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.
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
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
