The Nightmare Garden

the Munin. “We could be alone in there.”

Dean’s smile came slowly, but it warmed me from the inside out. “I like the way you think, princess.”

“I am the brains of this operation,” I said, and then shoved him lightly and took off across the grass at a run.

“Oh, you are gonna get it when I catch you,” Dean called as I darted away from his grasp, feeling lighthearted for the first time that day. He followed me until we’d climbed the ladder into the Munin, both of us out of breath and shivering from the cold.

Dean snapped his lighter and illuminated our way into the cabin, where he shut the hatch and then turned to me, stripping off his jacket. I sat on the edge of the bunk, feeling the satiny brush of the fine linen on the backs of my legs. Valentina had given me fresh stockings and a garter belt to replace the ones I’d destroyed on the beach, and suddenly I could feel every inch of them against my skin.

I couldn’t leave the Crosley house, I couldn’t fix what was happening outside it, but I could be myself with Dean. Never mind that my hands shook when I gripped Dean’s biceps, his wiry muscles moving under my hands as he lowered me to the mattress, the length of his body pressing against mine. I could feel his weight and smell his smell—cigarettes and leather and woodsmoke. It covered me and pushed away all the helplessness and the choking feeling of being caught in a spiral of events that I had as much control over as an oak leaf over a hurricane.

“I like being this close to you, Dean,” I whispered.

“And I you, princess,” he whispered back. “What do you want to do?”

“Honestly?” I propped myself up, looking into his eyes, and bit my lip.

“Honesty is good,” Dean said.

“I want to take a nap,” I confessed. “I’m exhausted, and that house is so echoing. I can never really drift off.” I was self-conscious all of a sudden. Would he get mad that I didn’t want to just make out until we either got caught or had to go in to supper? Would he go find someone who would, when we left here, if I kept putting him off? “Or we could just go inside,” I rushed. Dean stopped me moving.

“Don’t do that,” he said. “Don’t leave.”

“I-I’m sorry,” I stuttered. “I just …”

“Hey, calm down,” Dean said, and I managed to stop my frantic babbling long enough to look into his eyes. As always, the calm gray seas within soothed me. He stroked my hair, pulling me back to his chest so that I could hear his heartbeat. In that moment, I never wanted to move. “So lay yourself down and sleep.” He grinned at me. “How many guys get to sleep next to somebody who looks like you?”

“Just you,” I murmured, eyelids already fluttering now that I knew he wasn’t upset with me.

“Damn right,” Dean said, pulling a blanket over us. “And in my book, that makes me the luckiest guy on this messed-up planet.”

“Good night, Dean,” I whispered. I planted a light kiss on his chest before nestling my head against him. His arms went around me, and I was so warm and calm that I never wanted to get up.

“Good night, princess,” he said softly. “Sweet dreams.”

The figure didn’t seem surprised to see me, and I wasn’t as shocked as I had been in the past to see him.

All the skies were red, bleeding sunsets and throbbing, bruise-colored sunrises. The black things that drifted above were close now, close enough to cast shadows.

I no longer even bothered asking what he wanted from me. I just stood, watching the great gear tick off the heartbeats of this place.

“You are unhappy,” the figure said.

I shrugged, watching absently as, one by one, the suns winked out, replaced by stars, and listening to the glass bell that made up the figure’s domain vibrate as the great shapes passed back and forth overhead.

“You have regrets,” the figure said. He reached out a hand to me. His robe fell back, and it was a disappointingly common hand, pale but not too pale, as if it had once been a darker shade and had spent a long time in the dark, leaching pigment into the nothing around it. “Please don’t look that way,” he said. “I do like your visits, you know.”

“Unless you can bring back my mother, mend my father’s life and turn the world back to how it was before it got ripped apart,” I told him, “then you’d better get used to this expression on my face.”

The figure withdrew like I’d burned him, hand disappearing into the black miasma of his body. Eyes glittered at me from under his hood. “I shouldn’t,” he said. He looked at the shapes overhead. “But it’s a new day, not an old day. This is a day never before seen by the universe, by any spoke of the wheel.”

“What are you talking about?” I sighed. “I hate your damn riddles.”

“This is the day and the night and the place in between,” the figure told me. “You can see it when you sleep. You cannot cross into it via magic or machine, but you can dream your way into it. Dreams are in every world, Aoife. In everything. Time. Dust. Your blood. The things you can’t remember when you wake.”

“Meaning?” I spread my hands.

“The nightmare clock can find your dreams,” said the figure. “It can weave them and unravel them. It can make your dreams real and allow you to cross not just worlds but time. If you can dream it, the nightmare clock can give you the ability to make it a reality, no matter where or when or how impossible your dream may seem.” He stretched his hand out once more and grabbed mine, and I realized that he was as cold as I knew the airless space outside the glass was. “Aoife,” he whispered. “The nightmare clock can undo what you have done, what plagues your dreams. The nightmare clock can set you free.”

Footsteps woke me, all at once, like breaking the surface of icy water. I sat upright and knocked Dean’s arm off me in the process. He grunted and scrubbed a hand across his face. “Not awake yet,” he muttered.

“I heard something,” I insisted. Before Dean could respond, the hatch swung open and Valentina appeared, aether lantern in hand. The sky had gone dark while we’d been asleep, and the blackness inside the Munin’s cabin was near absolute.

“There’s that mystery solved, then,” Valentina said, lowering the lantern. “We thought you’d been devoured by something.”

“No such luck,” I said sarcastically, trying to cover for my embarrassment at being found here. Valentina looked me up and down, and I could see her eyes pause on my mussed hair. Never mind the fact that Dean was lying next to me.

“Get up,” she said shortly. “Your father is in a mood, and I have a feeling none of us wants to have this conversation.”

Dean got up, grabbing his jacket and pulling it on. “We weren’t doing anything you need to be worried about,” he told Valentina. I nodded vigorous agreement, glad it was mostly dark in the Munin and she couldn’t see that my face was on fire.

“Fine, but I doubt Aoife’s father will believe that,” she told him. She didn’t look angry, but she sure wasn’t happy, mouth compressed into a thin line. She jerked her free hand at me. “Come along, Aoife. Your father is waiting.”

I made sure the buttons on my dress hadn’t come unfastened and the seams on my stockings matched. I slipped my shoes back on and went as far as the hatch, drawing even with Valentina. I knew she was doing me a favor, letting me know she wasn’t going to tell my father how she’d found us, even if we hadn’t been up to anything. I couldn’t help wondering, though, what I was going to have to do in exchange for her silence. “Thanks,” I mumbled. “I swear I wasn’t doing anything.” Not entirely true, but not entirely a lie. Half-truths seemed to be the order of the day.

Valentina sighed. “Aoife, I was sixteen once. Just go find your father. And quickly. He’s terribly worried.”

Worried that I was dead or worried that I wasn’t doing exactly as I was told, even if he hadn’t told me yet? I decided it didn’t matter right now—I’d gotten away with sneaking off, and if Archie wanted to yell and rant at me a bit, I’d take it.

I crossed the lawn back to the main house and found Cal sitting at the table in the sunporch, playing a game of solitaire, his greasy hair falling in his eyes.

“You might want to check a mirror,” I told him. “Before Bethina figures out you aren’t just afraid of bathing