The Mirrored Shard

16 Awake

AT FIRST I thought I was in the void of nothing, the same place that contained the Old Ones. I saw flashes of their great eyes and limpid bodies, drifting between galaxies, between supernovas, on and on, until one turned to look at me and I thought if I could just hold its gaze, I would know all the secrets of the stars. But I couldn’t, and meeting the great eye burned me like staring into the surface of the sun.

I screamed, and the burning coalesced into the center of my chest, until I thrashed with pain and fell onto a hard floor.

“She’s back,” Chang said. He put away two small paddles hooked up to a battery run off the Tesla coil.

I rolled to the side, feeling my throat and guts constrict, and vomited.

“You’re all right,” another voice said, and I felt Conrad’s hand rub my back. “She’s all right, isn’t she?”

“We’ll have to see,” Chang said. “She was under for much longer than I’ve ever seen anyone survive.”

“She’s tough,” Cal’s voice broke in. My head was throbbing, and in that moment, prostrate on a cold floor and covered in my own sick, I felt miles away from tough.

“Good thing, because we have to move,” Conrad said. “Those boys outside aren’t going to wait much longer.”

Over the drone of the Tesla coil and my own blood humming in my ears, I heard a voice echo off the front of the building. “We know you’re in there, Miss Grayson! Come out with your hands up!”

Chang, Cal and Conrad jumped, but all I could do was take a deep breath and let it out. It hurt, like somebody had taken a bat and smacked me across the chest, but it was the best pain I’d ever felt. I could feel the blood moving through my veins again, my heart thrumming, electricity shooting through my nerves just like it hummed through the Tesla coil.

Tesla. He’d told me I had to endure. I had no choice now, because here I was, right back in the grasp of the Iron Land.

“Who’s out there?” I rasped. My voice sounded as if I’d scraped it across gravel, and speaking sent hot fire down my throat.

“Who do you think?”

This voice was the one I’d been dreaming about. The one that had the power to set me sobbing or inspire joy. It was for this that I’d endured all the pain and nightmares.

I sat up and looked into his eyes. “Dean?”

“Hey, princess.” He crouched next to me, brushing sweaty hair out of my eyes with his rough, sure fingers. He looked pale and sick too, but he was holding it together much better than I was. “You sure are a sight for sore eyes, you know that?”

I said nothing; I just grabbed him and wrapped him in my arms and pressed my face into his neck, smelling his sweat and his skin and feeling him warm and alive against me.

In that moment, everything was perfect, every bit of suffering had been worth it, and nothing, not even the encroachment of the Old Ones, could render me completely hopeless.

And just as quickly, it all shattered again.

“Miss Grayson!” Pounding started up on the door, and Chang shot a nervous glance toward it.

“The Brotherhood?” I guessed, looking to Cal and Conrad for confirmation.

“They showed up a few minutes ago,” Cal said. “Guess they got tired of watching the door. That’s why Chang had to shock you.”

Conrad was still staring at Dean. “How are you here? I thought you were dead, and you just—pop up here. What the hell is going on?” His brow furrowed. “You were dead. I saw your body.”

Dean gave Conrad a grim smile. “Dead as a doornail, man. And by the way, it’s great to see you, too.”

“I hate to interrupt this tender reunion,” I said, clambering to my feet. Even though I felt sick and my heart was throbbing, part of me was elated. My mother hadn’t been completely crazy after all. Dean was here, and he was holding my arm when I started to sway, and he had his time back—all of the thread that he should have had, the thread that had been cut because of me, repaired. I used him to hold myself steady. He was here, body and spirit. Here with me. “But we have a decision to make.”

“What’s the decision?” Cal said. “We’re out the back and we disappear into Chinatown. And let’s do it now, before they bust the front door down.”

“They’ll have agents at the back,” Conrad said. “Trust me, I’ve spent months with these people. They’re organized, and they’re not stupid.”

