Iron Codex 2 - The Nightmare Garden (19 page)

“Aside from when I got you out of Ravenhouse, I mean,” he said. “And that’s not exactly a family memory I’m looking to cherish.” He sighed and raked a hand through his hair, disturbing his carefully groomed coif into something that was closer to my own unruly cloud. “I’m glad you’re all right, Aoife, but you have to promise me never to do something that stupid again—and I mean both times, when you let Draven pick you up and this time, when you were doing whatever the hell it was you were doing down there in that wasteland.”

I had a feeling he wouldn’t be so forgiving when he found out why I’d come back, especially after he’d helped
me escape the Proctors’ cells when I’d turned myself in to Draven as a means to get to the Engine. But I was done lying to everyone. Done pretending everything was fine, when even now the iron told me that the clock had started ticking on my madness again.

At least up here on the
Munin
, made of wood and brass, it had quieted to an insidious whisper rather than a scream. I looked out the porthole while I formulated my answer carefully. The country passing beneath us was blank now that we’d left the outskirts of Nephilheim, gray and white with patches of bare trees and snow. The coastline cast gentle lace on the frozen beaches, and I could see the red buoys of the shipping channel we followed bobbing like tiny beacons in the vast Atlantic.

“I was looking for Ner—for my mother,” I told Archie. “What happened … I left her there.”

“Nerissa isn’t in the madhouse,” Archie said. “She’d know the ghouls would come up when everything went to pot. That ghouls or something worse would be after her. Nerissa is a survivor, Aoife. She knows to go to ground and wait for things to blow over.”

“How can I possibly know that for sure?” I snapped, shocked and angered that he was brushing off my mother’s fate. Archie hadn’t seen Nerissa for nearly sixteen years. She wasn’t a survivor. She was fragile. Exposed to the world, the open air and the creatures in it, she’d wither like a hothouse bloom. “Is that supposed to make me feel any better about what I saw down there? Should I get back to tea and scones with your friend Valentina and leave all my troubles behind me?”

“Don’t you speak to me that way,” Archie snapped back.
“You have no idea what went on between your mother and me. Like it or not, Aoife, I know her better than you do.”

I felt tears press up against my eyes, hot and traitorous. I couldn’t cry in front of my father. Couldn’t show him how I was panicking over not being able to find Nerissa, and over everything else that had come out of my one misguided moment of trusting the wrong person. I covered the panic with anger instead. “Oh, really?” I whispered, because that was all I could say. “Where were you, up until a few weeks ago? Oh, that’s right, you left your bastard children to rot in Lovecraft and went on your merry way. You didn’t even care that Conrad and I existed until Draven decided to use me to get at you.” I breathed hard, feeling the anger heat my cheeks and quicken my heart, burning away the tears. “You left us,
Dad
. You left us to whatever might happen. So no, I don’t believe you, and I don’t think of you as my father. Not in any way except by blood.” I had to get out of the close little room, which was hot and smelled cloyingly of rosewater, no doubt Valentina’s doing. I scrabbled at the hatch.

Archie jumped up and slammed the door shut before I could fully yank it open. “You are a
child
, Aoife,” he said, color rising in his face. “You’re a smart child, and a resourceful one, but there are things you don’t yet understand about your mother, or me.”

“Then tell me,” I said. My heart thumped in time with Archie’s ragged, angry breaths. “Tell me, or I have no reason to trust you and never will.” The simple truth coming out lightened me to a surprising degree. I’d been waiting, consciously or not, a long while to say that to Archie’s face.

My father slumped, like someone had opened a valve
and let the air out of him. “That’s fair,” he said. “That’s honest. Look, sweetheart. I know I wasn’t any kind of father to you. Not in any way that mattered.” He pointed at the second chair again, and this time I joined him. Hearing him admit it so easily had extinguished my rage like a bucket of ice water. I’d imagined telling Archie off in so many different ways, and now I just felt like a petulant, spoiled brat, whining because her father hadn’t bought her a pony.

I’d never expected him to admit it. And I’d never expected the deep ache in my chest when he did. I’d
wanted
a father. I could pretend I only hated him for leaving, but I’d always wanted him back, as well. And every day and month and year he didn’t come had made the knife cut a little deeper into the wound.

I didn’t hate Archie anymore, I realized. He’d screwed up. So had I. But maybe I didn’t have to be a child. Maybe I could be a girl who tried to forgive him.

