Iron Codex 2 - The Nightmare Garden (23 page)

“My turn,” I said. “Give me that and I’ll show you what I can do.”

Archie frowned, turning the silver watch in his hands before he gave it over. “Be careful. That watch was your grandfather’s.”

I popped open the top. The face was mother-of-pearl, and the hands were black, the numerals painted on in a fine hand and intertwined with vines hiding tiny forest creatures. It was a work of art. Inside the lid was an engraving, almost worn away with age:
There is no rule but iron, and no balm but time
. The date was 1898.

Pushing a little of my Weird to the forefront of my mind, I let the smallest tendril touch the watch. Here, away from the city and in Valentina’s iron-free house, the whispers and the pain weren’t nearly so bad. I could probably stay here for years before I started to go truly insane.

My Weird responded eagerly, unmuted by iron, and in the space of a heartbeat, the hands began to turn backward, still ticking off time. The dates in the face also turned back,
and once I’d ensured they would stay that way as long as I held a bit of the watch in my mind, I handed it back to Archie proudly. “I can do that with anything. Came in handy when we were on the run.”

“Pretty neat,” he told me with a grin, and this time I didn’t hesitate to return it.

“What’s the inscription mean?” I asked.

“It’s the motto of the Brotherhood,” he answered. “Or was, at least. Back when the Brotherhood actually did some good.”

I started to ask what he meant but thought better of it when his smile dropped and the stone-faced expression I recognized returned. He shut the watch and shoved it into his pocket. When he looked up, he was smiling again. “But enough about that. Want to take another crack at breakfast?”

“Sure,” I agreed, and followed him inside. The hundred questions I had about Nerissa, the strange comments about the Brotherhood and my Weird could wait. I
did
trust my father, and I just hoped that sooner rather than later, he’d be in a mood to give me answers.

The next two days at the Crosley house passed uneventfully. Things with my father were all right when it was just the two of us, but when Valentina was around he got gruff and awkward and had a hard time looking me in the eye. I wasn’t sure how to act either—yes, I was his daughter, but in reality he barely knew me, and the last thing I wanted was a spat with my de facto stepmother over territory she had clearly already claimed.

Valentina wasn’t completely bad, as long as we avoided serious subjects. She showed me how to apply rouge and paint my nails without getting the enamel everywhere. We sipped tea in the sunroom and everyone gathered around the piano to hear her play thunderous classical music that sounded like the ocean had broken down the dunes and come rushing through the music room.

It was a break from running, that was for sure, and there was decent food and a warm bed. Still, every time I looked toward Lovecraft and saw the orange glow against the night sky from still-burning fires, my guts churned with guilt and worry.

On the third morning, I couldn’t take it anymore. My patience caved, and with it went my placid veneer. “Are we going to stay here forever?” I said to Archie. He and I were washing up from breakfast, a task I’d taken away from Bethina by force. She thought as long as she was in Archie’s presence, she had to revert to her old job of maid, but I’d bribed her with some leftover scones and cream and sent her away with a suggestion of taking Cal for a walk along the dunes. She wasn’t a maid any longer, and I wanted her and Cal to be able to relax.

“It’s safe here,” Archie said. He was scrubbing while I dried. “Relatively so, anyway. We’re not behind walls like in New Amsterdam and San Francisco, and there are things roaming out there, but no Fae is going to risk coming within spitting distance of this house and not one but two members of the Brotherhood of Iron.”

“Is the Thorn Land trying to invade us?” I asked bluntly, setting the plates in a pile. They clacked like ghouls’ teeth. I hadn’t asked yet because I didn’t really want the truth, but I
couldn’t avoid it any longer. If I’d done more than wake the queens of the Thorn Land, if I’d opened not just a crack but an actual channel for invasion, I needed to know.

“You sure are good at picking the one question I don’t have an answer to,” my father said. He shut off the hot water and dried his hands, wincing. I noticed that his knuckles were cut, like he’d driven his hand into something hard and unforgiving.

“Tremaine said—” I began.

“Tremaine lied to you,” Archie snapped. “That’s what he does. He’s a snake, even among his own kind. He told you exactly what you needed to hear so you’d wake the queens, and then he told you exactly what you needed to hear so you’d stay good and scared and not try to put anything right once you saw what you’d done.”

He had a point—I’d seen the extent of Tremaine’s lies firsthand. But his lies always held a grain of truth, and that terrified me.

“You’re with the Brotherhood of Iron!” I cried in frustration. “You all saved the world when Tesla made the Gates. You’re supposed to know what to do.”

“The Brotherhood is not some magical cavalry that rides out of the smoke and hellfire and saves the poor, innocent humans from the menace of the otherworlds,” Archie said. “No matter how much Grey Draven and his cronies might want to change us into that very thing.”

He gestured me outside to the kitchen steps, and despite my irritation I followed him. He stood quietly for a moment and then furtively drew out one of his cigarettes. “Truth is, Aoife, the best we ever were was a police force that was too small and spread too thin to do all the good
we could against encroachment from Thorn, the Mists and wherever the hell else nasty monsters crawled up from. And that was in my grandfather’s day. Now the Brotherhood has … Well. They’ve lost sight of the endgame, to say the very least, and there’s a lot of things the leadership and I don’t agree on.”

I sat next to him, pulling my skirt down over my legs to keep out the cold. I’d wanted the Brotherhood to be the knights, to have the knowledge in their collection of Gateminder’s diaries to fix what I’d done. But the image of squabbling men, and only a handful of men at that, didn’t inspire much hope. “So they can’t help us?” I was only half surprised. Most hope these days died a quick death the moment I got close to it.

