“I wish that were true,” I said, and meant it. If I could fight and hunt, if I were something to be afraid of, none of this misfortune would have happened.
Toby drew something out from behind his back, awkward as any human boy. “Carver said you lost your kit in Ravenhouse. I know humans need things. Even though they just clank and clack, hanging from your bones.” He shoved the object into my hand.
I gasped when I saw Tremaine’s blue goggles. “Where did you get these?”
Toby grinned at me. “Those men following you and Carver and the Erlkin. Some of us went back, went hunting. The fat one had them on his belt.”
Quinn. I’d be lying if I said I was sorry.
I slid them over my eyes and looked at the nest. Toby appeared wavy and insubstantial, only his bones showing clearly. His ghoul spine with its cruel curve that made him able to spring and twist in midair, the long jaw full of teeth, and the knifelike claws.
All around me, the underworld revealed itself, disused pipe and tunnel running off in every direction, a drain that dribbled overhead directly to the river, and the broken, branching chimney that vented the ghoul’s hearth.
Toby panted, itching behind his blunt ear with one long claw as I slid the goggles onto my forehead. “So it’s a fair bargain, yes? For saving Carver’s life?”
“Yes, Toby,” I said. “More than fair. Thank you.” I tried Tremaine’s goggles again. “Now I know what it’s like to be Dean—to see everything that’s hidden.”
Dean poked his head from the nest tunnel to the outside. “I hear my name?”
“Dean!” I waved the goggles at him. “Look what Toby found.”
He took a glance through the lenses and just as quickly jerked the mask off. “That’s Folk trickery. Splits my head in two.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “But they’ll help us get down the vent tunnel. I can watch for the steam, and time it.”
“Assuming we get through that grate,” Dean said.
Toby extended his claws with the sound of daggers being drawn. “Leave that to us.”
36
In the Engineworks
CAL AND TOBY went into the hearth pipe in the lead, Toby loping easily on all fours and Cal in his boy skin, walking upright. Dean stayed with me. I was relieved that Cal seemed to have stopped sniping at Dean. It was clear in hindsight why—Dean represented everything Draven was trying to keep me from.
Cal’s clothes now were rags, an old Engineworks jersey and pants tattered about the hem. His feet stayed bare.
“I figured this might make it a little easier for you,” he told me.
“Don’t worry about sparing me,” I said. “Toby’s already laboring under the impression he owes me something for saving your life.”
“You did,” Cal said shortly. “Not in Ravenhouse, but before. You made me realize I didn’t have to be afraid of Draven.”
“Cal …” I’d never find someone as loyal as Cal again. That I knew, in an immutable bone-deep sense.
“I’ll let you into the vent, and we’ll be even.” Cal flashed me a smile, and I saw that he hadn’t bothered to hide his ghoul teeth.
“If she comes back, you two can skip merrily over the ground. If not, someone will have a fine supper.” Toby chuckled to himself and climbed up to walk on the ceiling.
I took the pedestrian route, sticking near Dean and Cal. Tremaine’s goggles dangled from my hand, and across my back I’d strapped a small pack that bore the partially chewed-away logo of the Lovecraft Academy Expedition Club circa 1933, clearly a year where they didn’t teach student members not to go wandering around old sewer mains.
I’d taken only tools and a little water, for rehydrating after Dean and I had gone through the steam. No books, no pens, no paper. Only Dean’s geas, tucked up tight under the wrist of my jumper.
“You haven’t said much since last night,” Dean said.
I shrugged. “Not much to say.” The dream of my mother lingered, like a corpse’s touch against my skin, a spot of chill that no amount of steam heat could erase. You shouldn’t have walked in the lily field.
“How long do you have?” Dean said.
“Six days. I was born at four a.m. Six days and four hours.”
Dean fingered a Lucky but didn’t light it. “You might be spared, you know.”
“I won’t be,” I said shortly. “Because life’s not fair.” On this point, I was sure.
Dean spread his hands. “I don’t—”
“We find out there is no necrovirus and my family is still mad,” I said. “So clearly, I will be too. And now I’m even further from knowing why.”
Dean took me by the shoulders and turned me to face him. “I ain’t good at words, Aoife. I made my living with my blood and my boots and my fists, and I’m not a poet.”
His hands gripped more tightly, but I didn’t try to wriggle away even though he was hurting me a little. He was the only thing in the tunnel that was really solid.
“I’m not running,” he said simply. “I’ve seen what can happen and I’m not scared. You may be mad and you may not be, Aoife, but you’re stuck with me. I ain’t run from a problem yet and I’m not about to start with you.”
He released me, and walked on. I wished I could be as brave as Dean. I wished I could be as loyal as Cal. But I was only me, and that was going to have to be enough for what was ahead.
“Dean.” I caught up with him, my feet echoing in the empty pipes. “I know,” I told him. “I know that you won’t leave.”
He nodded, some of the knots slipping from his posture. “Good,” he said. “Then we’re square. You’ve paid your part of the bargain and I’ve held up mine.”
“No more bargains,” I said as we reached the guard grate and came to a halt. “Just Aoife and Dean from now on, all right?”
He smiled, brushing a thumb down my cheek. “I like the sound of that.”
Toby tugged at the grate ineffectually, his claws shrieking over the rusted iron. “Carver, don’t just stand there catching flies. Give me a hand.”
I slipped on the blue glass goggles while Cal crouched. His skin rippled, bones with it, like his skin was sand and his insides were the ocean, pushing and re-forming it. He grunted as he became ghoul, the only hint of the pain that must rack him whenever he twisted his bones and skin into the shape of what he despised.
I wondered how long Cal had been passing as a human, how often he’d ventured over ground to find medicine or food.
How long Draven had tortured him the first time, until he agreed to spy on me.
Someday, I vowed, as I searched the vent and its connected discharge pipes for a hint of the next jet of steam, I would see Grey Draven again. And I would take back my father’s book and make him answer for all that he’d done to those I cared about.
The vent fell away with a clang, and Toby stuck his finger in his mouth. “I broke one of my claws clean off.”
“Now who’s the baby?” Cal asked him.
“Quiet!” I snapped. I could see the steam, moving like a phantom through the discharge pipes, gathering speed like a spectral hurricane. “It’s coming,” I whispered.
“What’s that mean for us?” Dean said.
I grabbed his hand and squeezed it tight. “It means we have to run. Now.”
“Aoife!” Cal shouted as we ducked through the opening the ghouls had made. His voice was lost in the roar of the gathering vent jet, but I think he was telling me to be careful.
Dean and I ran through steam, and it took me back to running through the mist with Tremaine. Just as it had been then, I risked being stolen away, not by the corpse-drinkers or the other things that lingered in the fog but by the molten jets of steam from the Engine that even now throbbed under my feet.
The goggles showed me the encroaching vent, the access hatch we needed to reach before the heat exploded into the tunnel.