“Look, I was really mad …,” I started, but Archie held up his hand.

“Don’t you start apologizing for speaking your mind,” Archie told me. “That’s a dangerous habit to get into.” He glanced at the door for a second, then went to the wardrobe and pulled an old, dusty evening jacket from its hanger, fishing in the pocket for a pack of cigarettes. “Open the porthole, will you?” he said. “If Valentina smells this I’ll catch hell.”

I did as he said, too drained to do much else, and sat back. He was being remarkably calm. I could have misjudged the hardness in his face—maybe Archie wasn’t unyielding. Maybe he wore the face as a shield. I did the same thing, when I was hurt and angry.

“I didn’t know you smoked,” I said. It was all I could think of.

Archie pulled a silver lighter from his pocket and lit the cigarette, exhaling with a sigh. “I have a lot of bad habits. Is that all right for a father to admit?” He shrugged. “Too late now.” He tapped ash into my empty saucer and sat forward. “I know you don’t believe me that Nerissa is safe, but you have to trust me—if anyone can outrun the ghouls and the Proctors, it’s your mother.” He squeezed my shoulder—not a long gesture, or a gentle one, but solid. “I know you’re worried about her, and that you came back for her, but you need to trust me when I say this: We need to be a family, to get through what’s happened. And what’s coming. If you can just take me at my word, I promise we will get Nerissa back.” He inhaled once, sharply, then stubbed out the cigarette and slid the unburned portion back into his pack. “Can you give me that? Just until we get where we’re going?”

I thought, really, it was a pretty simple thing to ask. Archie had rescued me, after all. Let himself tell me how he really felt. I could wait to interrogate him with the million questions I had, about the Brotherhood and my Weird and the Fae, just a little longer.

“Aoife?” he said, his expression begging me to just go along with him.

“Okay,” I said. “But you and I really need to talk when we get—Where
are
we going?” I asked, peering out the porthole. I saw that we’d been following the coast as the land got narrower and narrower. I figured we were tracking over Cape Cod, and could see two small islands in the distance.

“Valentina’s summerhouse,” Archie answered. “Can’t go back to Graystone—the Kindly Folk—the Fae, whatever
you call them—and the Proctors both’ll be crawling all over it.”

“Are her parents expecting us?” I said, and immediately felt inane. Who cared about manners at a time like this?

Archie snorted. “Hardly. The elder Crosleys live down in New Amsterdam. Where it’s safe.” His lip twitched, just the barest flicker of scorn, but I caught it, and it dawned on me that Archie didn’t feel any more comfortable with the money dripping off the
Munin
and Valentina herself than I did.

“I suppose Valentina’s home is all right,” I offered. It had to be safer than Lovecraft, even though small towns and villages didn’t offer the protection of big cities. Then again, the lack of iron would keep me from getting sick a little longer, so I supposed the mortal danger balanced that.

Though with things like Tremaine around, what good had protection done?

“Thank you,” Archie sighed. “And I meant it—I’m glad you’re all right.”

I felt my first real smile in what seemed like years flicker. Just a spark, but it felt good to know that
somebody
other than Dean and Cal cared if I turned into ghoul food. “I know you’re angry that I went back to Lovecraft,” I said. “And I know it wasn’t that bright, but I’d do it again. It’s my fault Nerissa is … is … out there.”

“Hey,” Archie said, squeezing my shoulder again, longer and harder this time. “None of that. Your mother isn’t a fool. She will have found a place to hole up. It’s how she survived as long as she did, when the Fae were after her.” He shoved a clean handkerchief into my hands, and I was embarrassed he’d even noticed my tears. “We’ll find her eventually, or
she’ll find you. I know you blame yourself, but you’re going to have to stop trying to find her and set things right all by yourself. You’re going to get yourself killed.”

I looked at him, knotting the handkerchief between my fists. The fine linen turned to a wrinkled lump in my grasp. “You don’t seem all that worried about her. About any of this.”

“Of course I am,” Archie said. “But tearing out my hair and running straight into a herd of ghouls isn’t going to help anyone. Not Nerissa, not you.” He opened the hatch. “Nerissa is smart, Aoife. She always was. Smart and a survivor. She’ll be fine. I’m more worried about you.”

