Unless a worker possessed of identification came to the gates, visitors would be turned away at best or shot at worst. The Engine was buried hundreds of feet below the streets, and the vent tunnels to the surface were welded shut and patrolled regularly.
All of this I’d learned in Civil Engineering. No one tampered with the Engine. It was the heart of the city.
And I was going to rip it out.
The jitney ground into the depot on lower Miskatonic Avenue, stabling itself next to a dozen similar steel-
