The Nightmare Garden

9 The Weight of Blood and Bone

I SPENT THE AFTERNOON trying to compose an entry in my journal about what had just happened with Valentina, then crumpling the pages one by one and tossing them across my bedroom to land in a corner like a drift of downed birds.

I was almost relieved when someone knocked at the door, and I opened it to see Archie and Conrad. “Oh,” I said. I’d been hoping it was Dean. Even if we couldn’t slip away to the Munin, he would have been someone to talk to.

“Don’t get too excited,” my father said dryly. He looked me up and down. “Get changed and meet us down at the beach steps,” he said. “Pants and a blouse—something you can get dirty.”

I cocked my head, confused. “What are we …,” I started, but my father was already walking away, that stiff-legged stalk I’d noticed he adopted, the one that warned all before him to get out of his way.

“What’s happening?” I asked Conrad, catching him by the sleeve before he could follow. “No idea,” he said, and tugged free of me. His face was a thunderhead, which made me think he did know, but I figured if something was upsetting Conrad maybe it wouldn’t be so bad for me. We were getting more different, in every way, but rather than dwell on it, I changed and hurried down to the beach steps to meet my father and brother.

Conrad stood with his hands shoved in his pockets, wind whipping his hair back and forth. Archie stood a little way off, smoking, but he extinguished his cigarette when he saw me. My steps slowed, but I forced myself not to look nervous, even though my stomach was in fits.

“All right, you two,” he said. “It’s time both of you learned how to handle yourselves. Aoife showed me her Weird, but it’s obvious she can’t hold her own in a stand-up fight. So you, Conrad—let’s see what you’ve got.”

I let my gaze rove between Archie and my brother.

Conrad’s face had flushed, two bright flowers in his cheeks that had nothing to do with the wind. “You want me to what, do a trick?”

“I want to see your Weird,” Archie said evenly. “If there’s a problem there, then there’s a much bigger problem with this whole plan. If we’re going back into the city in a few weeks to take another crack at finding survivors, I need you both in fighting form.”

Of course I’d wondered when I’d found out Conrad had used slipstreamers to get himself into the Mists. I’d wondered when he hadn’t offered to open the Gate back to the Iron Land. But he had to have a Weird—he was the firstborn Grayson of our generation, the only son. Heck, my father was only Gateminder at all because his older brother, our uncle Ian, had died young. I didn’t know how I was able to manipulate the Gates. There hadn’t been time to really think about it when the Proctors had chased us, or when Tremaine had been watching me, threatening to hurt my family. I might have thought of myself as a Gateminder in my lighter moments, but I wasn’t really sure what I was.

But either both of us were Gateminders or Conrad had been skipped and it was me. Had always been meant for me.

I wrapped my arms around myself and prayed that Conrad was just a late bloomer.

“There’s no problem,” Conrad said evenly, but all his muscles were tense. He looked like he did right before he was going to fight somebody, a kid at school who’d made a remark or a foster sibling who’d gotten too pushy with me. I sincerely hoped he and Archie weren’t about to come to blows, because then I’d have to jump between them, and nobody wants to break up a fistfight between members of their own family.

“Then do it.” Archie took a step closer to him. “Show me, son.”

Conrad looked at the ground, looked back at Archie. Veins stuck out in his neck and at his temples, and his face turned crimson. I took a step toward him, to try to calm him down, but he beat me back with a glare.

Archie sighed and then went over and patted Conrad on the back. “That’s enough. Don’t hurt yourself.”

Conrad let out his breath in a rush, white mist meeting the freezing air. “I can’t do it, all right?” he shouted. “I’ve waited and waited and tried every damn thing—fire, water, wind, even machines, like Aoife—and I can’t do it. I’m useless.”

He stormed past us and back toward the house. I ran after him without thinking. “Conrad, wait!”

I caught him by the arm as he reached the steps, and he shook me off. “Why should you care?” he growled. “You’re the one he wants, aren’t you? You’ve got the gift.”

