Iron Codex 2 - The Nightmare Garden (22 page)

I sat for a long time, listening to the house tick and settle. There was a draft coming through the windows, and I burrowed under the covers of the tiny bed. It was like being back at the Academy, in my drafty dormitory under my threadbare school-issued coverlet. Not exactly comforting, but familiar.

What was I supposed to do now? Sit and wait for my father and Valentina to solve things? If I was going to be the daughter Archie had asked me to be, the trusting one, the answer was probably yes.

If I was being honest with myself, that sounded like trading in one set of rules designed to keep me passive and sweet for another designed to keep me obedient and not asking questions.

But before I could debate any more, my mind decided that I’d been awake for enough days in a row, and I fell asleep hearing the wind worm its way through the cracks and hollows of the house.

*  *  *

In the morning, I realized that I’d slept dreamless and dead to the world for the first time in weeks. My neck was cramped from lying on the rollers. I unpinned them and pulled them off my head, combing the curls with my fingers. I wrapped my head with a rag while I took a bath and then wiped the mirror free of moisture to see what I looked like.

Valentina had been right. I hardly recognized myself. My dark hair set off my skin—which until this moment I’d always lamented as too pale—as it fell in gentle waves to just below my shoulders, swooping low across my brow to partially shadow my gaze.

I’d almost call myself pretty. Almost.

I tried not to let my shock at how I looked distract me while I got dressed. I was still here, in Valentina’s house, and still had no idea what my father wanted from me beyond shutting up and doing as I was told.

The dress Valentina had left for me was plain blue wool, with a straight skirt and mother-of-pearl buttons up the bodice. It was a lady’s dress, not a full-skirted thing with a wide, round collar made for a child. This dress required stockings, a garter belt and pumps, not a petticoat and stiff, flat shoes.

I put it on gratefully. Now that I’d distanced myself from them, the clothes I’d gotten in Windhaven really did stink.

I found underthings in the wardrobe, rolling on stockings that smelled of mothballs, and when I ventured outside my door, a pair of tan leather pumps with low, practical heels
sat next to my doorway in the hall. Valentina and I had the same size feet, it turned out, and the pumps gave me height that I loved, even if I did wobble crazily until I learned how to balance on the narrow heel.

All right
, I admitted.
She’s not my favorite person on the face of the earth, but she’s not an evil stepmother, either
. In time, maybe I could accept the fact that my father had replaced Nerissa with her. After all, it wasn’t really Valentina’s fault. That lay wholly with my father, and meant an entirely different unpleasant conversation we would have to undertake at some point.

But not now. Now, my stomach growled and reminded me that real food was nearby, and I hadn’t had nearly enough of it lately. I headed for the stairs.

In daylight, with a chance to look around undisturbed, I saw that the Crosley house wasn’t in much better shape than my old, mud-stained clothes. Everything was clearly expensive, overstuffed and velvet-covered and practically oozing out the money it had cost, but it was all curiously faded and dusty, as if nobody had come to the house for a long time and the house preferred it that way.

I followed the smell of bacon into the kitchen, which was vast and modern, both icebox and range a pale pink I’d only seen over a makeup counter in a department store. All the latest gadgets to mash and peel and open cans under the power of clockwork rather than doing it yourself sat on the countertops, covered in a thick layer of dust.

My father stood at the stove with his back to me, and I watched him for a moment. I tried to see myself in him, as I had the day before, and as I’d done with his portrait at Graystone before that. His posture wasn’t mine—he stood
feet apart and shoulders thrown back, even as he chopped onion and turned eggs in a frying pan.

Our hands moved the same way, though, sure and quick. Our hands knew what to do even if we didn’t. You needed steady hands and a delicate touch to be an engineer. It was the one way being smaller than everyone else in the School of Engines had come in handy. In those days, I could always fix what was broken.

“How long are you going to stand there?”

I ducked away reflexively at being caught and then looked at the toes of my shoes, my face heating. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sneak.”

Archie didn’t respond. He scooped up the onions and dropped them into a second frying pan, covering them with egg mixture from a pink porcelain mixing bowl. He tossed in a few lumps of soft white cheese and then wiped his hands on a blue-checked towel and turned to face me, sizing me up with those stony eyes once more. And once more, I felt like a squirming specimen under a microscope.

