The Iron Thorn - Caitlin Kittredge [72]
I checked the boiler, an ancient but sound Potsdam model, imported from Europe. The pressure was normal and hot water was flowing through a nest of pipes, hissing in the dark of the cellar. It sounded like the shoggoth’s voice in my mind, and I drew back quickly, knocking my head against one of the low-hanging aether globes.
In the swinging blue light, I saw the edge of a bricked-up hole in the foundation. Bethina hadn’t been telling tales about bootleggers, after all.
The hiss of the boiler grew louder, more insistent, and my shoulder began to throb as I stared at the dip in the wall. Conrad had read me a story once, from one of Nerissa’s few, dog-eared books. The story was called “The Cask of Amontillado.” A man was walled up in a cellar, lured with the promise of the sweetest wine he had ever tasted.
The boiler clanked and shuddered as Bethina opened the steam tap in the kitchen, and I retreated up the stairs, a bit quicker than my pride would have liked.
I found Cal at the switch panel and smoothed my hands down my dress to stop their quivering. My momentary scare in the cellar had retreated, and now I just felt silly. Graystone wasn’t my house, but I felt at home here, more than I had anywhere else so far in my life. Graystone wasn’t going to hurt me. Gears and clockwork didn’t have life or a mind of its own.
“You look a little pale, Aoife,” Cal said. “You feeling all right?”
“I … yes. Perfectly fine.” I went about returning all of the dials on the panel to their original positions. “Everything seems to be in order.”
“Not quite,” Cal said. “The Library dial is stuck.”
“I’m sure it just wants a little greasing,” I said. “I’ll see if Bethina knows where the autogarage is on the grounds.”
“Maybe if we tried turning it together,” Cal said. “I mean, who knows how long this thing has been shut away? It could have rusted.”
“All right.” I put my hand on the dial and tried to turn it, to no avail. It was, as Cal said, stuck fast.
Cal slid his hand over mine, his long fingers closing down. They were cold. “Together,” he said. “One, two … three.”
We twisted, and Cal’s fingers grated against mine hard enough to force a cry from my lips. Just as quickly, the pressure eased and the dial snapped over hard, a clank of mechanisms speaking to the neglect that Graystone had suffered since my father had gone missing.
But nothing happened. No more miracles of engineering and clockwork revealed themselves. The library stayed stubbornly the same.
“Guess it’s busted,” Cal grumbled. Dean came tromping down the front stairs, his boots leaving scuffs on the white marble of the entry hall.
“You gotta peep the upstairs of this place when the clockwork’s turned on,” he said. “There’s a map of the world that moves and has a nautical compass, up there in the gentleman’s parlor, and a stenotype that types by itself when you say words into a phono-phone.” He caught sight of Cal’s and my hands, intertwined. “Somewhere else I should be, maybe?”
“It’s not that,” I said quickly. “We’re just trying to get this silly library control unstuck.” I twisted again and only succeeded in straining my wrist. It wasn’t much compared with Cal and Dean trading glares.
“Forget it, Aoife,” Cal said. “If I can’t get it working, then you certainly can’t. I’m much stronger.”
After the thick tension of the day so far, I balked. Of course I was used to being tolerated as an oddity in the School of Engines. Of course I bore it with good breeding and grace. In Lovecraft. But here, in my father’s house, a house built with the same vision that made gears dance behind my eyes and steam whisper in my dreams where other girls saw designer pumps and lanternreel stars, I was thrice-damned if I would bear it any longer.
I grabbed the dial with both hands and wrenched, putting