“This place have a basement?” Cal asked Chang, but Chang shook his head.

“No basement,” he said. “Too close to the bay.”

Everyone erupted into arguing and shouting, but I took a step toward the front door, and then another.

Dean caught my hand, and I turned back to him and shook my head. “Don’t try to stop me,” I told him. “You know this is the only way we all get out of here alive.”

“Wouldn’t dream of trying to stop you,” he said, squeezing my hand. “Just trying to make sure you stay out of trouble.”

I put my hand on the rough wood of the door and tried to smile at Dean. “If I hadn’t just thrown up, I’d kiss you right now.”

He winked at me. “Rain check, princess. When all this is said and done.”

Conrad realized what I was about to do, and he came bolting through the front of the store, but it was too late. I’d grabbed the doorknob and twisted, throwing the door open into a welter of raindrops, sodium lights and shock pistols pointed at my face.

Did I think it was the right decision? I thought it was stupid. I was sure I was being foolish. But I also knew it was the only way to keep my brother, Cal, Dean and myself alive. Not to mention Chang and anyone else who crossed the Brotherhood’s path.

I stepped onto the front stoop and held up my hands. Dean did the same.

“Don’t move!” someone bellowed from behind the spotlight. It hissed as the raindrops burned up against its blinding brilliance, and steam drifted around us, obscuring the rest of the street. I was in my own world, just Dean and me—and the Brotherhood, even now advancing to clap iron shackles around my wrists.

“You don’t have to do that,” I told them. “I’ll come peacefully.”

“Orders, Miss Grayson,” the man said. He didn’t sound much older than me, his face obscured by a fedora and his coat collar turned up. “I’m sorry. I know about your abilities.”

Another agent, a woman, handcuffed Dean, and when I looked back into the house, it was empty. My brother, Chang and Cal had gone. I trusted that Conrad would be smart enough to keep the rest of them out of harm’s way, especially Cal.

They put us into separate jitneys, and the last I saw of Dean before the door closed was his reassuring smile.

I sighed as I watched the lights of Chinatown recede behind the jitney’s treads. I wished I shared Dean’s confidence that everything was going to be all right.

The Brotherhood took us to a house high up on Haight Street, near Golden Gate Park. It was sandwiched between two other, identical houses and painted bright blue. It was such an incongruous spot for an outfit like the Brotherhood that I could barely worry when they separated Dean and me again in the hall and took me upstairs, to a study in the turret that looked down Haight Street to the Port Authority, its white spire gleaming with raindrops against the streetlights.

The young Brotherhood agent shackled me to my chair and left. I waited, watching the rain on the glass, listening to the hiss of the aether lamps and trying to do calculus in my head to keep the iron from getting to me.

Iron madness could come on slowly, over years, or all at once, depending on how much you were exposed to. The background hum of a city was one thing, but iron against my skin was another thing entirely. I probably had only a matter of hours before I started hallucinating, a day or two before I was completely mad.

I focused on the raindrops. They weren’t just raindrops, I reminded myself, but tiny prisms, each containing fractals of infinite design and possibilities. The math inside a raindrop could keep my mind from breaking down for months.

Fortunately, I didn’t need to wait that long. After barely an hour by the clock hanging above the vast chestnut desk in front of me, the door opened and a single figure came in.

“Hello, Aoife,” he said. “Didn’t think I’d be seeing you again so soon.”

I had last seen him covered in mud, running like a scared dog with his tail between his legs. I stared, unable to believe what I was actually seeing. “No,” I said. “There’s no way they’d let you …”

“The Brotherhood makes deals with a lot of unsavory folks, Aoife,” Grey Draven said. “Fae, Erlkin. I had an agreement with Crosley that if I ran across your father I’d turn him over. We both had a vested interest in keeping the Fae off our territory. Of course, they’re filthy heretics, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have the same end goal.”

“Trust a snake to find a warm nest,” I grumbled, and Draven clapped me on the shoulder.

