and that patchy skin is hiding something.”
Cal looked up and gave me a glare. “Nice mouth. What’s gotten into you?”
“I’ve been summoned by Mr. Grayson,” I told him. “I’m pretty sure he’s going to read me the riot act.”
Cal grimaced. “Yeah, he was stomping around the library a minute ago, before he went out with Valentina to find you. He’s pretty steamed.”
“Of course he is,” I said, feeling the heavy dread of a punishment, a holdover from my days at the Academy. Meals, things like hot water and clean clothes, even our shoes, were taken away sometimes, for the smallest things. I didn’t think Archie was going to switch me, but the residual twinge of fear was still there.
I walked as slowly as I could, following the irregular lamplight to the library. It wasn’t anything like Graystone’s magnificent collection of books, not even close. This was small and cozy, stuffed with the sort of reading material wealthy people like the Crosleys put on display to prove they were educated. The potboilers and cheap romances were probably tucked behind the Proctor-approved classics and the fashionable novels.
“You think you can just run off whenever it suits you?” My father was sitting in one of the twin leather armchairs, the oxblood deep and slick by the glow of the fire in the grate. He was drinking, a bottle half empty and a glass more than that.
“I’m sorry,” I said, figuring contriteness was the first and easiest route to take. My father looked much angrier than Valentina, all the lines in his face deep and stark.
“I told you how dangerous the world is now,” my father said. “And I know you’re not stupid enough to not listen to me about that. So what is it, Aoife? Typical teenage willfulness? Or something else?” He picked up the glass, drained it and slammed it down. “I’ve got enough problems without my daughter sneaking off to canoodle with some useless greaser and letting me think she might be nothing but rags and bones in a ghoul’s nest for hours on end.” He poured and drank, and the glass landed again.
I stayed where I was until he glared at me. “Something you want to add?”
I chewed my lip for a moment and then decided he couldn’t get any angrier if I just asked. “Do you know anything about the … something called the nightmare clock?” I said softly.
Archie stopped moving, glass halfway to his mouth. “Where did you hear that?” he asked, in the same soft tone I’d used.
“It’s not important,” I said quickly, seeing his alarm. At the same time, though, his alarm told me this was real, or that I wasn’t the only person who’d had the dream. Not the only one the dream figure had talked to, not the only one to visit the strange room. With my father’s reaction, I couldn’t write the bleak figure off as a product of iron poisoning, the human world making the Fae blood in me boil with insanity. The dreams were more than my own fancies. The figure’s words echoed in my head.
I could go further and make a reality my oldest dream, awake or asleep—that my father had never left us. That he, Nerissa, Conrad and I were a family, together.
“Well, I never heard of such a curious phrase,” Archie said, and tossed back the last of his drink. “No idea what you’re talking about. Sounds like some story in a cheap magazine.”
That was one way Archie and I weren’t alike, I realized. He was a terrible liar. He couldn’t even look at me, and fidgeted uncomfortably in his seat, as if a colony of ants had taken up residence under his shirt.
“All right,” I said. “I suppose I’ll say goodnight, then.” I started to walk out, then stopped and looked back. “And I am sorry. For going off like that and worrying you.”
I sped out of the room before Archie could reply. His lie had told me a lot.
He had heard of the nightmare clock. And what my father knew about it scared him enough to make him lie to me about it. If he knew, someone else knew. Someone who might be willing to tell me the whole story, explain the cryptic riddles of my dream figure.
His knowing about the clock also meant that I’d been right: the dreams, the black figure and the endless skies, the great gear, all of it—they were at least partly real.
I felt a swell of happiness in my chest like a soap bubble, fragile but there. As I climbed the stairs to my room, my thoughts were racing. The nightmare clock could set me free—if the dream figure was telling the truth. Could I use it to undo what I’d done in Lovecraft? I had to think so. Otherwise it was just another dead end, another dashed hope. It was like a Gate, but with the power to move time and events already set. That, I could use. That would set me free, free of everything I’d let Tremaine make me do.
While I got ready for bed and crawled under my blankets, I decided I needed to find out, and fast—because if I had a chance to set everything right, I was taking it, no matter what.
My father was quiet at breakfast, holding his head in his hands. Valentina was by contrast unusually sharp and impatient for someone who prided herself on decorum. She slammed a coffee cup down at Archie’s elbow, and he winced.
“Do you have to?”
“Your own fault,” she returned, and went and sat at the other end of the table. Conrad raised his eyebrow at that, then went back to sulking over his notebook. Dean and my father were engaged in some kind of glaring contest, and Bethina was focused on her food. Only Cal seemed to be in a good mood.
“Say, Valentina,” I said in a voice that was gratingly perky to my ears. “I’m a bit bored. I was wondering if I could use the library on the
“Sorry, no,” Valentina said. “I have more important things to do today. You’re just going to have to entertain yourself in the house with the others, where we can keep an eye on you.”
“Good grief, Val,” Archie snapped without looking up. “This isn’t a reform school. Just let her go get some books that don’t insult her intelligence. If she stays on the
“Oh, of course,” Valentina said, and the acid in her tone could have etched the teacup she was holding. “Because you have the final say in all things, Archie, don’t you?”
“As far as the people at this table are concerned, I do,” Archie said.
“Right,” Conrad said, pushing back from the table. “I’m going … somewhere else.”
“Yeah,” Cal said hurriedly, also jumping up. “Thanks for breakfast, Miss Crosley. I mean, Mrs. Grayson. Uh … I mean … just thanks.”
Bethina took that as her cue to start clearing plates, and Dean pulled out his pack of Lucky Strikes, practically waving them under Archie’s nose before he went out to the back steps to smoke one. I rolled my eyes.
“Looks like it’s just you and me, then,” Valentina said in the same tone she’d used on my father. “Let’s get you fixed up with something a girl like yourself finds stimulating.” She snatched my hand and practically dragged me outside and to the
I had prepared this lie carefully, so that it would practically drip sincerity. “I am sorry about yesterday,” I told her as we climbed the ladder into the main cabin. “I really didn’t mean any disrespect.”
“Aoife, I’m just going to say this once,” she told me when we were inside. “Because I’m not your mother, and not trying to be, but I am older and I’ve been around. From what I’ve seen these past few days you’re a sweet, bright girl. You don’t want to waste yourself on somebody like Dean Harrison.” She flipped the switches in the main cabin to turn on the aether lamps and then folded her arms, looking for all the world like a miniature, younger version of one of my professors at the Academy. “You want to wait for someone who’s marriage material. Lifelong material. Don’t sell yourself short just because a boy gives you a wink and a smile. I’ve seen too many smart girls take that route and end up stuck in the mud.”
“You’re not married,” I said, feeling reflexive anger when Valentina insulted Dean. She didn’t know him, and she’d admitted she didn’t know me. Four days didn’t qualify her to give me parental advice. “And don’t worry about filling in for my mother. You’re barely old enough to be my big sister.” I knew it was mean, but she’d fired the first
