“Will you speak up?” I said, jolted to attention as the group of boys turned toward us. “I don’t think everyone on Academy grounds heard that.”
Cal pulled me down onto one of the threadbare sofas and leaned close, as close as we’d ever been. “This isn’t a simple thing, Aoife. Even if we made it out of the school—which is impossible, by the way—there’s still the city lockdown at dusk. We’d never make it over the bridges before they close the roads and the sewers against the ghouls. We’re underage. We could never convince the Proctors we had passage papers.”
“I’m aware of the variables,” I said. Lovecraft was a fortress against the necrovirus, and its citizens; at night, when the viral creatures were most active, the same citizens became prisoners within the city blocks.
Cal shook his head. “Math isn’t going to give us one lick of help this time, Aoife.”
I chewed on my bottom lip, a habit Mrs. Fortune deplored as unladylike. “ ‘Us’?” I said after a time, casting a sidelong glance at Cal to test his expression. He heaved a sigh too large for his skinny chest.
“If you think I’m letting you run off from school on the word of some madman on your own? Then you’re not mad, Aoife … you’re just nuts.”
As quickly as I’d slapped him before, I threw my arms around Cal. He let out a small grunt. “Thank you,” I whispered fiercely. He returned my grasp, tentative.
“All right, Miss Engineer … how are we hauling out of Lovecraft?”
“Well … I …” My reasoning hadn’t led me much beyond “help Conrad.” Cecelia, her sharp eyes and sharp words during the burning, came back to me. “The Nightfall Market.”
Cal let out a groan. “Great. We barely get clear of Dunwich Lane, and you want to go someplace twice as dangerous.”
“Oh, listen to you. You’re worse than an old woman. When have I ever lead you into danger?”
“Yesterday,” Cal said. “That bloodsucker in the alley.”
“And I got you back out again, didn’t I? Don’t go to supper,” I said, the plan forming and gaining momentum in my mind. I felt the same when I sketched new machines, things that could fly or burrow or glide under the river like fish. “That’ll be our chance.” Supper was the one time all of the students and heads of house gathered in one place. “Play sick if you have to. Meet me behind the autogarage once the dining bell rings.”
Cal nodded grimly. “Be careful, Aoife. I’d hate to see you … taken away. Before your time.” He squeezed my hand and went and joined the boys listening to the tubes.
5
Nightfall
RUNNING AWAY HAD never crossed my mind before. Certainly, I was an orphan for all intents and purposes, but I’d been accepted into the School and I had at least a journeywoman’s career ahead of me at the Engineworks. I wasn’t a cinder-girl from a storybook. A prince didn’t need to ride up on his clockwork steed and take me away.
When I was small, my mother told me that before the spread of the necrovirus and the madness it inflicted, before the Proctors had burned every book that even smacked of heresy, fairy tales had been different. They’d contained actual fairies, for one thing.
I didn’t take any memories of her when I packed my things, just a change of clothes, a toothbrush and hairbrush, all the money I’d received from the city when they auctioned Nerissa’s effects—a paltry fifty dollars—and my toolkit, the leather pouch of engineer’s equipment that every student was issued upon their acceptance into the School of Engines. I withheld one uniform shirt and unscrewed my last bottle of ink, splashing it down the front in a violent pattern.
As soon as everything was secreted in my satchel, I went to the first floor and knocked at Mrs. Fortune’s pin-neat room. She cracked the door and sighed at the sight of me. “I’m very busy, Aoife.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but there’s a bit of an emergency,” I said, holding up the shirt. “I was drawing my schematic, and—” I had the lie planned to the last word, but Fortune cut me short.
“Oh, stars, Aoife.” She shook her head. “You’re clumsy as a fawn. It’ll be comportment classes next year if you don’t pull yourself together and learn how to be a lady.”
I chewed my lip in remorse and dropped my head. “I’m ever so sorry, ma’am. But if you could have the security officer let me out, I could run up Cornish Lane to the China Laundry before they shut,” I said. “I only have two shirts, as you know”—I moved my toe across the crack in the floor—“being a ward, and all.” People like Mrs. Fortune—wealthy and well-meaning—were conditioned from birth to be charitable to the less fortunate. Even when the less fortunate were lying to their faces.
Fortune patted her own cheek in sympathy, but stayed firm. “You are most certainly not running about the city after curfew on your own. What would the Headmaster say?”
“Oh, it’s not a problem,” I said, prepared for this variable. “Cal will go with me. And I’ll be back before I have to meet the Headmaster about me going mad and killing people on my birthday. I swear.”
Mrs. Fortune raised her eyes heavenward. “The mouth on you, Aoife Grayson, could fell a Proctor. Master Builder forgive me the blasphemy.” She waved the edge of her tartan shawl at me. “Go on. I’ll have the man at the side gate let you out.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” I said, keeping my eyes on the floor so my victory wouldn’t live in my gaze. I struggled to keep my shoulders drooping and my expression contrite. “It should take me no time at all.”
Waiting by the autogarage in the cold, doubt swooped down on me like the Proctor’s clockwork ravens on their black silken wings. Conrad could be sitting contentedly in some pub, whispering to his invisible friends while he wrote fanciful letters that put me in danger.
Or Conrad could really be in danger, as he’d never lied to me, not even on his birthday.
He picked up the knife from his toolkit, the same toolkit I’d receive at the start of term, and ran his thumb along the blade. “Have you ever seen your own blood, Aoife?” he murmured. “Seen it under starlight, when it’s black as ink?”
They said the virus was in our blood, an infection passed from mother to child until time immemorial. Dormant, until a signal from within our biology woke it up, brought on the madness. No one could tell me how far back it went, as my mother refused to speak of her parents at all. I’d wormed my father’s name out of her before she dipped too deep into the pool of illusion and fancy. I’d verified that Archibald existed in the city records at the Academy library, that he was real and not cut from the whole cloth of her madness. I’d also discovered that he didn’t appear to be mad. But he’d been with Nerissa, so there must have been something cockeyed in the man’s schematic.
My fingers were cold inside my gloves and I stamped my feet, expelling steam breath into the night. A hand on my shoulder made me shriek in alarm and slam my palms over my mouth. I tasted lanolin and soap.
“It’s me!” Cal hissed. “It’s only me.”
“Don’t do that,” I cried, rasping. “That sneaking. That’s for ghouls and thieves.”
He grinned at me halfway in the dim light of the auto yard, his crooked teeth and blond hair standing out stark like a negative photoplate. “Sorry. I’m quiet enough to be either, I guess.”
I pressed my hands together to regain my composure and smiled to hide the shaking. “Not funny, Cal.”
He chuckled softly. “You know, for a girl taking me to the Nightfall Market you’re as jumpy as if you’re juggling aether tubes.”
“You’re not?” I said, incredulous, as we started for the gates. “Scared, I mean.” The Academy was brick banded in iron fencing to keep out viral creatures, and spiked with finials along the fence’s top to keep students bent on mischief in. The iron spikes’ jagged shadows breathed out cold when we approached.
“I’m a young man set out on a great adventure,” Cal said. “The way I see it, the least that can happen is I have a story to tell the guys when I get back.”