I squirmed under his scrutiny. “I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine,” Archie said. “Aoife, you can’t beat yourself up about what happened with Tremaine. The Fae trick you. It’s what they do. How they survive. You did a terrible thing with the Engine, but your mother—It’s not your fault. You did it, but the blame doesn’t lie with you.”

“He tricked me,” I whispered. I swiped viciously at my face with Archie’s handkerchief, hating that I was showing weakness at all, never mind to my father. “Tremaine tricked me, but I shouldn’t have left her.”

Archie looked as if he was going to reach for me, then drew back when another guttural sob came out. I was glad. We weren’t at the point where we could touch each other like a normal father and daughter. “Listen,” he said. “I guarantee, the minute no one was around to pump her full of sedatives, Nerissa was over that fence,” Archie said. “She’s a firecracker.” He smiled, as quickly as he’d glared before, and I wished that I could add another question to my list, about what Nerissa was like before Conrad and I were born.
Before all the badness that came down on us after Archie left. “You’re a lot like her.”

I handed back the handkerchief, now a stained and soaked mess. “I’m going to be as crazy as she is if I stay in the Iron Land, I know that much.” I sighed.

Archie shrugged. “Probably. I don’t know you that well, strange as that is to say about your own flesh and blood, but I hope that changes.” He took a step from the cabin. “I’ve got to get back to the bridge. If you need something before we land, Valentina can get it for you.”

I looked back at the wardrobe. One side was my father’s jackets. The other side held dresses and skirts, rows of shoes lined up neatly on the bottom and hatboxes stacked along the top shelf. Archie knew Nerissa, but there were no signs of her here. Here, it was Valentina’s domain, and I wasn’t sure I could accept that. “How long?” I asked Archie. He blinked at me in surprise.

“Valentina? I … Well. A few years, I guess.”

I looked past his broad shoulder out into the main cabin, where Valentina sat with Bethina and Conrad, sipping tea. Dean paced from one porthole to the next, never sitting still.

“My mother asked for you,” I told Archie. “Over and over, all the time I visited her. She kept talking about you and asking for you.” I stared him down, waiting for something. I wasn’t sure what. Guilt? An admission that I wasn’t the only one who’d left Nerissa behind?

I got nothing except the inscrutable mask once again, the frown lines and the cold glance of my father’s glittering emerald eyes. “Aoife,” he said. His tone was as heavy as an iron door. “I’m sorry, truly, that you feel that way. But what
went on between Nerissa and me is complicated, and my being with Valentina is my business. Not to put too fine a point on it.”

He might as well have slapped me. Although he and Nerissa hadn’t even talked since just after I was born, the idea that he’d managed to find himself someone new didn’t sit well with me. Maybe it was a selfish way to think, but whenever I thought about my father and Valentina, my stomach twisted involuntarily. “Are you going to marry her?” I asked bitterly, loudly enough to make Dean look up from where he was examining the antiques and curiosities on the wall.

“I’d like to,” Archie said, pulling back from me a bit and looking surprised at how forward I was. “But Valentina doesn’t believe marriage is necessary.” The
Munin
shuddered in the wind and he turned and left, making his way back to the bridge. From where I sat I could see him take the wheel again. Valentina stared at me for a moment before leaning over to refill Bethina’s teacup, and I flushed hot, looking away.

I couldn’t say that if Dean and I were separated, after years and years I wouldn’t move on. Find somebody new, especially if they cared about me as much as my father clearly cared about Valentina. The way his features softened when he talked about her made me almost jealous. They weren’t soft at all when he talked to me, so far.

But I doubted I’d be able to forget Dean. I doubted I’d be able to say our being apart was for the best. And for that, I found my father’s attitude callous. I decided that I wouldn’t ask him any of those questions that were burning me up about him and Nerissa after all. I couldn’t hear him talk about my mother while Valentina was here, safe and alive.

I went into the main cabin and over to a porthole away from the others and stared out at the passing landscape, trying to let the hum of the
Munin
’s machines calm my mind and take me away from my racing, angry thoughts about my father, Valentina and everything else.

The ship, under Archie’s guidance, flew on, over the spindly arm of Cape Cod, past stately white-painted mansions hugging the coastline. The destruction was less here, but I could still see creatures moving among the low scrub, darting and jumping from place to place. An overturned jitney on the side of the road lay smoking, steam wafting from under the crushed hood like spirits escaping into the cold air. No people.