“Aoife, I’m hurt. I thought you’d be much happier to see a familiar face.”

“Then I guess we’re both disappointed,” I said. “Now, even though I know it’s your favorite hobby, why don’t you cut out the pointless blather and tell me what you want?”

Draven sat on the edge of the desk and removed a cigarette from a gold box. He lit it, inhaled and watched as the smoke curled in the bluish light of the aether lamps. “You’re wrong, Aoife. It’s the threats that come after the talking that I actually enjoy the most.” He favored me with one of his razor-thin smiles. “I spent some time in Proctor custody after I dropped back into the Iron Land, you know. It’s not a pleasant place to be.”

I sighed and looked directly at him. After what I’d seen in the past few … hours? days? who knew how long I’d been under? … he didn’t frighten me in the least. “It’s not my problem if you don’t like the taste of your own medicine. If you’re going to kill or torture me, would you please just do it? I’m getting bored sitting here listening to your rambling stories.”

“Kill you!” He barked a laugh, before he stubbed his cigarette out in a dish that looked like it was carved from a ram’s horn. “Dear girl, I would no sooner kill you than I would kill Nikola Tesla himself returned from the afterlife.”

“You might get a shot at that sooner than you think,” I muttered, but I don’t think he even heard me. Dr. Draven was certainly a man impressed with the sound of his own voice.

“You have a purpose in life, Aoife, though you may not realize it yet. And that purpose is to serve the Brotherhood. You are a young girl, I realize, and that is why I don’t hold you responsible for your selfish actions.”

He got up and pulled a ring of keys from his vest, sorting through them until he found one that fit my shackles.

“I hold them to your father far more closely, these responsibilities. There are things you should have been indoctrinated in from birth that you never so much as considered.”

I watched as he unlocked my shackles, and felt the immense weight of the iron against my skin lift. I calculated the distance to the door. If I was fast, I’d decided while I’d been waiting, I could reach the street before anyone could stop me, and then I could start screaming if I had to. It wasn’t like the Brotherhood could gun me down in a public street. That privilege was reserved for the Proctors.

“Such as?” I said, shooting him a glare. “What exactly should I consider? That you manipulate people and cut deals with the very creatures that should be your sworn enemies? I know all about Crosley making accords with the Fae, giving them leeway in exchange for information about the Thorn Land. I know that when my father objected, you cut him out and threatened his life.”

“Harold Crosley threatened his life,” Draven said, perfectly calm. “And that had more to do with Archie’s predilection for running off with people’s daughters than his objections about our methods.”

“That’s a load of crap and you know it,” I shot back, borrowing one of Dean’s indelicate phrases.

Draven twitched an eyebrow. “I see you’re about as personable as Archie, even if he didn’t teach you anything you need to know to be a proper Gateminder.”

I sighed. “I know you’re going to threaten me or make me an offer. So why don’t we get on with it?”

Draven gave me a thin smile. “And you’re direct like him too. I miss the days when young women were taught manners.”

“I miss the days when I wasn’t being harassed by the likes of the Brotherhood,” I grumbled.

Draven laced his fingers over his knee. He looked for all the world like a headmaster relishing the scolding he was about to give. “I’m going to be frank with you, Miss Grayson—you don’t have a choice any longer. You’ve denied the Brotherhood, but your birthright is working for us, to keep the darkness of the Fae and magic and the Old Ones at bay. Why would you deny that?”

“My birthright is to create and control the Gates as I see fit,” I snapped. “There wouldn’t be a Brotherhood if it weren’t for people like me, so why don’t you try another tack? This one’s not working.” I glared at him harder than I’d ever dared glare at any teacher of mine. Draven was getting on my nerves, and I wasn’t in the mood for any more of the Brotherhood’s mind games cloaked in manners.

“You know,” Draven said, getting up and going to the window. He watched the bob and sway of the lamps atop the Golden Gate Bridge for a moment before turning back to me. “It would be a shame if anything happened to that boy Dean. Especially after you’ve worked so hard to be reunited.”

