The Iron Thorn - Caitlin Kittredge [31]
“If you want to get out of Lovecraft before the sun goes up, this is the way to do it,” Dean said. “Now, I know no Uptown princess is going to come down to the Rustworks looking for yours truly. No girl who can’t pay the toll would come this far.” Dean grinned at me. “You’re no princess.”
I swallowed hard. My throat felt like it was lined with sandpaper. “And you’re no white knight,” I told Dean, and before my nerve failed me, stuck my hand into the gap an acetylene torch had cut in the tollbooth’s side. My fingers brushed a thin iron spike set where the coin slot should be.
I placed it against my index finger and pressed down. My blood dribbled into the crevice of my knuckle, warming the skin. The spike was cold where it bit into my flesh.
No Proctors swooped down on me and no fanciful black magic swarmed up to turn me into the wanton heretic that Professor Swan and his newsreels warned about. My finger started to ache, and I pulled my hand away, sucking on it and getting an aftertaste of iron.
The automaton regarded me with its flame eyes and then withdrew its arm into the booth. “Proceed, travelerssss.”
“There,” Dean said. “Not so bad, is it?”
Cal stepped up. “What about me? What do I do?”
“Nothing,” Dean said. “You didn’t hire me, she did.” He tilted his head toward me. “You’re awful quiet, Miss Aoife. You all right?”
I tried not to think about the warm throbbing brass of the castigator where it waited in Banishment Square. Dean pulled a stained red bandanna from his back pocket and held it out. “Here. A little more blood won’t matter to this old rag.”
“What, and risk an infection?” Cal fumbled in his knapsack. “Hold it, Aoife. I’ve got a plaster.”
“Cal,” I sighed. “You remind me of Mrs. Fortune sometimes.”
Dean’s mouth curled up at that. He stepped past the tollbooth, onto the bridge. The wire grating beneath our feet bounced and creaked as we advanced, and I unwillingly flashed on the images of the twisted span after the collapse, suspension cables flapping in the wind like tangled hair.
As we walked, the holes grew wider, until finally we were just walking on the mesh used by Babbage to under-sling the roadbed, a thin half-inch of wire keeping us out of the river. I looked back at Cal and saw that his face had gone sheet white with an undertone that matched his thatch of hair.
“Come on,” I said, holding out my hand. “I’m sure it’s perfectly safe. We don’t weigh that much.”
He looked at me, looked at Dean, and then stepped forward, his jaw twitching. He ignored my hand and shoved his own into the pockets of his car coat. “Let’s just get across, okay?”
I pulled my hand back to my side, a small pain with it. Cal had never refused my help before. At least my bleeding had stopped and I didn’t appear to be branded a heretic for it. Not like the five-pointed stars and crosses and sutra wheels the Proctors told us to watch out for, because a mark like that was the first sign. Heretics believed in gods, in magic, and carried their marks. A rational person knew there was no need of such decoration.
Dean walked with me, Cal a little behind, and together we crept across the span, over dark water and cracking ice. When we’d passed under the halfway mark, the Gothic arch that Babbage had proudly declared the gateway to New England, Dean spoke. “So, Miss Aoife. Arkham. What’s a city girl want with that worm-eaten little town?”
I didn’t answer for a moment that stretched long and thin, listening to our feet clang against the span.
“Something that’s none of my business?” Dean guessed. “That’s usually the way. But the more I know, the quicker I can get you to your Point B.”
“I have a brother,” I said. “His name is Conrad.” I glanced back at Cal, trudging a few paces behind with his eyes glued to his feet. “He needs my help,” I told Dean. “In Arkham.”
“Answer me straight, Miss Aoife,