The Nightmare Garden

Archie sighed, sitting down in one of the two small, overstuffed chairs by the cabin’s porthole. “Have a seat, Aoife.”

I stayed where I was and fidgeted. Being around him was still too new for me to sit and act comfortable—as if we were actually father and daughter. Besides, if I sat, I couldn’t study him while we talked, look for the similarities in our faces that I wanted to be there. I wanted to be a little bit like Archie—otherwise, my only fate was to end up like Nerissa.

Archie’s eyes were an eerie reflection of my own when we locked gazes, dark green and glittering, like something that had waited for light a long time in a dark place.

But his held none of the uncertainty mine did, just a calculating hardness that seemed to measure me up and dismiss me as wanting. I’d always hoped that Archie would be warm, like the fathers in books and lanternreels who came home every evening, hung up their hats and kissed their wives and children hello. But I’d known I was probably just fantasizing. His hard eyes weren’t really a surprise, just a disappointment.

“It’s good to see you,” he said at last, more quietly than I had expected. “It’s been a really long time.”

This I hadn’t expected. A lecture, maybe, or a punishment for making him rescue us from the city, but not the sadness that hung on his frame like an ill-fitting coat. “Yes,” I said at last, matching his soft tone. “It has.”

“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