Just like that, all the fight went out of me. I hated that the Brotherhood could find my weakness so easily. Hated that they had something to hold over me, even now.

“What do you want?” I sighed.

Draven spread his hands. “For you to do your duty, of course. To come back to the fold of the Brotherhood and give up these foolish dreams of putting things back exactly as they were before.” He leaned forward into my face, so close that I could smell garlic and whiskey on his breath.

“There is no changing what you’ve done, Aoife. There is only forestalling the inevitable.” He looked out at the sky, and at the growing dark spot, the blot on light. “And from the looks of things, that won’t be much longer.”

“You don’t want any sort of forestalling,” I said in disgust. “You just want leverage against things like the Fae.”

“Of course I do,” Draven said with a shrug. “In the scheme of things, humans are relatively powerless. Only one of us can create and use Gates, as opposed to any Fae who thinks to raise their head from the mud long enough to step into a hexenring. That will not stand. Not when humans are superior.”

“Nice as it is to get a dose of xenophobia along with paranoid ramblings,” I said, “why don’t you just tell me what I’m going to have to do to keep you from hurting Dean?” I raised my chin. I might not have had any leverage left, but I did have my dignity. I wasn’t going to cry or beg. I’d done enough of that in the Deadlands.

“You’re going to do exactly as we say,” Draven told me, “until we have no use for you any longer. And you’re going to cease all contact with Dean and your family. Except for that mother of yours. She could be useful. Her feelings for you make her vulnerable.”

I almost choked on my laughter. “You think I have any influence over Nerissa? You’re even dumber than you look.”

“A mother cares for her daughter. A mother who would stay in a city overrun by ghouls to reunite with that daughter cares more than most.” Draven tsked. “I don’t think you give your mother enough credit, Aoife.”

“And I think you give her entirely too much,” I grumbled.

Draven sighed and then grabbed me by the arm. “Come with me, Aoife.”

He pulled me along, down a set of spiral stairs so tightly curled my shoulders could barely pass between the walls, and into a kitchen lit by a single bare bulb. Most of the cabinets had been ripped out, and a chair was bolted to the tile floor. I recognized it as the sort used in madhouses to keep patients restrained.

My stomach lurched as I saw that the chair’s occupant was Dean, hands and ankles bound with leather straps, and blood running from a split lip. One of his eyes was blacked and there was a cut on his cheek. A Brotherhood thug stood to one side, flexing his hand.

“Tough nut, boss,” the thug said. “Won’t say nothing except to tell us to screw off. Trying to tenderize him a little bit.”

“That’s fine, Hobson,” said Draven. “Why don’t you leave us for a moment? We have something to discuss.”

I ran to Dean and smoothed the hair back from his forehead. It was thick with blood and sweat, and I tried not to show my anger as Draven watched us, his arms folded. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered as I cradled Dean’s head, pressing my lips to his forehead. “I tried, I really did. I thought this was the right thing to do.”

“It was,” Dean muttered. “You know they would have pasted all four of us, princess. You made the right choice.”

“Do you have any doubt, Miss Grayson, that I am willing and able to follow through on my threat?” Draven asked.

I kept holding on to Dean, and shook my head. “I know what you’re capable of. Now and before.”

Draven nodded. “Then you’ll do as we ask. There won’t be any need for more melodrama.”

He went to the door and pulled it open. I saw a plain hallway beyond. Strange, to think that all around this torture chamber there was an ordinary house on an ordinary street, surrounded by people who knew nothing of the Brotherhood. Nothing of the Fae, nothing of people like me or the creatures that stalked through their nightmares.

“No,” I said quietly. Dean looked up at me.

“Princess,” he said urgently, “what are you—”

“Just trust me,” I muttered.

Draven turned. He looked angrier than a bank of thunderheads, but I forced myself not to fall back into fear.

