The Nightmare Garden

me to where Conrad was shoving roast beef into his mouth.

“Right,” he said. “Conrad. Of course.” He shoved the dirty rag into his back pocket and gave me another of those enigmatic half smiles. “Get some sleep, kid. You look exhausted.”

I was exhausted, so I didn’t argue, just went up to the room Valentina had told me was mine when she was running around playing hostess. I didn’t understand how she could take the time, considering what was going on. Valentina definitely seemed as if she was showing off—her grand house, her skills at hospitality. Wasn’t it enough that she was stunningly beautiful and rich? Did she have to be perfect at everything else too?

I huffed as I flopped backward on the creaky bed, examining the room to which Valentina had exiled me. Maybe exiled wasn’t the right word. Removed. I was rooms away from Dean, my brother and my friends, never mind the master suite. Just like at the Academy—stick the charity case up under the rafters and forget about her.

My room was in a corner so small that the ceiling formed a pyramid where the sides of the roof met. The furniture was mismatched and clearly picked from other parts of the house. A chipped mirror over a dressing table told me I was dirty, tired and really in need of a change of clothes. I got back off the carved wooden bed, which was covered with a crazy quilt and a long-forgotten family of porcelain dolls, and went to the wardrobe to look for some clean underthings, at the very least.

Cal and Bethina were still downstairs—I could hear them laughing. They could enjoy Valentina’s house with none of the resentment the place triggered in me. Dean’s whereabouts were a mystery, and if I knew Conrad he was probably hanging off my father and Valentina, determined to play the part of the good son.

If my mother had been safe, I would have tried to give Valentina a chance to be my stepmother and my father a chance to be happy. I would have forced myself to at least be polite to her, even if we’d never be the best of friends.

But the world was turning to ashes, and Archie didn’t seem nearly as concerned with that fact as he did with his pretty blond doll.

I’d feel better if I were clean. That was the only thing I was sure of. I rooted around in the wardrobe and found a robe made of silk so old it crumbled in places under my hands. It was the only thing remotely resembling nightclothes that fit, though, so I pulled it around me and let the musty, sharp scent envelop my skin.

The bottom of the wardrobe held a stack of old composition books, so old the pages breathed dust when I smoothed one open. Searching the drawers, I found a pencil with a little lead left. My bag and my original journal were gone, but I needed to write. Maybe if I got all these racing, swelling, screaming thoughts out of my head, I’d be able to make a new plan.

I dated the corner of the page and began.

Fourth entry:

I failed. I had a plan, I executed it, and I still failed.

My mother is not in Lovecraft and the city is gone. Lovecraft is an abattoir filled with ghouls. My father has a girlfriend who could be my sister and he doesn’t think I should have any problems with that fact. He just says I have to “trust” him, that he has the answers that will let us fix the Gates and find Nerissa. I want to trust him. I want a father, a family. I want people I can trust. But everything that’s happened since I destroyed the Engine makes it close to impossible.

The world is burning, and all I can do is watch and feel the flames on my face. I don’t have a plan to put the fires out. I don’t even know where to look for water.

I didn’t only fail my mother. I failed as a Gateminder.

There has to be a way to stop Draven and put things back like they were. To stop ghouls from roaming free, to stop the Gates from being thrown open to allow whatever can find them to make their way from world to world and cause more destruction. To restore the order the Brotherhood of Iron worked so hard to protect.

I think of the way my life was. I was so afraid of the Proctors, of going crazy, but also of getting bad grades and whether my hairstyle would get me teased. Such small worries now. Of course, that was a life built on lies, but innocent people weren’t in harm’s way.

A life of lies or a life of nothing except this vast feeling of loss inside me.

Is there another way?

I threw down the pencil and slapped the book shut. How was scribbling maudlin little thoughts supposed to save the world? Was the whole Brotherhood of Iron indolent and/or insane? Where were they? Why wasn’t Archie contacting them, trying to find a solution to all this?

What was he waiting for?

In the middle of my worrying, a knock sounded at my door, and I jumped, tearing my robe at the shoulder. I shoved the notebook under the threadbare pillows on my bed and got up to answer it.

Valentina stood on the other side, a dress draped over her arm.

I let my distaste show in my posture, something I’d learned from Dean. “Can I help you, Valentina?”

In her other hand she held a quilted ditty bag, which she held out to me. “Peace offering?”

I looked at the thing askance. Valentina didn’t have to try to befriend me—she already had my father, and Conrad was clearly smitten with her presence. What could she possibly gain from kissing up to me?

“What is it?” I didn’t take the bag.

“Let me in and I’ll show you,” Valentina told me, attempting a smile. It looked about as real as the creamy, note-perfect platinum tones in her smooth, glowing hair, which was to say, not at all. In my old life, friendly faces bearing gifts were usually just looking to trick or mock me, or make me look stupid for the other students’ amusement. I’d learned a long time ago not to trust them, so why should Valentina be any different?

A tiny, doubtful part of me whispered that I was being awfully hard on Valentina, but I told it to be quiet. “I’m very tired,” I said aloud. “I think I’m going to bed.” I started to shut the door, but Valentina stopped it with her foot. She and I exchanged polite stares for a moment, before she sighed and dropped her gaze. I was surprised—she was in charge here, the lady of the house, and she could just as easily have demanded Archie make me behave as tried to reason with me.

“Look, Aoife,” she said, and her voice was no longer the pleasant trilling of a well-trained bird. All at once, she just looked tired. “I know you don’t like me. It could hardly be more obvious, really. But I love your dad, and because of that, I want the two of us to get along. Can you give me five minutes to make my case?”

I felt a tightening in my chest. Five minutes with Valentina would feel like betraying Nerissa the entire time.

“I’m not asking you to take a side,” Valentina said quietly. “I just want you to know I’m not as awful as you seem determined to make me out to be.”

I had some doubts about that, but she looked so defeated I felt the resolve to hate her washing away like the dunes outside under heavy seas. She really wasn’t much older than me—if I’d been in her shoes, I’d have been at my wits’ end trying to deal with somebody so openly hostile.

“Fine,” I said, and pulled the door all the way open. “You can come in, I guess.”

“Well, thank the stars for that,” Valentina said. “You’re even more stubborn than your father, you know that?”

“No,” I told her, sitting on the bed again and pulling my knees to my chest. “I barely know him, never mind whether he’s stubborn or not.” It made me happy to know she saw some similarity between my father and me. I felt a bit less like we’d simply been thrown together as father and daughter by fate. Maybe something other than the Weird tied us together after all.

“He is,” Valentina assured me. “Stubborn as an old goat.” She pulled a hanger from the wardrobe and put the dress she’d brought in on it, placing it on a hook inside the door and smoothing it with her neat, manicured hands. “It didn’t look like you had any clean clothes,” she explained. “You and I should be around the same size, though I’m a bit larger in the bust.” She drew a packet of hairpins from the ditty bag and put them on the edge of the dressing table. “You’ll get there. I can already tell you’re going to be a true beauty.”

I chewed on my lip, not able to think of anything to say, so I just settled for blushing furiously and staring at my feet.

“You don’t hear that much, huh?” Valentina said, raising an eyebrow. “Well, take it from me—when you grow into your face, you’re going to stop traffic.”

“You’re the only one who thinks so, I’m sure,” I mumbled. “Not even my mother ever said I was pretty.”