“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.
Cal whistled. “You could lock somebody up like Attica in this place.”
“Or lock something out,” Dean muttered. “I don’t much care for locks, tell you the truth. We in the Rustworks spend a lot of time thinking about cold iron on our legs and stripes on our shoulders in some Proctor work camp.”
Entranced as I was, I waved him off. “The whole house is clockwork. The whole house is knitted together with these gears, and this is where one can make Graystone do whatever it likes.” The feat of constructing a clockwork house was something that a student at the School of Clockworks could only dream about. The assembly to cobble an entire structure together, to calibrate and time it so that it ran smooth and soundlessly, and then to bring it all into the central mechanism of the clock and the controls … the amount of time and care the clockmaker who built the house must have invested boggled my conception of mechanics.
My father hadn’t built it—it was much older, Victorian in style—but he must have known about it. He lived in this clockwork marvel.
And it was mine to learn and to control, and only mine. My father had left and in doing so left me the iron bones of Graystone, sleeping and waiting for me to wake them. Until he came back. If he did.
“Well,” Cal said. “We should test it out. See what it can really do. I mean, for our own safety.” His eyes were bright and I could see that his fingers were twitching, itching to touch the controls of the clockwork as much as my own were.
“Sure,” I said, giving him a small smile. “How about you stay here and try out the dials? Dean and I can explore.” There would be no more talk of leaving once Cal got his hands on the panel. And I could show him I didn’t begrudge him wanting to go home by letting him play with the house’s mechanics.
Cal’s jaw jumped once at the mention of Dean, but only once. “Watch out for the traps,” he said. “All these switches have the setting.”
“She’s in good hands,” Dean told him, ushering me from the library.
I removed my elbow from his grasp. “I’m not in anyone’s hands at the moment.”
Dean’s back stiffened for a heartbeat, but then he gave me a nod. “My mistake.”
“It’s not a …” But I stopped myself before I became an even bigger fool. I wasn’t shying away from Dean because I wanted to. I was staying away from him because he was dangerous to me in the same way as an aether flame—bright, hypnotizing and hot enough to burn. I was here to find Conrad, get him out of danger and then go home. Not to let a boy fill my head with dreams and ideas that I could have if I didn’t go mad, if I had been born to a different family. No matter how much I wanted to see how he was different from the boys I knew. And I did want to, but I resigned myself to only wanting.
“Hey.” Dean called me into the back parlor. “Think now we can get the wireless working?” He pointed to the old-fashioned console, its tubes set into ruby and emerald glass, the gas inside them drifting lazily back and forth.
“I don’t know,” I said. “This thing is museum quality. Cal!” I shouted. “Turn the aether switch on!”
After a moment, the crystals that passed heat through the aether and made it active began to glow, and when I turned the glass needle along the spectrum dial, a voice scraped out of the ancient phono horn.
“You’re listening to WKPS, Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and this is Dirk DeVille with the news. The President issued a statement today regarding the ongoing necrovirus research purportedly conducted in secret Crimson Guard laboratories, calling it blatant heretical aggression against the United States—”
Dean spun the needle along the spectrum. “Sorry. Listening to that guy’s voice is like putting a rivet into my own head.” The studio audience for The Larry Lovett Show laughed back at Dean.
I spun the dial again. Music crackled faintly, a phonograph that was half static.
Dean’s mouth quirked. “Finally, something we can both agree on.”
“Aoife, are you going to hang around in there all day?” Cal called. “I want to see what this thing can do!”
“All right, Cal,” I shouted back, reaching to turn off the wireless. Dean stopped me.
“Leave it. I like a little music when I’m alone with a pretty girl.”
I’m sure the blush I felt showed in my face. Dean kept sending me hurtling off balance. I’d never met someone who spoke as freely as he did. Especially about me. “You’re not alone with me, Dean, and I’m hardly the sort of girl someone like you finds pretty.”
Dean pushed a piece of hair away from my eyes. “Why don’t you let me decide that?”
I ducked away from his touch. I knew damn well I was a smart girl, not a pretty one. Boys at home told Cecelia she was pretty constantly, and she let them take advantage constantly. Not me.