The Nightmare Garden

“I’m pleased to meet you,” he told Valentina, seeming calm enough. “There were some letters in my father’s house from you. Archie and I never spoke about you, but I’d hoped we’d meet someday.”

Valentina blinked at him, staring for a moment, and I stared as well. Where was Conrad’s sullen rage at being abandoned? The outrage that Archie had clearly taken up with another woman? I was feeling both in spades, but my brother seemed pleased as punch to be here.

Valentina recovered inside of a second and held out her hand. “And it’s really a pleasure to meet you at last, Conrad. Your father has told me so much about you and your sister both.”

I shot a glance toward the bridge while pleasantries were being exchanged. My father stood alone, silhouetted against the glass. I rose and climbed up the brass steps and stood at the lip of the bridge, feeling awkward but needing to see him, to speak to him again and convince myself this was really happening. How to start a conversation like that? Why did you save me from the Proctors? Where have you been? Why did you leave our family behind?

“Two of my friends are still in Nephilheim,” I said at last. “Cal and Bethina.” I figured he’d at least appreciate my being to the point.

“Bethina, really? My maid? She’s come a long way.” He looked over his shoulder at me. The Munin was flown standing up, with a half-moon brass wheel for the rudder and two controls for the fans. It was really a beautiful craft in every way. If I hadn’t been put so off guard by how I’d come aboard, I would have been excited to see something that was this much art along with its function. And would have been doubly excited that my father was at the helm and I was face to face with him for only the second time in my life.

“We need to get them,” I said. “Or you need to let me off there so we can go somewhere safe together.”

Archibald locked the rudder in place and turned to me, folding his arms. He was taller than I remembered from meeting him in the interrogation room in Ravenhouse, and his eyes held none of the warmth they’d had then. “And what if I said no?”

I kept his gaze and adopted the same icy tone. “Then I suppose it’s been nice to see you again.”

Archibald shook his head, dropping his arms. “I swear, you’re even more stubborn than your mother.” I flinched. It was strange to think of his spending time with my mother before Conrad and I were born, learning her expressions and her moods and seeing them in me.

My father banked the craft, dropping us over the dour gray roofs of Nephilheim. “Don’t think I don’t know,” he told me, “that your little buddy Cal Daulton is a ghoul. And don’t think I’m going to welcome him aboard.”

“He saved my life, Dad,” I said, folding my arms to mimic his earlier posture. “He’s not like the other ghouls.”

“I know,” he said. “That’s why I’m picking him up.” He spun the wheel and we crossed the river, drifting up the far bank, over the foundry and into the village, which from this vantage looked like a ruined toy, stepped on by an angry child.

“There,” I said, pointing to the broad avenue where we’d left Cal and Bethina. My father throttled back the fans, hovering, and the Munin shivered as the thin, delicate ladders unfurled from its hatches. I saw figures emerge from the nearest ruined cottage, and mere moments later, Cal and Bethina were in the main cabin with the rest of us.

“Mr. Grayson!” Bethina shrieked, running to my father and wrapping her arms around him. She’d been his chambermaid; he probably knew her better than he’d known me, before all this happened. I was just relieved they were both all right, and didn’t begrudge her the reunion.

My father smiled at her and patted her on the back. “Glad to see you in one piece, Bethina. Didn’t I dismiss you, though?”

She shrugged. “I didn’t have anywhere else to go. Someone had to keep your house in order.”

Cal sidled up to me. “That’s your father?”

“In the flesh,” I said, still barely able to believe it myself. Every time I looked at Archie, he seemed like he should shimmer and vanish like an illusion, rather than be standing not ten feet from me, pouring Bethina a cup of tea.

“Something to sweeten it?” he asked, reaching for a cut-glass brandy decanter in the sideboard.

“Oh, no,” said Bethina primly. “You know I don’t do that sort of thing, Mr. Grayson.”

“Seems nice enough,” Cal muttered to me. “Certainly not the raving lunatic Draven was always yelling about.”

“Jury’s out on the first part,” I said, just as Cal’s eyes lit on Valentina.

“Who’s the dame?” he said, brows going up. “She looks like a lanternreel star.”

I spread my hands. “I’ve been here about ten minutes longer than you have, Cal. Her name is Valentina. Aside from that, your guess is as good as mine.”

Valentina bubbled up to us, carrying a tray holding two delicate china cups painted with briar roses. “Tea?”

I took it and pointed to the brandy. “I think I’ll have something in mine.” My old teacher, Mrs. Fortune, would give us tea with brandy when we had the flu at the Academy. I could use the calming effect just then.

“No, you won’t be having any brandy,” my father returned crisply. “The rest of you, make yourselves comfortable. Conrad and Aoife, we need to speak privately.”

He gestured to a small hatch that led to the room Valentina had appeared from and waited until we’d followed him in before shutting and latching the door. I felt as if we’d been called on the carpet for passing notes during class, not as if we were having the first real meeting with our father, ever. His expression was stern and his eyes betrayed no emotion beyond annoyance.

This was not how I’d imagined my first conversation with Archie going, and I could tell from Conrad’s fidgeting and his frown that he felt the same way.

“First of all,” Archie said, “what the hell were you two thinking, going back into Lovecraft?”

“I—” I started, but Archie pointed his finger at me and focused his eyes on my brother.

“I’ll get to you. Conrad?”

Conrad spread his hands as if to ask what was the big deal. “It wasn’t my idea. I was actually against it.”

“Oh, come on, Conrad!” I shouted, furious that now we were actually caught, he was trying to wriggle out of getting in trouble. “You were the one who ran off in the first place! It’s because of you that I’m even here! You and that stupid letter!”

“I wrote that letter to get you out of Lovecraft, not rip apart space and time and destroy the entire damn city!” Conrad shouted back.

Rage overwhelmed me and I cocked my arm back and whipped my teacup at Conrad’s head. He ducked and the cup hit the wall, sending tea and china shards spattering across the cream-colored damask wallpaper.

“Enough, both of you!” Archie bellowed. He stepped between us, pointing at the door. “Conrad, give us a minute.”

“You always overreact,” Conrad muttered at me. “That’s why we’re in this mess.”

“You’re an idiot,” I returned, too angry to watch what I was saying. Conrad could treat me like I was still his excitable little sister, but I’d managed on my own for over a year after he’d run off. I’d managed after he’d nearly killed me. He didn’t get to talk to me like that any longer.

Archie thumped him on the side of the head with his knuckles. “I said enough. This is not your sister’s fault. Not entirely. Go.”

Conrad turned and stormed out, slamming the hatch behind him hard enough to rattle the framed paintings on the walls. In the silence that followed I looked anywhere but at my father’s face: A bunk in the corner immaculately made up with cream linens and rows of clothes neatly hanging in the wardrobe. A brass globe swaying from the ceiling, lit from the inside by aether. Outlines of continents and seas glowing softly against a ceiling painted like the night sky, constellations spelled out with silver thread. Finally, I ran out of things to stare at and had to look at my father again and see his shoulders slumped with fatigue, the dark circles under his eyes and the new lines along the sides of his mouth. I felt horrible for screaming at Conrad, for breaking my father’s things. What must he think of me after that?