Draven couldn’t scare me.

He couldn’t even come close.

“What do you mean by that no, Miss Grayson?” he snapped, his mouth twisting. I recognized the look. It was the look that all powerful men got when you told them what they didn’t want to hear.

“Do you want me to repeat myself?” I said softly. “Because I will. As many times as it takes.”

Of course I knew this might be a stupid decision. I knew that I might be sealing my and Dean’s fate. But I couldn’t bring myself, after all I’d seen—the vast stars, the Old Ones, the face of the Yellow King—to believe it would be the worst thing that ever happened to me.

“Think very, very carefully about the next thing you say, Aoife,” Draven told me. “Because I would hate to have to do something unpleasant to you. Or to your little man-friend here.”

“It’s funny,” I said. “I’ve heard a lot of threats since I found my Weird, you know that? More than I ever did when I was just some poor girl who was a city ward. But you know what else?” I stepped away from Dean and faced Draven. “You’re not going to follow through on them. You’re not going to raise one finger to me. Because you need me. Without my Weird, you’re just scared little men, cowering in the dark and watching the last of your fire go out. You’re playthings for the Fae if they feel like visiting the Iron Land for their amusement. Without me, you’re nothing.” I curled my lip at Draven. “You’re human.”

“I don’t need to do anything to you, stupid girl,” he snarled. “Dean—”

“If you harm one hair on Dean’s head I swear I’ll never help you again,” I said. “You might as well just kill me, because you won’t get the benefit of my gift. You can do your worst to me, but face it—it will never be enough. I’ve seen what lies beyond it all, Iron and Thorn. I’ve seen the worst things in the universe. What on earth makes you think I’d be afraid of you?”

Draven said nothing, just stood there, chest heaving impotently and face growing crimson. I felt intense satisfaction at being on the other side of that outrage for once, to be the cause rather than buffeted by the consequences.

“We’re leaving,” I said. “And if I feel like helping you unwind all of Crosley’s sneaky little bargains with the Fae, I will. And if I don’t, and I see another one of your little trench-coat brigade anywhere near me”—I narrowed my eyes—“I’m going to make you regret the day you looked into the shadows. You’re going to wish with every fiber of your being you knew nothing of this world.”

I expected bluster and shouting, the things Draven was so good at. I expected threats and recriminations. I didn’t expect Draven to give a primal snarl and yank a shock pistol from under his tweed jacket, closing the distance between us and shoving it against Dean’s temple.

“What?” he shouted as I recoiled, my hands flying up in a gesture of placation. “No clever rejoinders, Aoife?” His face twitched in a crazed man’s imitation of a smile. “Maybe you’re not quite as smart as you think you are, little girl.”

“Aoife,” Dean choked out. He tried to pull away from the barrel of the pistol, but he couldn’t move under the restraints. I watched the muscles in his jaw twitch in panic and my stomach roiled in response.

I wanted to kill Draven. I wanted to leap on him and beat him with my bare fists until he realized the error of his ways, but I didn’t move. That was the anger, the rage that I’d kept down for so long begging to be let free. It wouldn’t help me, and it certainly wouldn’t help Dean.

“It’ll be all right,” I told Dean.

Draven grimaced and jabbed Dean’s temple again with the gun. “Will it?” he snarled. “Or have we beaten you again, just like we did in the Arctic?”

“Beat me?” I started to laugh. It was better than screaming, or crying. “You didn’t beat me, Draven. I used you to get what I wanted. I needed you and the Brotherhood to get my mother back. You let yourselves be manipulated by a little girl, someone you think is beneath you. No wonder you’re so angry now.”

Dean stared at me, his eyes wide and unblinking, and I looked back. I didn’t think Draven would kill him, not when he had my allegiance on the line, but I couldn’t be sure.

The thought of backing down felt like a leaden weight settling in my chest in place of my heart. But it wasn’t about my feelings for Draven. I wasn’t the only person in play here.