I reminded myself he was angry and probably didn’t mean it as cruelly as it came across. I grabbed his arm when he tried to run off again, harder. “You think this is a gift?” I whispered. I could barely hear myself over the wind. “Conrad, all it means is I have something in my blood that can kill me, that can split my skull apart if I try to control it, and that makes me a target for everyone in the Thorn and Iron Lands who wants a pet Gateminder. It doesn’t make me better. It doesn’t make me not your sister. Forget about what Archie thinks. You’re my family. You’re the only one I’ve known until now.” I stopped talking, but held on. I wanted the distance between us to stop. I wanted this painful chasm of bad feeling and resentment to close.

Conrad snarled for a moment, looking for all the world as if he was going to slap me across the face, but then he collapsed, wrapping his arms around me so tightly I couldn’t breathe.

I hugged him back, as hard as I could. Relief flooded through me. This was the Conrad I knew, the one I’d grown up with.

I realized amid my pounding heart and the wind that Conrad was saying something to me, and I pulled back to listen. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so, so sorry, Aoife.”

“For what?” I said, confused. “Neither of us has been very nice lately, but that’s not—”

“No.” Conrad tugged my scarf down. I flinched when he touched my scar but squeezed his hand between my own.

“It wasn’t your fault. The iron madness—”

“Nothing will make my attacking you all right, Aoife,” he said. “Not the fact that I was crazy, not the fact that I’m in remission. Nothing will make this mess with me making you come find me all right. Just let me say I’m sorry.”

I dropped his hand and nodded, pulling off my scarf on my own. “I forgive you, Conrad.” After everything that had happened, the words that had once stuck in my throat at merely thinking them came without any effort at all.

Conrad didn’t say anything; he just buried his face against my shoulder. We stayed that way for a minute, until Archie came up and coughed softly. He looked almost ashamed to be intruding, and I thought it sort of served him right. He was trying to teach Conrad to be a survivor, but calling him out had been cruel. I held on to my brother protectively as Archie spoke.

“I think that’s enough for today, son. You can go on back to the house.” He gave Conrad an awkward tap on the shoulder, the sort of male gesture that somehow conveyed it was all right, that he wasn’t really mad.

Once my brother had gone out of earshot, Archie turned to me and shook his head. “This is going to cause an epic uproar, I hope you know. There has never been a female Gateminder, not in the hundred and twenty years since Tesla made the damn things in the first place. If you turn out to be my heir with the Weird—and let’s face it, we both know it’s likely after your brother’s performance just now … Well. There’s going to be some hurt feelings in the Brotherhood.”

I didn’t particularly care what sort of uproar I’d cause. By now, I was pretty used to being the one who made everything go sideways for the people in charge. “Are you mad at me?” I asked my father. He gave me a look as if I were going crazier than I already was.

“Of course not. I’m damn proud of you. You’re smart, and your Weird is something to behold. Once we toughen you up, you’re going to do a much better job of this whole thing than me.”

I blushed a little. Inspiring pride in Archie was a new sensation, and I liked it. “But without the Brotherhood, what good are the Gateminders?” I asked. “What will it matter if it passes to me?”

“We’re still the only humans who can open Gates,” Archie said. “In this world or any other. As long as that’s the case, we have a duty to police what comes through, whether or not those fat cats who’ve taken over the Brotherhood have a say.”

I kicked a furrow in the sand with my foot. It was a lot of responsibility. But it certainly wasn’t more than what I’d already decided to shoulder myself: to find the nightmare clock. That was what I had to do, above all else.

“I’ll do my best,” I said to my father. I felt lousier than I admitted about lying to him, even partially. But his falling-out with the Brotherhood wasn’t mine, and I needed a look at the Iron Codex, now more than ever. I needed a way to find the nightmare clock and use it, and Archie couldn’t do that for me.

