The Iron Thorn

32 The Proctor’s Truth

“DEAN!” I HISSED. He cast about for a moment and then looked up.

“Aoife?” His mouth slackened. “What the hell are you doing up there?”

“Long story,” I said. “I promise, when we’ve gotten away from here I’ll explain in full.” I shoved on the vent until it gave, then swung myself down, wincing as I landed. I had knocked myself around but good getting out of the interrogation room.

Dean helped me up as best he could with his hands shackled, pressing his forehead against mine. “I can’t believe you’re here. I thought I’d never clap eyes on you again.”

I breathed in for a moment, letting his scent of leather and cigarettes and boy calm my ragged breathing. “They tried,” I whispered. “But it’ll take a little more to get rid of me for good.” I held out my hands. “I think I can slip the door, but these shackles are another matter.” The skeleton lock, complex and virtually without moving parts, gave not a whisper to my Weird.

“Leave that to me,” Dean said. “Got a hairpin, princess?”

I reached up and snatched one from my bun, which had become just another one of my wild nests of hair in the face of Proctor force.

“I met Grey Draven,” I said as Dean went to work on my shackles. Even with his hands tied, he was quick and smooth as a cardsharp shuffling a deck.

“No kidding.” Dean stuck the tip of his tongue between his teeth as he worked the lock. “Always gave me the creeps in the lanternreels. He has those dead-man eyes, like he sees everything at once.”

“He told me some things,” I said very quietly. “Some really terrible things, Dean. About me, about my father—”

“Got it!” he said as my handcuffs snapped open. He handed me the pin. “I’ll talk you through it—get mine off and we’re gone, baby, gone.”

“There is no necrovirus,” I said as I went to work on Dean’s shackles. “They made it up. Draven knows about the Folk. He told me how the gateways between Iron and Thorn used to be open. How people like my father have been trying to keep the balance while the Proctors just lie. Draven knows everything about me.”

“That’s …” Dean shook his head. There was a long time where the only sound was the scrape of the pin against the lock. “Aoife, I don’t know what you want me to say to make that all right,” he said at last.

“Nothing,” I said as I wiggled the pin in his locks. “Don’t say anything. I just had to tell someone before I exploded.”

“So if there’s no virus”—Dean gave a long breath of relief as his shackles came loose, and rubbed his raw wrists—“what’s wrong with your old lady and your brother?”

I turned to the door, laying my cheek against the metal, caressing the lock and the handle with my Weird. “I don’t know,” I told Dean. “But something is making us mad, and I aim to find out what.” I had always known that Nerissa’s behavior and her hallucinations and my dreams weren’t normal, never mind my own brother coming at me with a knife. There was still something in our blood. But now, at least, there might be a real cure.

The lock popped and the door swung open before me. The Weird was quiet in this place encased in iron, easier to control. I flinched as my nose began to leak blood again. My vision slurred left and right as I stumbled along the wall with Dean.

“We need to find Cal,” I gasped. “Draven said … he said for the Proctors to torture him.…”

I became aware that Dean was no longer behind me.

“I don’t think we’re going to get far on that plan, princess,” he said, and I turned to watch him put up his hands. My stomach plummeted. We’d been so close.

“Nice to see you again.” Quinn was flanked by two other Proctors, and they were all armed. He shouldered his weapon and snatched me by the arm. “Be a good little girl this time,” he whispered. He dragged me away from Dean and down flights of stairs, until dripping water and mold told me I was deep beneath the earth. We spilled into a hallway containing a row of iron doors lit only by a series of aether lanterns hung from crossbeams.

“We’re below the riverbed,” Quinn told me as he unlocked the nearest door. “Unless you’ve got gills, you’re ours for good.”

He tossed me into the cell and the door shut behind me. I shouted and screamed and pounded on the door, but it did no good. Once more, I was alone in the dark.