I had to think of Dean. Had I brought him back only to lose him again?

“There’s no more talking,” Draven said. “There’s you doing as I say, or his brains on the wall. Am I making myself clear?”

Dean still looked at me, and then, impossibly, he winked. “You’re better than all of this, Aoife,” he said. “I love you.”

I felt a small smile touch my mouth. All at once, the doomsday scenario I’d been playing out in my head vanished. Dean understood. He loved me, even if I’d screwed everything up and brought us here.

Dean trusted me, and his look told me now I had to trust myself.

“I love you too,” I said, and then turned my eyes to Draven. There was strength in the admission—I’d known ever since the first time we kissed that I loved Dean, but to say it out loud made it real, inevitable and final.

I loved him. I always had.

“I don’t care what you do,” I told Draven. “You might kill him. You’re a bad man. You have no morals and a soul that’s rotten to the core. But I’m not that person. I know what I have to do to close my eyes at night, and working for your corrupt little gang isn’t it.” I took a deep breath and put my eyes back on Dean. “Do whatever you’re going to do. My answer won’t change.”

Draven tightened his grip on the trigger of the shock pistol, and I felt a cry rise in my throat. I’d hoped it wouldn’t come to this, but I knew I couldn’t give in to him, couldn’t agree to become the Brotherhood’s weapon without dire consequences for this already shredded world of iron.

Before Draven could do more than inhale, the door banged open, nearly smacking him off his feet.

“That’s enough,” a voice said.

I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding when I saw my father standing in the doorway, and a small cry escaped. Just a ghost of the scream I would have given if the shock ray had pierced Dean’s skull.

Dean slumped in relief. “Never thought I’d be glad to see you, Mr. Grayson,” he muttered.

“Likewise,” my father said, and came over to me, wrapping his arms so tightly around me I could barely speak.

“Y-you’re all r-right …,” I stammered.

“I am,” he agreed. “A few days ago I came to. I’d been having the strangest dreams, Aoife, but suddenly they receded, and I was back to my old self. Conrad had left word where he’d gone, so I came here with Bethina. Conrad’s been bringing us up to speed on … everything.”

“That’s all well and good,” Draven said, “but I think you’ll find that I’m in charge here, Grayson, and you’re a traitor.” He raised the pistol again. “It’s amazing what people will do when they’re desperate and in need of a strong leader. It was ridiculously simple to take over from Crosley and get everyone loyal to me.”

My father turned on him, and the expression on his face was the coldest I’d ever seen. His mouth was a thin line and his eyes could have cut glass. “Maybe this cell of the Brotherhood, yes. But not all.”

He advanced on Draven, who backed away, pistol wavering. “You think Crosley is the only one who escaped the Bone Sepulchre? He wasn’t. The others remember what you did to them, and the friends you threw into your Proctor prison. They want nothing to do with your little freak show. They’re loyal to me.”

“No,” Draven said. “You’re a traitor, Grayson. You left the Brotherhood when they most needed you, left them vulnerable to the machinations of the Fae. Hell, you reproduced with one of those silver-blooded monsters. Nobody trusts you or your offspring.”

“Better to leave than to be a part of this sideshow,” my father said. “But I’m here now, and the Brotherhood is going to start doing some things differently.”

He snatched the shock pistol from Draven’s grip with an economical move. “And if you ever threaten my daughter again …”

I saw Draven’s hand flash down while my father’s anger had him distracted. I saw it grasp a small black handle in his waistband and the flash of the blade as he pulled it free. I saw all this in slow motion as my blood roared through my ears like a crashing zeppelin, propelling me across the room and into Draven with my whole weight. We staggered together, caught in a rough dance, until his foot tangled in the rung of Dean’s chair and he stumbled.

The knife blade lowered a fraction and I took the opening. I slammed my fist into his nose with all my strength. Broken noses hurt, and it was no less than he deserved. So much less than he deserved. But it would have to do for now.