I was as ready as I was ever going to be, I realized. And I was going to have to disobey my father to do what I needed to do—only, now there was at least the small hope that he’d forgive me after the fact for running off on my own.

Archie pulled me in with one arm and gave me a squeeze. “Thank you,” he said.

I frowned in confusion. “For what, Dad?”

“Trusting me,” he said. “I know it was a lot to ask. All I ask now is that you keep being smart, and strong, and trust yourself.” He held me at arm’s length, and for the first time the expression in his eyes softened when he looked at me. I wouldn’t have called it fatherly, but it was no longer calculating. “Trust yourself, Aoife. And never stop fighting.”

Trusting other people doesn’t come easily to you when you’ve never had someone who trusts you. But I had to tell someone about my dreams of the dark figure and the spinning worlds beyond his glass prison, someone who wouldn’t tell Archie or Valentina in turn. Or let it slip to the girl he was infatuated with.

Dean shook his head when I finished, and lit a cigarette. “Hell of a story, Aoife.”

“They’re not regular dreams,” I said. “I’m sure of that. They feel too much. I can taste the air and hear the gears clacking, feel the vibrations under my feet.”

“I’ve had some doozies of dreams,” Dean said. “Bourbon and bad diner food will do it. But not lately.” He slid closer to me and draped his arm around my shoulder. “I sleep nice and tight here, princess.”

“It’s different,” I said, blushing at his reminder of the day before. “If the nightmare clock actually exists, and I think it does, Valentina said it can … change things. Reality.” I swallowed, hoping it didn’t sound insane when I said it aloud. “It could put the world right again. The Engine, the Gates, everything.”

“Right.” Dean exhaled. “You mean back like it was, with Proctors and secret prisons and burnings? Because that was top-notch, I gotta say.” Venom dripped from his words.

“Back to where I know why my mother is sick, and I can help her,” I whispered, feeling tears prick at the corners of my eyes and hating my weakness. “And where the Proctors don’t exist at all.”

Dean ground out his cigarette against a porch post. “You’ve got that look, Aoife. Like all the gears are seized. What crazy thing are you thinking of?”

“Someone who knows more than Archie could be a big help,” I said.

“True, but you’re stuck here with dear old Dad,” Dean said. “He’s got his eye on you, to make sure you don’t …” He trailed off and rubbed his chin, not meeting my eyes.

“Blow up an Engine and break the Gates?” I supplied. It was the truth. It shouldn’t have hurt. But it did, and I pulled back.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Dean said. He drew me close again. “I know you feel like you have to put things right. I just don’t want you to get hurt. Besides, who knows more than your old man about this stuff?”

“The Brotherhood,” I said instantly. “They have the Iron Codex—all the knowledge this world has of any other.”

“I thought Archie said we couldn’t trust them,” Dean said. “People who think they know everything are usually pretty good at hiding stuff, Aoife.”

“But I don’t know anything right now,” I said, all the frustration I’d been feeling earlier cropping up again. “I don’t know if my dad’s right or just paranoid. I’d just like the chance to ask them myself.”

“Well, if you insist,” Dean said. “Let’s bust out of here and go ask ’em. Where do they bunk?”

I shrugged. “No idea.” I looked back at the house, where off-key piano music floated out through the glass. “But I bet Valentina knows all about it.”

Valentina and Archie shared the master bedroom in the Crosley house. The four-poster bed was unmade, and bottles of ink and papers bearing my father’s jagged handwriting were scattered across the writing desk in the corner.

I stood still for a moment, taking in the details of the room. A negligee hung from the door of the wardrobe, and one of Archie’s shirts was crumpled on the floor.

A creak from below reminded me that I was on borrowed time, and I went over to the dressing table, which was covered with rows of makeup pots and perfume bottles and a powder puff, all the tools Valentina had shown me how to use to put my face on. She’d really tried to make this easier on me, and a small part of me felt rotten for snooping now and deceiving the both of them.

