I turned and left the kitchen, my ridiculous shoes clacking on the wood floors, raising tiny hurricanes of dust in my wake. I snatched an overcoat from a tree by the wide French doors leading to the back deck and ran across the lawn, past the Munin, all the way down to the shore. My breath sawed in my chest, pushing the urge to scream to the surface.
I’d been right the first time. My father didn’t care about me. All he wanted to do was hold me up as an example of how he could do everything so much better.
As if I’d ever had a chance, with him leaving. He was a hypocrite, and he was cruel.
The waves were higher than my head on the beach, breaking with vibrations that raced up through my feet where I stood on the sand. The heels of my shoes sank in, and I yanked them off viciously and threw them, along with my stockings. The freezing sand bit into my bare feet, and my toes went numb. Good. My whole body could have gone numb for all I cared in that moment. I wanted to smash up against something, like the surf, vent my rage on something tangible, but there was nothing there. I settled for staring furiously at the waves, tears blinding me as I faced the wind, breath coming in short, hot, razor-sharp gasps.
The ocean was gray, and far off I could see the wobbly horizon line, the promise of a larger storm to come. I stayed, relishing the sting of cold and salt on my face, waiting for the wind and rain to roll in and blanket me in their fury, so much larger than mine that it was the only thing that might erase how I felt right then.
“Aoife!” My father’s voice cut straight through the wind and the roar of the surf, and when he appeared at the top of the dune, he sounded as if he were right next to me. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”
He came down the rickety weathered steps from the dune two at a time and crossed the sand to grab me by the arm. “It’s not safe out here by yourself! Anything could be wandering around!” His brow furrowed. “And where on the scorched earth are your shoes?”
I looked down at his hand, back at his face. Suddenly I couldn’t even muster the energy to be angry. He’d told me how he really felt, and that was that. Now that he’d been honest, I had no reason to be angry, or hopeful, or confused any longer. Just numb, like all the exposed bits of my skin. “Let go of me,” I said, flat as the wet sand around us. Far down the beach, some kind of aquatic mammal had beached itself, white skeleton picked over by a horde of gulls.
“I …” Archie dropped his hand from my arm and stuck it in his hair instead, his face a mask of confusion and upset. The dark strands were laced with white and stood out from his head, toyed with by the wind. “I’m no good at this,” he said. “It’s not gonna do any good to sugarcoat it, Aoife—most Gateminders grow up learning how to do the job. And for various reasons, you didn’t. It’s going to be hard to teach you what you need to know in so short a time. But it doesn’t mean I’m …” He spread his hands, at a loss for words.
“Disappointed,” I finished for him. “And you are. I can see it.” Why wouldn’t he be? He was a Gateminder and I was his daughter who had destroyed everything he and the Brotherhood had tried to build up. Build up and keep safe for hundreds of years. I was a failure as a Grayson. There was no sugarcoating that, either.
“I’m disappointed in a whole hell of a lot,” Archie said. “I’m disappointed I couldn’t tell my daughter not to trust the first Fae who fed her a good story. I’m disappointed her mother went so crazy even I couldn’t fix her. I’m disappointed we live in a world that’s so full of lies it seeps poison like a snakebite. But I’m not disappointed in you, Aoife.” He reached out as if to cup my cheek, but then detoured to my shoulder, patting it awkwardly. I felt like I should pull away after what had happened, but I didn’t. I allowed myself the tiny hope that maybe things would turn out all right after my tantrum. “You’re my child,” Archie said. “We’re kinda stuck with each other.”
“I do have my Weird, you know,” I told him, drawing my brows together in reproach. “You act like I need rescuing, but I can be useful.” I wanted my father to believe that more than anything.
Archie’s mouth curled into a smile. “Yeah, they seemed pretty excited about that in Ravenhouse when they caught you. It works on machines, huh?”
I nodded, adding my own smile. “Anything with moving parts. Some things are easier than others.”
Archie leaned down, and his expression was conspiratorial, like we were the same age. “Wanna see mine?”
His enthusiasm was infectious, and I thought I caught a glimpse of the boyish side that had entranced Valentina, and likely my mother. So different from his perpetual frown and judgmental gaze. I wanted to see more of that, so I said, “All right. I’d like that.” I stood back, excited, but not sure what to expect. Better to be out of the danger zone, as I’d learned when Cal and I had taken a welding class and he’d lit not one but three of his aprons on fire with his torch.
My father winked at me, then trained his eye on a pile of driftwood and dried seaweed that had washed up a few dozen feet farther down the beach. He opened his palm and blew on it, just the smallest touch of air to skin.
A split second later, the driftwood ignited with a whump, a jet of crimson fire rushing toward the sky.
Archie let out a whoop, and I clapped my hand over my mouth. I’d figured out from his journal that my father could conjure fire, but seeing it in reality was a whole new dimension of thrill. I stared, unable to stifle a grin that matched my father’s miles-wide one.
I wasn’t alone. We could both do things that would be considered heresy by any Proctor.
But it wasn’t born of anything evil. It was magic, pure and simple.
“So?” My father was breathing hard from the effort, his face flushed. In the warmth of the nearby fire, my skin was no longer numb.
“Pretty neat,” I admitted. My father looked so animated, I couldn’t resist teasing him a bit. “I’ve seen better.”
“ ‘Pretty neat’?” Archie shook his head. “You kids today. What do I have to do to get your attention, dance a jig?”
I shook my head rapidly, trying not to giggle. “Please don’t. Really. It’s not necessary.”
Archie reached out and messed up the top of my hair. I didn’t care—Valentina’s beautiful curls were lost to the wind anyway. “Who taught you manners?”
It was like walking a tightrope—I took one step at a time and hoped I wouldn’t fall into a chasm. Archie was behaving like a father, me like a daughter, and I decided to just keep going until something did go wrong. “Certainly not you,” I teased.
“True enough,” Archie agreed. “Can’t say I’d have done a much better job if I’d been around. My manners are shit.” He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment and then looked at me, pained. “See? You’re not supposed to swear in front of your teenage daughter. I’m hopeless.”
“Trust me,” I said. “I’ve heard worse.” I knew that sooner or later, we’d run into another roadblock, have another fight, and things would go back to being strange and strained. But right now, I wanted to keep taking the tiny steps, keep swaying on the rope and enjoy a few minutes alone with my father.
The way things were going, they might be the only ones I’d get.
I pointed to Archie’s pocket watch, tucked into the front of his vest. My father’s clothes were nice, but they were also out of fashion by about ten years and clearly ripped and repaired dozens of times over. He was always just a bit too unkempt to maintain the appearance of a gentleman of his station. He looked more like a professor or a clock maker than somebody who lived in a grand house and could call flame out of thin air.
Then again, I supposed I looked more like the daughter of the same than what I really was.
“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.”