“The nightmare clock,” I said. “My life and yours, and everyone’s, depends on us getting to it.”
Casey nodded. “Okay,” she said. “You need Tesla’s notes and diaries, right?”
“That would be a start,” I agreed. Despite Octavia’s orders, despite Draven’s encroachment and what was sure to be an ugly confrontation, I felt the tiniest grain of hope.
“They don’t exactly trust orphaned errand girls with that kind of information,” Casey said, “but fortunately, I’m no dummy either.” She leaned in and whispered. “Tesla’s private papers are in the locked collection in the library.”
My hope faded again. “I’m guessing that’s not easy to get into.”
Casey shook her head. “Oh, no. Mr. Crosley keeps those books personally guarded by his handpicked men. The last person who tried was your father.”
I sat up in shock. “Seriously? My father?”
“It was awful,” Casey said. “I’ve never seen Mr. Crosley so angry. He threatened to throw Mr. Grayson in the brig, but Miss Crosley intervened, and then the two of them snuck out in the middle of the night. Mr. Crosley hates him,” she said. “Taking his daughter like that.”
The story redoubled my determination. I could succeed where Crosley had foiled my father. Harold Crosley was right—I was going to fix things. But not for his sake. For mine, for my mother’s, for the entire world, innocent and caught in the path of what I’d started when I broke the Gates.
“You get me into the library,” I said. “We can take care of the guards together.”
“He’s got powerful locks on the room too,” Casey said nervously. “And alarms.”
“Don’t worry,” I told her, laying my hand on her shoulder the way Archie had done to me. “I’ll take care of those.”
After Casey left, I changed out of my bloody clothes, into a loose blouse and cigarette pants that had been left folded on my bed. I curled onto my side on the bed, and I opened my satchel. Draven’s compass was still blinking as implacably as ever.
How close was he? Airships as large as the Dire Raven could only fly in the warmest part of the day this close to the North Pole, lest they risk ice building up on their iron parts and weighing them down.
He was coming, though. If Harold Crosley had been the only one we were talking about, I would have been happy to leave him to Draven. Crosley was keeping me prisoner—there was no denying it now. And if I didn’t prove to be a useful weapon, then I’d be bait in a trap for my father. Again.
But if Draven came after the Brotherhood, eventually he’d be led back to my family. He had a vendetta against the Graysons, that much was obvious. I had to find the clock—find it physically, not just in dreams—before he showed up so I wasn’t just a limp body for him to snatch.
The day crept by with agonizing slowness, and I tried to sleep, tried pacing, tried staring at the shimmering ice walls, but nothing worked. I just kept thinking of Octavia and Nerissa. Sisters. I truly hoped my mother wanted to return to the Thorn Land when this was over. But if she had run away from it once, was I returning her to a worse fate than the one she faced now? If she was even alive. And if I could find the clock and make it work.
After the aether lamps had dimmed for the night, Casey unlocked my door and came in. “Mr. Crosley is playing checkers with some of the other brothers. He’ll usually get into the gin and go to bed early.”
I stopped her from turning on the lamp; we couldn’t alert anyone that we were wandering around together. It was cold and silent, just us and the shadows dancing against the ice. “I know you’re scared of him, Casey,” I said. “I can’t thank you enough for trusting me.”
“I’ve seen what you can do,” Casey murmured. “That kind of power shouldn’t be under anyone’s control but your own. And I wasn’t always an orphan. If it were my family, I’d do anything to help them. Anything.”
We walked quickly through the halls, passing only a few other members of the Brotherhood, most of them in nightclothes or just starting their shifts in the mechanics’ bay. No one paid us the slightest bit of attention; we were two faceless girls meekly going on our way.
The library wasn’t locked, although a sign on the door noted that it was closed and would reopen at eight a.m.
We slipped in and Casey stopped me inside the main doors, pointing back through the stacks. The library was massive, shelves curving far over our heads, bolted to the ceiling and the floor, and reading tables every few feet. With the lights off, the library was eerie, shelves crouched like lines of sentinels waiting for the signal to come to life and march forward.
We crept through the stacks, toward a flare of light near the back wall. Every footstep seemed magnified, every breath Casey and I took echoingly loud. But the two guards watching the small iron cage didn’t seem to notice, and I breathed a little easier—that is to say, I breathed.
The two men in white sat on hard metal stools on either side of the cage. One leafed through a magazine and the other dozed, his head tilted back.
Casey looked at me and I examined our options. The men had weapons—short truncheons on their belts—and there could have been more hidden. Can you take one? I mouthed at Casey.
She nodded, knotting her hands into tight, knobby fists. I sucked in a breath. I was shaking. Once I took this step, there was no turning back.
Still, I didn’t hesitate before I called up my Weird and burst the bulb of the aether lamp on the wall next to the guards. A bit of smoke curled, and the scent of burnt paper permeated the air.
I didn’t have any more time to worry. The guards were up, shouting, stumbling into one another, and I saw the flash of Casey’s metal hair decorations as she flew past me and laid the first guard out with a right cross. She fell on the man, kicking him and hitting him, letting out small huffs of rage.
I grabbed my guard by the front of his tunic and used the one fighting move every girl knows: I drove my knee hard into the spot between his legs. The guard buckled and fell, and I hit him once more in the temple to make sure he was out.
Casey was still punching her guard, atop him, her face gleaming with sweat. “Casey!” I hissed, horrified. These men had done nothing to us—they were just obstacles. “Casey, stop!”
She blinked at me, as if she’d forgotten I was there. “Yeah. Sorry,” she said.
I helped her up, watching her wipe blood off her knuckles onto the tail of her shirt. “What happened?” I said softly. The pain on her face echoed in me. “Not just now. I mean, why did you do that?”
She shook her head, not looking at me. I brought a portable aether lamp from one of the tables and turned it on low so I could look into her eyes. Casey remained sullen. “It’s not easy being an orphan the Brotherhood plucks off the street,” she finally said with a sigh. “Any more than it is being a ward that the Lovecraft Proctors get their hands on.”
She didn’t meet my eyes, and I didn’t push the issue. I knew the rage that could boil up when you least expected it. I knew it all too well. “Let’s take a look at these locks,” I suggested.
Casey looked crestfallen. “Mr. Crosley has the only copy of the keys. There’s no way I’m getting my hands on them.”
At least here, I was in my element. I could do something about Casey’s misery. “Good thing I don’t need his keys, then, eh?” I said, placing my hands on the door to the cage. Casey was right—the locks were strong, complicated, not the sort of kid stuff I could break open easily with my Weird.
But it could be done. Was going to be done. I laid my forehead against the iron. I didn’t have much time, and the pressure didn’t help my concentration, but I let the locks speak to me, let my Weird speak to them, allow the meshing of two machines, one ethereal and one iron, to occur.
After a moment, the locks popped open, and Casey gave a small squeak. “I’ll never get used to that,” she explained when I gave her a questioning look. “Closest thing to magic I’ll ever see.”