But in the greater scheme, if I fixed things, if I used the clock the way Valentina had said some believed it could be used, wouldn’t it justify what I was doing now?

I sure hoped so.

While Dean kept watch on the door, I dug into the drawers, beneath the underthings and the odds and ends of old hairpins and mostly empty bottles.

Valentina had to have something—a letter, her own witch’s alphabet—that would tell me how to connect with the Brotherhood of Iron.

My fingers brushed paper—good, thick vellum paper—and I moved aside a stack of slips to see several oversized envelopes tied with a blue silk ribbon. Finally. Elated, I pulled them from the drawer and flipped through them one by one. They were all addressed to Miss Valentina Gravesend Crosley in the same precise hand.

I slipped the letters—six of them—out of the envelopes and retied the parcel sans the pages inside the envelopes. That would buy me a little time before Valentina and Archie discovered what I was up to.

What I was up to could be mad; I’d considered that. The iron of the Iron Land could be poisoning me—more slowly than before, it was true—but then, my particular brand of madness had always shown itself first in dreams.

Still, if there was a chance I could put things right, I was going to take it, no matter what the odds might be. I knew myself well enough to know that.

Shoving the letters into the waist of my skirt, I pulled the pin-neat white cardigan Valentina had lent me over the bulge and went back to my own little room.

I propped a chair under the doorknob to avoid being interrupted. I’d hit the jackpot. The letters, all but one, were from Valentina’s father, and he’d signed them Herbert Gravesend Crosley, which just solidified the image I had of Valentina’s parents as stuffy, unappealing sticklers.

Lastly, I unfolded a letter in familiar handwriting—the jagged slanted scrawl of my father. It was old, the ink worn away at the crease, and written on cheaper paper than the rest; it was beginning to fray at the corners.

Dearest Valentina,

I shut my eyes and sucked in a breath of the stale air in my room. A love letter. A love letter written when I was still in Lovecraft, when my mother was locked away, when Conrad and I were in some orphanage.

That couldn’t matter now. Shaking my head to clear it, I read on.

It’s cold here, and I’m getting more frustrated by the day.

The Brotherhood as it is now is a disgrace. They sit, fat and content here at the top of the world, and they scheme and argue, but they never do anything. Not about the Thorn Land, not about the Proctors, not about the instability of the Gates.

They don’t realize that with every bargain they cut with the Fae, they bring us an inch closer to another Storm. They are weakening the very world that they helped build. The tenet of never trusting the Fae has fallen by the wayside, and nobody listens to anything I have to say on the matter. They sit and scribble in their damn notebooks, natter on and on about the glory of the Iron Codex, and never admit that things are worse now than they ever were when the Storm was raging.

Too late, I thought. I gripped the letter hard enough to make tiny tears in the edges of the paper. There was a second Storm now—a slow-moving plague that was pouring from the shattered Gate into the Iron Land, a Storm I’d had a hand in causing when I’d broken the Gates to Thorn.

This is not about protecting the human race anymore. This is not even about balance, about living in harmony with the eldritch things that crawl out of Thorn. This is a shell game to see who can grab the most power and influence from under the cup before the whole thing collapses and we all realize we’ve grabbed a fat handful of nothing.

Or until the Proctors burn every last reasonable person on earth alive. I don’t know which we’ll get to first.

Archie’s handwriting started to skid off the page, his pen blotting and leaving long dribbles of ink that obliterated entire words.

Coming home. That’s what I want. I want to see green hills and blue skies again. Even that vile smoke over Lovecraft would be preferable to the endless days cooped up here with these old men in the Bone Sepulchre. I want

After that, the words were blotted out, until the very end.

hold you again, smell you and feel you next to me.

I love you, Valentina. I hope you understand why I can’t be a part of this farce the Brotherhood has become anymore. Say you’ll stay with me. Please.

