“He saved my life, Dad,” I said, folding my arms to mimic his earlier posture. “He’s not like the other ghouls.”
“I know,” he said. “That’s why I’m picking him up.” He spun the wheel and we crossed the river, drifting up the far bank, over the foundry and into the village, which from this vantage looked like a ruined toy, stepped on by an angry child.
“There,” I said, pointing to the broad avenue where we’d left Cal and Bethina. My father throttled back the fans, hovering, and the Munin shivered as the thin, delicate ladders unfurled from its hatches. I saw figures emerge from the nearest ruined cottage, and mere moments later, Cal and Bethina were in the main cabin with the rest of us.
“Mr. Grayson!” Bethina shrieked, running to my father and wrapping her arms around him. She’d been his chambermaid; he probably knew her better than he’d known me, before all this happened. I was just relieved they were both all right, and didn’t begrudge her the reunion.
My father smiled at her and patted her on the back. “Glad to see you in one piece, Bethina. Didn’t I dismiss you, though?”
She shrugged. “I didn’t have anywhere else to go. Someone had to keep your house in order.”
Cal sidled up to me. “That’s your father?”
“In the flesh,” I said, still barely able to believe it myself. Every time I looked at Archie, he seemed like he should shimmer and vanish like an illusion, rather than be standing not ten feet from me, pouring Bethina a cup of tea.
“Something to sweeten it?” he asked, reaching for a cut-glass brandy decanter in the sideboard.
“Oh, no,” said Bethina primly. “You know I don’t do that sort of thing, Mr. Grayson.”
“Seems nice enough,” Cal muttered to me. “Certainly not the raving lunatic Draven was always yelling about.”
“Jury’s out on the first part,” I said, just as Cal’s eyes lit on Valentina.
“Who’s the dame?” he said, brows going up. “She looks like a lanternreel star.”
I spread my hands. “I’ve been here about ten minutes longer than you have, Cal. Her name is Valentina. Aside from that, your guess is as good as mine.”
Valentina bubbled up to us, carrying a tray holding two delicate china cups painted with briar roses. “Tea?”
I took it and pointed to the brandy. “I think I’ll have something in mine.” My old teacher, Mrs. Fortune, would give us tea with brandy when we had the flu at the Academy. I could use the calming effect just then.
“No, you won’t be having any brandy,” my father returned crisply. “The rest of you, make yourselves comfortable. Conrad and Aoife, we need to speak privately.”
He gestured to a small hatch that led to the room Valentina had appeared from and waited until we’d followed him in before shutting and latching the door. I felt as if we’d been called on the carpet for passing notes during class, not as if we were having the first real meeting with our father, ever. His expression was stern and his eyes betrayed no emotion beyond annoyance.
This was not how I’d imagined my first conversation with Archie going, and I could tell from Conrad’s fidgeting and his frown that he felt the same way.
“First of all,” Archie said, “what the hell were you two thinking, going back into Lovecraft?”
“I—” I started, but Archie pointed his finger at me and focused his eyes on my brother.
“I’ll get to you. Conrad?”
Conrad spread his hands as if to ask what was the big deal. “It wasn’t my idea. I was actually against it.”
“Oh, come on, Conrad!” I shouted, furious that now we were actually caught, he was trying to wriggle out of getting in trouble. “You were the one who ran off in the first place! It’s because of you that I’m even here! You and that stupid letter!”
“I wrote that letter to get you out of Lovecraft, not rip apart space and time and destroy the entire damn city!” Conrad shouted back.
Rage overwhelmed me and I cocked my arm back and whipped my teacup at Conrad’s head. He ducked and the cup hit the wall, sending tea and china shards spattering across the cream-colored damask wallpaper.
“Enough, both of you!” Archie bellowed. He stepped between us, pointing at the door. “Conrad, give us a minute.”
“You always overreact,” Conrad muttered at me. “That’s why we’re in this mess.”
“You’re an idiot,” I returned, too angry to watch what I was saying. Conrad could treat me like I was still his excitable little sister, but I’d managed on my own for over a year after he’d run off. I’d managed after he’d nearly killed me. He didn’t get to talk to me like that any longer.
Archie thumped him on the side of the head with his knuckles. “I said enough. This is not your sister’s fault. Not entirely. Go.”
Conrad turned and stormed out, slamming the hatch behind him hard enough to rattle the framed paintings on the walls. In the silence that followed I looked anywhere but at my father’s face: A bunk in the corner immaculately made up with cream linens and rows of clothes neatly hanging in the wardrobe. A brass globe swaying from the ceiling, lit from the inside by aether. Outlines of continents and seas glowing softly against a ceiling painted like the night sky, constellations spelled out with silver thread. Finally, I ran out of things to stare at and had to look at my father again and see his shoulders slumped with fatigue, the dark circles under his eyes and the new lines along the sides of his mouth. I felt horrible for screaming at Conrad, for breaking my father’s things. What must he think of me after that?
Archie sighed, sitting down in one of the two small, overstuffed chairs by the cabin’s porthole. “Have a seat, Aoife.”
I stayed where I was and fidgeted. Being around him was still too new for me to sit and act comfortable—as if we were actually father and daughter. Besides, if I sat, I couldn’t study him while we talked, look for the similarities in our faces that I wanted to be there. I wanted to be a little bit like Archie—otherwise, my only fate was to end up like Nerissa.
Archie’s eyes were an eerie reflection of my own when we locked gazes, dark green and glittering, like something that had waited for light a long time in a dark place.
But his held none of the uncertainty mine did, just a calculating hardness that seemed to measure me up and dismiss me as wanting. I’d always hoped that Archie would be warm, like the fathers in books and lanternreels who came home every evening, hung up their hats and kissed their wives and children hello. But I’d known I was probably just fantasizing. His hard eyes weren’t really a surprise, just a disappointment.
“It’s good to see you,” he said at last, more quietly than I had expected. “It’s been a really long time.”
This I hadn’t expected. A lecture, maybe, or a punishment for making him rescue us from the city, but not the sadness that hung on his frame like an ill-fitting coat. “Yes,” I said at last, matching his soft tone. “It has.”
“Aside from when I got you out of Ravenhouse, I mean,” he said. “And that’s not exactly a family memory I’m looking to cherish.” He sighed and raked a hand through his hair, disturbing his carefully groomed coif into something that was closer to my own unruly cloud. “I’m glad you’re all right, Aoife, but you have to promise me never to do something that stupid again—and I mean both times, when you let Draven pick you up and this time, when you were doing whatever the hell it was you were doing down there in that wasteland.”
I had a feeling he wouldn’t be so forgiving when he found out why I’d come back, especially after he’d helped me escape the Proctors’ cells when I’d turned myself in to Draven as a means to get to the Engine. But I was done lying to everyone. Done pretending everything was fine, when even now the iron told me that the clock had started ticking on my madness again.
At least up here on the Munin, made of wood and brass, it had quieted to an insidious whisper rather than a scream. I looked out the porthole while I formulated my answer carefully. The country passing beneath us was blank now that we’d left the outskirts of Nephilheim, gray and white with patches of bare trees and snow. The coastline cast gentle lace on the frozen beaches, and I could see the red buoys of the shipping channel we followed bobbing like tiny beacons in the vast Atlantic.