The Nightmare Garden

didn’t stare a hole in me as if she could read my thoughts. “Are you going to tell me what happened to Jakob?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I did,” I said. I could have put my head down and slept there—Rasputina’s cabin was warm and smelled faintly of cinnamon. It reminded me a bit of our old apartment in Lovecraft, the last we’d had before Nerissa was committed.

“You looked scared when he talked to you,” I said. “He knew things about you nobody does, right? Things you never told anyone?”

Rasputina took off her cap and rubbed her forehead in distress. She’d washed most of the blood off, but a faint line of pink lingered at her hairline. I looked down at my own rust-streaked hands and shuddered. The gunshot seemed to echo in my ears.

“And how do you know that?” Rasputina asked at last.

“Jakob isn’t a man,” I said, and then amended it. “Wasn’t. He was a creature from a world that’s close to ours, but isn’t ours. He was poisoned by iron in the ship. He was here to spy on me.” That was as simple as I could make it. The Crimson Guard didn’t deny magic and the other lands as heresy like the Proctors did, so I thought maybe Rasputina would be willing to believe me. I hoped she was, because otherwise she was sure to think I was insane, just as all those people back in Lovecraft did.

“I grew up in a village called Dogolpruydny,” Rasputina said softly. She tipped her head back and shut her eyes. “A wild place, mostly run by crime lords. The Crimson Guard press-gangs children to serve as grunts in their army, but otherwise, the people there are less than cattle to those in the capital.” She sighed. “There are things roaming the streets at night. Halfway between men and dogs. They feed on your blood, and they are deathless. Not even bullets can stop them.”

My mouth felt dry. I remembered some of the creatures that lurked below the surface of Lovecraft. Even Cal’s family, the only ghouls I’d met not out for my blood, was unsettling. I couldn’t imagine how Rasputina had survived.

“One caught me one night,” Rasputina said. “I was small, and slow. Sick much of the time. It bit me, but it didn’t like my taste.” She opened her eyes again and went to the steam hob, rattling a teapot. “I found out in that moment that my blood is poison to the deathless creatures that come from that dark place, the place your Proctors insist doesn’t exist.” She turned on the water and watched it hiss from the tap with great concentration. “I just don’t know what they want with you.”

“They want me to do something,” I said. “It’s part of why I’m going north. I can’t do what they ask, and I can’t escape them, as you saw.” I wrapped my arms around myself. Since I’d come aboard the Oktobriana, I hadn’t been able to get warm. I didn’t know if it was from having been frozen or from my creeping apprehension that I was making a huge mistake.

But I couldn’t think that way. This was my only choice.

“And the other part is Dean?” Rasputina poured the hot water over a tea strainer and swirled the pot a bit, steam rising to obscure her face.

I looked at my hands, not able to meet her eyes. “I don’t know if we should be talking about this, seeing as you two have history. Dean tends to make me say things I don’t mean to.”

Rasputina choked on the tea she’d poured and then started to laugh. I flushed and blinked at her, surprised. I wasn’t sure what I’d said that was so funny.

“Oh,” she said, “he does, does he. Rest well, Aoife—we are friends, and I am grateful to him for saving my life, but Dean is not my type, not in age and not in the sense that he’s … well, a boy.”

“Oh,” I said, realization dawning. “Oh.”

“See? You are smart,” Rasputina told me. “And loyal. And fearless. Dean is damn lucky to have you.” She checked her chronometer, a wrist style that I’d always wanted but could never afford. “We’ll be at Newfoundland in a half hour or so. Try to keep out of the way until then, all right? My crew will be busy.”

I got up and managed to smile my assent, but at that moment all I could think of was that I might never see Dean again. There was a chance I wouldn’t even make it back to the United States, never mind free him from Draven and tell him I thought Rasputina was right but the reverse was also true—I was lucky to have Dean.

At least I knew it in my heart, even if I never got a chance to tell him.

12 Below the Ice World

Fifth entry:

This boat, and Rasputina, made me realize something important: even if I never see him again, I’ll never forget Dean Harrison. He’s quiet and strong, and he doesn’t fuss and worry over me like every other man I’ve known. I could see myself standing next to Dean for the rest of my life.

I don’t know anything about love. I don’t know what it’s supposed to feel like. I don’t think birds swoop down and bells chime, like in those stupid romances other girls at the Academy loved to giggle over. I think it might be more like the Gothic novels our house matron, Mrs. Fortune, read when she wasn’t looking after us—if two people are in love, you may be torn apart by circumstance, but you’re always together, at least in your hearts.

Of course, it’s not a scheming stepmother keeping me and Dean apart. It’s someone much worse. Draven knew exactly where to cut me to draw the most blood. I hate that he’s not willfully ignorant like most Proctors. I hate that if I’m honest, he’s as smart as me, if not smarter. I hate him, in the way that spreads poison through a mind. The more I think about Dean being under his control, the more I hate Draven. Hatred is not what my father would choose in this situation. He’d stay calm. He’d figure out some horribly clever solution. He’d fix everything.

There’s Draven. There’s my father and Valentina. There’s the Brotherhood. Three directions, all pulling at me, like I’m the magnet in a compass. All wanting different things, all wanting to use me for different things. And now Tremaine, letting me know he hasn’t forgotten, that he wants more from me than everything I’ve already given. He’s the worst, because I know that he will be unceasing until I bend to his will.

I’m so tired of being shuttled from one place to another like a ball in a maze. I want to stand up, but I can’t. I have to pretend to work for Draven, for Dean’s sake. I had to lie to my father to find my mother. And I have to face the Brotherhood, with more lies, for everyone else in the world, at the same time avoiding being pulled back to the Fae and whatever new scheme Tremaine has for me to take part in.

So many lies. I don’t even know how many layers deep they go any longer. I don’t think I’ll ever be who I used to be after this is over. The Aoife Grayson who left Lovecraft is dead. And I don’t know who’s taken her place.

* * *

Once we’d recharged the batteries and cast off from Newfoundland, the routine on the submersible was unceasing and unchanging. The crew slept in shifts, and everyone had a job to do. I was frequently in the way, so I took to spending a lot of time sitting in the mess, playing backgammon or checkers with off-duty crewmembers, many of whom didn’t speak a lick of any language I knew. The mood was bleak—everyone knew what had happened to Jakob, if not the details leading up to it, and that I was somehow involved, and many of the crew wouldn’t even make eye contact, never mind try to talk to me.

Not that I minded much. I was busy turning over every piece of information I’d gleaned about the Brotherhood, and planning how I’d approach them. I had to appear to be on their side, which wouldn’t be too hard. I didn’t have any love for the Fae, certainly. I just had to keep the compass hidden and figure out a way to put off Draven until I’d found the clock. Then his plans to ensnare everyone in his web wouldn’t matter.

When Rasputina wasn’t busy, she taught me a few snippets of Russian and told me about living in her childhood village, which sounded, if it was possible, even worse than life as a charity ward in Lovecraft.

“There are secret societies as well as press-gangers,” she said one day as we were playing backgammon, “and they recruit children from poor neighborhoods. They make them runners, get them in trouble, and if they want to survive the gulag they have to join the society, get official tattoos and be bound to them forever.” She moved a piece across the board. “It’s that or the Crimson Guard. Don’t know which is worse.”

She looked up at me with that black bird’s gaze. “So what are you trying to find up there, in the Bone