“How did you know I was here?” I said finally, to break the unbearable silence.

“Basic situational awareness isn’t a magic trick,” Archie said. “At least, not a very good one. And it’s something you’re going to have to learn, if you want to stay alive by more than pure luck.”

I bristled. He could at least give me a tiny bit of credit for staying alive this long. “It’s not just luck. I know things.”

Archie raised an eyebrow and then turned back to the stove, flipping the omelet in the pan with an expert hand. “You can’t fight. You don’t know wilderness survival. You
know nothing about the Fae or the Erlkin, or even the Gates. You’ve spent your whole life safe in Lovecraft.” He slid the omelet onto a plate and cut it into sections, placing them on several dishes along with potatoes and bacon and toast. “Tell me, Aoife—exactly what great feat of skill or strength kept you out of the clutches of the Proctors besides pure, blind luck?”

He turned back, set a plate on the table in front of me and folded his arms, awaiting an answer with the tilt of his head.

I stared at him for a moment, stared at the plate, and then, unable to contain myself, shoved the plate back at him, scattering food everywhere. “If you feel that way, Dad, why’d you ever pull me out of Lovecraft on your stupid, prissy airship and let your stupid, prissy girlfriend act like you two actually wanted me here? If I’m such an idiot, you should have just abandoned me to the damn ghouls.”

I turned and left the kitchen, my ridiculous shoes clacking on the wood floors, raising tiny hurricanes of dust in my wake. I snatched an overcoat from a tree by the wide French doors leading to the back deck and ran across the lawn, past the
Munin
, all the way down to the shore. My breath sawed in my chest, pushing the urge to scream to the surface.

I’d been right the first time. My father didn’t care about me. All he wanted to do was hold me up as an example of how he could do everything so much better.

As if I’d ever had a chance, with him leaving. He was a hypocrite, and he was cruel.

The waves were higher than my head on the beach, breaking with vibrations that raced up through my feet
where I stood on the sand. The heels of my shoes sank in, and I yanked them off viciously and threw them, along with my stockings. The freezing sand bit into my bare feet, and my toes went numb. Good. My whole body could have gone numb for all I cared in that moment. I wanted to smash up against something, like the surf, vent my rage on something tangible, but there was nothing there. I settled for staring furiously at the waves, tears blinding me as I faced the wind, breath coming in short, hot, razor-sharp gasps.

The ocean was gray, and far off I could see the wobbly horizon line, the promise of a larger storm to come. I stayed, relishing the sting of cold and salt on my face, waiting for the wind and rain to roll in and blanket me in their fury, so much larger than mine that it was the only thing that might erase how I felt right then.

“Aoife!” My father’s voice cut straight through the wind and the roar of the surf, and when he appeared at the top of the dune, he sounded as if he were right next to me. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

He came down the rickety weathered steps from the dune two at a time and crossed the sand to grab me by the arm. “It’s not safe out here by yourself! Anything could be wandering around!” His brow furrowed. “And where on the scorched earth are your shoes?”

I looked down at his hand, back at his face. Suddenly I couldn’t even muster the energy to be angry. He’d told me how he really felt, and that was that. Now that he’d been honest, I had no reason to be angry, or hopeful, or confused any longer. Just numb, like all the exposed bits of my skin. “Let go of me,” I said, flat as the wet sand around us. Far down the beach, some kind of aquatic mammal
had beached itself, white skeleton picked over by a horde of gulls.

“I …” Archie dropped his hand from my arm and stuck it in his hair instead, his face a mask of confusion and upset. The dark strands were laced with white and stood out from his head, toyed with by the wind. “I’m no good at this,” he said. “It’s not gonna do any good to sugarcoat it, Aoife—most Gateminders grow up learning how to do the job. And for various reasons, you didn’t. It’s going to be hard to teach you what you need to know in so short a time. But it doesn’t mean I’m …” He spread his hands, at a loss for words.

