The Iron Thorn - Caitlin Kittredge [127]
“Was she pretty?” I said, a tinge of sharpness I hadn’t intended in the question. “The girl you went to jail over.”
“Pretty enough,” he said. “Gold hair, blue eyes. The usual.” He let go of me and winked. “She was sure no you.” He tried a cookie, crumbs lingering on his chin. “That Bethina’s got a real trick for the hearth.” He licked his fingers. “With my kind of people, you might almost call her a witch.”
I cocked my head. “And what would you call me?”
He considered. “Dangerous. What you have, and your old man—the knack for elemental enchantment, messing with fire and iron—that ain’t usual, and we heretic types know not to cross what’s unusual. No future in it.”
I looked at my hands. Even here in the parlor, where there was no clockwork to speak of beyond the door hinges and the shutters, I could feel the Weird under my fingers, resonating with the iron that ran in my blood. For the first time my hands were terribly alien to me, the hands of a stranger who commanded eldritch, unearthly forces.
“I suppose I better go put things right with Cal before he takes a runner,” I muttered. The thought that I had to talk my best friend out of betraying us galled me.
“I’ll go out for a smoke,” Dean said. “I’ll be within hollering distance if he gets sassy.”
He kissed me on the top of my head before he went out and I tried not to feel guilty at the magnetic pull as my Weird responded to his touch.
“Cal?” I went from parlor to billiard room to kitchen, finding not hide nor hair. “Cal, where are you?” If he’d already gone, I’d have to go after him, and I didn’t relish that scene.
“He went out for a walk,” Bethina said. She had her sleeves rolled up and was working a white lump of bread dough on a butcher board. “Said he needed air. Looked fit to pop.”
“That’s my fault,” I sighed. Rational or not, I’d upset Cal, and that, I did feel terrible about.
Bethina stopped kneading and brushed her hands. She left ghostly prints down her apron front. “Can I ask you something, miss? And expect honesty in return?”
“As honest as I can be,” I said, wondering what fresh hell I was in for. I went to the icebox and opened it, picking out nothing. My stomach was far too troubled for hunger, and there was nothing edible inside anyway.
“Do you fancy Cal?”
I lost my grip on the chrome handle in my surprise, and the icebox slammed shut. “Do I …” It was a fair question. Cal was noble, true and innocent. Dean wasn’t any of those things. But Cal saw the worst in me, and I couldn’t go back to what he thought I should be. Not now that I had opened the way to a world I’d thought was only my mother’s stories with the Weird and with the Folk.
“Miss?” Bethina stood very still, as if she were waiting for a slap. “I’d like an answer. Please.”
“No. Not that way,” I said. “Not in the way that he wants.”
“He’s your friend, though, miss,” Bethina insisted. “He’s loyal to you, and he thinks you’re pretty. He said.”
I threw up my hands. I’d figured Cal might have a crush, but I’d been careful not to give him hope. “It doesn’t work that way in real life, Bethina. I know what he wants and I don’t want the same. I’m sorry.”
Bethina’s face fell. “Well, I—I do care for Cal. In the way he wants. He’s just like Sir Percival, in the King Arthur tales.”
“And I thought I read too many books,” I murmured. I’d never thought like Bethina and normal girls did. Boys didn’t look at me and I had no time for them. Dean was the first one to talk to me like I wasn’t beneath him or just stupid. Even Cal talked down to me at times. He’d been raised to, in a respectable household with respectable people. Dean was the only boy I’d met who was like me.
Bethina folded, like someone had cut her strings. “You don’t think someone like me is