Archie kicked the knife out of Draven’s reach and I rushed to Dean. I unbuckled the cruel leather straps and massaged his wrists, and he let his forehead fall against mine. “You have a hell of a left hook, princess,” he said. “Remind me never to get you mad.”

I pressed my lips against his, tasted blood and sweat, and felt relief swell in me when I did. He was alive. He was bleeding, and alive, and I hadn’t lost him again.

Archie cleared his throat, and we pulled apart. I felt my cheeks flush slightly, and then really focused on my father for the first time. He still didn’t look very well—he was thinner and pale, and stubble coated the bottom half of his face.

“Thank you,” I said. He smiled at me.

“No need to thank me, Aoife. I’m just doing my job as head of the Brotherhood.” He took a step, all he needed with his long arms, and enfolded me in an embrace. “And as your father.”

I looked up at him, tears pricking the corners of my eyes. “Are you really in charge?”

“Valentina is, technically,” he said. “Crosley was her father, and most of those simpleminded sheep are just happy somebody else is making all the hard choices for them. But she’ll do what’s right. She won’t make backdoor deals with the Fae, and she’ll teach them to really fight in the face of what’s coming.”

I pulled away from him and looked down. “I’m sorry. For my part in everything. I’m sorry I ran away and I’m sorry I let Crow release the Old Ones. I was just trying to fix things.”

“You can’t fix the world, Aoife,” my father said softly. “The world was broken long before you got here. And the harder you try, the faster it turns to dust in your hands.”

I did start to cry then, long, heaving sobs that were humiliating. I wished I could stop, but it all became too much.

Dean came to me and held me, but that did nothing to stop my tears. “Will you look at what you did?” he snapped at my father. “She’s hysterical.”

“She’s tired and angry and she feels guilty,” my father said. “Just let her cry it out.”

He was right—I was guilty. And I knew from his last words that he blamed me. “I’m sorry,” I choked. “I let you down.…”

“I didn’t mean that,” Archie said sternly. “You made a mistake, Aoife. We all make them. But the Old Ones were going to break through whether or not you made that mistake. Even if you’d turned your back on them in the dream realm, they’d have found a way through. The barriers between their world and ours are too weak to hold them any longer.”

He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “I think that’s why you were born, Aoife. Because unlike Tesla, you have no doors to open, only doors to guard. The world needed your Weird to fight off the influence of these things, and that’s what you’re going to have to do.”

I swiped at my tears, and as I did, my father turned me from Dean and looked into my eyes. It wasn’t his usual vaguely irritated look that said I was an annoyance he was trying to shape into something useful. It was a dead-serious look, one I’d only seen him give other adults.

“You are our protector, Aoife,” my father said. “You are the one who balanced the spheres, and you are the one who can keep the darkness at bay. It’s not fair to ask such a thing of you, but I must. I’m your father, and I love you, and I will stand by you, but from now on, this is your calling. Tell me now—can you do it?”

I returned his look, this new one that said I wasn’t a disappointment, his renegade daughter who was nothing like he’d expected her to be. He was regarding me as an equal for the first time, and in some ways that thought was more terrifying than the idea that I would have to take up the mantle of Gateminder once and for all, to stand alone against the forces, out there among the stars and here on earth, that crawled out of the mud and the mist and my dreams themselves to bedevil the human world.

I had come this far, I thought. I hadn’t destroyed the Iron Land. I had fought back against Nylarthotep. I had conquered the nightmare clock.

I was Aoife Grayson, and I was no longer just a scared little girl from Lovecraft. No longer a changeling who didn’t have a place in any of the Lands. I was myself. I was the Gates, and the Gates were me. How it should have always been.

I nodded at my father. “I can do it,” I said. “I can be what I was always meant to be.”

My father gave me a slow nod and smile. “Of course you can,” he said. “You’re my daughter, after all.”