“Disappointed,” I finished for him. “And you are. I can see it.” Why wouldn’t he be? He was a Gateminder and I was his daughter who had destroyed everything he and the Brotherhood had tried to build up. Build up and keep safe for hundreds of years. I was a failure as a Grayson. There was no sugarcoating that, either.

“I’m disappointed in a whole hell of a lot,” Archie said. “I’m disappointed I couldn’t tell my daughter not to trust the first Fae who fed her a good story. I’m disappointed her mother went so crazy even I couldn’t fix her. I’m disappointed we live in a world that’s so full of lies it seeps poison like a snakebite. But I’m not disappointed in you, Aoife.” He reached out as if to cup my cheek, but then detoured to my shoulder, patting it awkwardly. I felt like I should pull away after what had happened, but I didn’t. I allowed myself the tiny hope that maybe things would turn out all right after my tantrum. “You’re my child,” Archie said. “We’re kinda stuck with each other.”

“I do have my Weird, you know,” I told him, drawing my brows together in reproach. “You act like I need rescuing,
but I can be useful.” I wanted my father to believe that more than anything.

Archie’s mouth curled into a smile. “Yeah, they seemed pretty excited about that in Ravenhouse when they caught you. It works on machines, huh?”

I nodded, adding my own smile. “Anything with moving parts. Some things are easier than others.”

Archie leaned down, and his expression was conspiratorial, like we were the same age. “Wanna see mine?”

His enthusiasm was infectious, and I thought I caught a glimpse of the boyish side that had entranced Valentina, and likely my mother. So different from his perpetual frown and judgmental gaze. I wanted to see more of that, so I said, “All right. I’d like that.” I stood back, excited, but not sure what to expect. Better to be out of the danger zone, as I’d learned when Cal and I had taken a welding class and he’d lit not one but three of his aprons on fire with his torch.

My father winked at me, then trained his eye on a pile of driftwood and dried seaweed that had washed up a few dozen feet farther down the beach. He opened his palm and blew on it, just the smallest touch of air to skin.

A split second later, the driftwood ignited with a
whump
, a jet of crimson fire rushing toward the sky.

Archie let out a whoop, and I clapped my hand over my mouth. I’d figured out from his journal that my father could conjure fire, but seeing it in reality was a whole new dimension of thrill. I stared, unable to stifle a grin that matched my father’s miles-wide one.

I wasn’t alone. We could both do things that would be considered heresy by any Proctor.

But it wasn’t born of anything evil. It was magic, pure and simple.

“So?” My father was breathing hard from the effort, his face flushed. In the warmth of the nearby fire, my skin was no longer numb.

“Pretty neat,” I admitted. My father looked so animated, I couldn’t resist teasing him a bit. “I’ve seen better.”

“ ‘Pretty neat’?”
Archie shook his head. “You kids today. What do I have to do to get your attention, dance a jig?”

I shook my head rapidly, trying not to giggle. “Please don’t. Really. It’s not necessary.”

Archie reached out and messed up the top of my hair. I didn’t care—Valentina’s beautiful curls were lost to the wind anyway. “Who taught you manners?”

It was like walking a tightrope—I took one step at a time and hoped I wouldn’t fall into a chasm. Archie was behaving like a father, me like a daughter, and I decided to just keep going until something did go wrong. “Certainly not you,” I teased.

“True enough,” Archie agreed. “Can’t say I’d have done a much better job if I’d been around. My manners are shit.” He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment and then looked at me, pained. “See? You’re not supposed to swear in front of your teenage daughter. I’m hopeless.”

“Trust me,” I said. “I’ve heard worse.” I knew that sooner or later, we’d run into another roadblock, have another fight, and things would go back to being strange and strained. But right now, I wanted to keep taking the tiny steps, keep swaying on the rope and enjoy a few minutes alone with my father.

The way things were going, they might be the only ones I’d get.

I pointed to Archie’s pocket watch, tucked into the front of his vest. My father’s clothes were nice, but they were also out of fashion by about ten years and clearly ripped and repaired dozens of times over. He was always just a bit too unkempt to maintain the appearance of a gentleman of his station. He looked more like a professor or a clock maker than somebody who lived in a grand house and could call flame out of thin air.

Then again, I supposed I looked more like the daughter of the same than what I really was.