The Iron Thorn - Caitlin Kittredge [85]
Below, Arkham was ringed in fire. The mist took on an unearthly glow, living and boiling in the cauldron of the valley. “He calls it the Weird,” I said softly. “My father. And his father. A Grayson has had it, for fourteen generations. I …”
I might not be mad after all. The thought was wishful, but I hadn’t been able to get rid of it since I’d read my father’s diary.
“Ever since I came here,” I tried again, “I’ve had a feeling that something was awake in me. That there’s something not right in this house. And now I don’t think it’s the house; I think it’s me.” I ran out of thoughts, because this was as far as I’d ever allowed my speculation—my hope—to go.
Waiting, in the cold and the moonlight, for Dean to speak was agonizing.
“Won’t lie to you,” he said at length. “I’ve been up and down the highways once or twice, princess. I’ve seen some sights that weren’t born from the necrovirus.” He nodded, as if he’d decided something final. “I’d believe in an enchanted book, I think. I’d believe in magic.”
Dean believed me. He made one person, one person in the entire world. Which frankly didn’t comfort me much. “What can I do?” I cried. “I can’t very well tell anyone besides you. I don’t know if I have this … this Weird or if Conrad does or if we’re all just … unnatural.”
“Here’s what you do, see,” Dean said. “Before you go fretting about measuring up to the old man, you gotta be sure.”
I blew on my hands to warm them, then tucked them into my pockets. I was growing used to the cold. Dean not running as far as he could when I’d brought up enchantments helped a bit. And his not recoiling from me and throwing out that hateful word: mad. “I’m sure,” I told him. “I can feel it whispering to me when I’m in Graystone. It’s like having an aethervox in my head, and you can just hear something coming across the spectrum.…”
“Then I suggest you find out what your game is,” Dean said. “Way I dig it, sorcerers are supposed to have some kind of affinity, right?”
“I’m not a sorcerer!” I snapped. “It’s not even a real thing.”
“Fine, fine,” Dean said. “But I’m telling you now—‘Weird’ don’t sound any better.” He tapped his chin. “What was your old man’s?”
“Fire, I think.” I recalled the passage about the shandy-man and its burning. “He was vague.”
Dean cocked an eyebrow. “Think you could be fire? Make you real handy at bonfire parties.”
I had to shake my head, and at once the prospect of embracing the wild, untested truth of my possessing a Weird didn’t seem so outlandish. “No, it’s not that. I can’t even get the thrice-damned coal grates in this place to go.” Now that I was thinking about the subject, it was vexing me.
“You’ll figure it out,” Dean said, hunching inside his leather against the stiff breeze that had come up. “The one thing you aren’t, besides crazy, is dumb.”
I took Dean’s hand this time and squeezed it hard, hoping my gesture telegraphed the waterfall of words that I couldn’t get out, except one sentence. “Thank you.”
His hand stiffened in surprise under my grasp. “What’s the thanks for, princess? I didn’t do anything.”
“You believe me,” I said. “No one has ever done that, just believed me. Without any questions.”
Dean brushed his thumb under my chin. “You’re all right, Aoife Grayson. Don’t let anyone tell you different.”
I turned back to the vista over the valley, watching the aether fires burn. Dean stayed next to me and we watched for a long time, the only sound between us the wind and the faraway howling of ghouls.
The Dark Place of Dreaming
IN MY ROOM, I changed into nightclothes and turned the flow down on the aether globes, crawling into bed with the aid of moonlight. The sheets were new and scented with lavender instead of must—Bethina must have crept in when I was in the hidden library and cleaned up after me. Another first.
I turned on my side and watched clouds skate across the moon through the crack in my drapery. Wherever Conrad was, he saw the same moon. That comforted me, a little.
It wasn’t, however, enough comfort to dull my thoughts about my Weird. I’d wished for so long not to be