“Oh, they’re trying to shut the broken Gates, and keep the Fae and the Mists at bay while they do it,” Archie said. “Avoid Draven and his plans to turn them into his own personal shock troops while they’re at it. But when Tremaine came after me and started this whole mad plan that ended with you, I couldn’t ask the Brotherhood for help.”

“Why not?” I said, confused. I wasn’t naive enough to think the Brotherhood would come and set everything right, but I’d at least thought they could be an ally and that, as members, my father and Valentina counted among their number and were to be aided no matter what.

“Because they’d have negotiated,” Archie said softly. “They’d wheedle and cajole, try to get something for themselves out of the deal and use me like a damn trading chip. The Grayson family has done a lot for the Brotherhood, Aoife, but we are
not
in charge. Gateminders are guard dogs. Dogs have masters. If you have the idea that you can
go and ask them to help you now …” He reached out and squeezed my hand, hard and all at once, with bruising strength. I hissed in pain, flinching under his touch, but he held fast and stared into my eyes.

“Promise me, Aoife. Promise me you will not throw yourself on the mercy of the Brotherhood. They know it was a Grayson who broke the Gates, because it couldn’t be anyone else. I don’t think they’ve figured out which one yet, since they haven’t tried to haul me in for questioning, but listen—they won’t take you in with open arms and they won’t fix anything, because despite acting as if they’re all-knowing, they can’t. Tesla was the only one who really understood how the Gates on our side work, and he’s long gone, along with his research.”

“Dad …,” I began, trying to ease his grip on me and reassure him I wasn’t going to go running off, but he squeezed harder, wringing a droplet of sound from me at the pain. “I can’t promise,” I whispered. “You don’t understand. My mom …”

“I told you, Nerissa is going to be all right for a little while longer,” Archie said. “Stay with me, let me show you the ropes, make it so you don’t end up like you did in Lovecraft. Let me help you, Aoife. Stay here for a month or so and promise me you won’t go to the Brotherhood, and then I’ll do what I can about Nerissa, all right?”

“I can’t …,” I started. My mother didn’t have that kind of time, no matter what he said. I couldn’t waste a month learning whatever it was Archie wanted to teach me. If the Brotherhood had actual answers, I had to seek them out, no matter what they thought of my father or he of them.

“Promise me,”
my father ground out. Pain flared in my fingers.

“I promise!” I cried, because I could tell by his expression I wasn’t going to change his mind.

I didn’t change my own mind, either, though.

My mother didn’t have a month.

Crunching footsteps over the icy grass made my father finally let go of me, putting his hand back in his lap, and when Dean rounded the corner, Archie looked like himself again. I breathed a sigh of relief, glad it was Dean and not Conrad or Valentina.

“Hey there, Aoife,” Dean said. “Mr. Grayson.” He was smoking the very end of a Lucky Strike, which he stamped out under his steel-toed boot. “Am I interrupting something?”

“No,” I said, jumping up. “We were just finishing our talk.” Honestly, I didn’t think
that
talk would ever be finished. The revelation that the Brotherhood might blame me for what had happened, might actually refuse to help, was almost more worrying than thinking about my mother’s fate.

Archie stayed where he was, smoking and running his other hand absently up and down his temple, his index finger leaving a small red mark. He didn’t look strong and self-assured just then, more small and lost, like I felt a great deal of the time. I wanted to do something to make him feel better, but I knew from my own bleak moods there was nothing for it except time.

Before I could say anything else, Dean laced his fingers with mine and was leading me away. The motion aggravated my already sore hand, and I jerked loose without thinking.

“Whoa,” Dean said as we rounded the corner of the porch. “You hurt? Did he hurt you?” Quick as a cloud scudding across the moon, darkness dropped into his eyes. “I’ll beat his hide so hard your granddad feels it.”

“Dean,”
I said as he started back toward Archie, realizing what he’d read into the situation. “He didn’t do anything.”

Dean looked down at me, his nostrils flaring and his lips parted so I could see his teeth. In that moment he looked more Erlkin than human, and I took a step back. “You’ve been quiet and glum since we got here, and now I see you looking tore up. Is he—”

“No!” I shouted. “Stones, no. He’s my
father
, Dean. He’s not hurting me.” The very idea that Archie would be physically abusing me was sort of laughable. To me. But Dean’s life had been very different, and I knew he was just trying to look out for me.

Dean settled back inside his leather jacket, like a predator retreating back into its cave. “Well, okay. Why are you so gloomy, then?” He brushed his thumb down my cheek. “I miss you, princess. I miss your spark.”

I didn’t speak, just leaned in and wrapped my arms around his torso under his jacket. I loved the feel of his ribs under my fingers, the warmth of his skin through his shirt. I put my cheek against his cotton-wrapped chest and let out a breath for what felt like the first time since the
Munin
had touched down.

“I miss you too” was all I said. All my anger at the Brotherhood and all the worry about my father deflated, and I felt exhausted.

Dean pressed his lips to the top of my head. “Is it that bad?”

“Yeah,” I whispered. “We’re stuck here. And everyone in the world wants my head on a spike.”

“They can’t all,” Dean said. “Though it is a very pretty head.”

I laughed, even though it felt like swallowing a mouthful of ash. “You’re the only person who thinks so, I guarantee.”

Dean moved his lips to touch mine. “Only one that matters, aren’t I?”

I nodded, and stood on my toes to kiss him in return. After a minute I tilted my head toward the metal hulk of 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.