I crumpled the letter and tossed it across the room. It landed in the corner, with a flutter rather than a satisfying bounce.

I’d found out something useful. The rest of it shouldn’t matter.

My resolve had hardened.

The Brotherhood was going to help me, whether they knew it or not. The Iron Codex would have answers, and I was going to have to go and find them.

I laid out my plan to Dean, Cal, Bethina and Conrad, because I needed their help. They took it about as well as I expected.

“You’re cracked,” Conrad said. “You heard what Dad said. We have to lie low, and we have to wait until there’s more of us together to try and fix the Gate. In the meantime, there are Proctors everywhere, and creatures coming through the broken Gates. Have you thought about how you’re even going to get to this … what’d you call it?”

“The Bone Sepulchre,” I said, matching his testy tone. “And stop calling me nuts, Conrad.”

“I’m sorry, but when you say something that’s nuts, I’m not gonna lie,” he said. He looked at Dean. “Please tell her she’s being crazy.”

“It’s a bad idea,” Dean said. “But if you’re going, I’m going with you.”

“No,” I said firmly. “I don’t know how they’d react to you, Dean. It’s bad enough that I have Fae blood. I can’t put you in that position.”

“Have you ever thought that your father might be right?” Bethina spoke up. “The world isn’t the same at all. Ghouls everywhere, stone knows what crawling out from under every rock.” She shivered. “Mr. Grayson has good sense, miss. Maybe you should listen to him for once.”

Cal nodded agreement, and I shot him an annoyed glance. He was only doing that to impress his girlfriend, and I kicked him under the table when he glared back. Boys and girls got silly when crushes and love came into play. I hoped I didn’t come across as that irritating when I was with Dean.

“I’m going to try,” I said. “So don’t even attempt to change my mind.”

Cal grumbled, and I spread my hands. “If it were your mother missing in this mess …”

“All right, all right,” Cal said, throwing me a murderous shut up glance. As if I’d spill his secret in front of Bethina. “We’ll help you, but for the record, I think this whole plan is going to come to a bad end.”

“Well, I’m not helping,” Conrad announced. “Your running away is just that—running. You’re afraid of what might happen if you let Archie be in charge and fix this the right way.”

“And what exactly are you doing besides nothing, Conrad?” I asked. “What exactly did you do before, besides pant after Archie’s trail like a puppy and almost get yourself killed? Thank goodness you had your Weird,” I said, and then snapped my fingers. “Oh, that’s right—yours hasn’t shown up yet.”

“You’re being a bitch, Aoife,” Conrad said, his brows lowering and his eyes going angry.

“And you’re being a dunce if you think we can just sit here and expect everything to be fine,” I snapped back. I shouldn’t have picked on Conrad’s lack of a Weird, but he could be so infuriating. “Archie’s not perfect, Conrad, and he doesn’t always have a plan. He did just leave us in Lovecraft.”

“You know our mother, Aoife,” he cried, slamming his hand on the table in frustration. “I would have left too.”

“You leave wives,” I said. “Not children.”

“She’s got a point,” Dean murmured.

Conrad stood up, shoving back his chair. “Fine. You two run off like delinquents, and drag poor Cal and Bethina with you. I’m out of this.” He left, and I stood up to go after him, to do what, I wasn’t sure, but Dean pulled me back.

“Forget it,” he said. “You’re not changing his mind.”

I sank back in my chair and pressed my face into my hands. I thought I’d lost Conrad over a year ago when his iron madness made him go for my throat with a knife, but to find him alive and sane and now to see the gulf between us getting even wider—that, I couldn’t handle.

Nor could I blame Conrad entirely for being such a jerk. I wanted a father again as badly as he did. He was just more willing to accept Archie’s demands for obedience.

“He’s right, though,” I muttered. “I don’t have a plan for how I’ll get out of here, never mind how I’ll get to the Brotherhood. We don’t even know where the Bone Sepulchre is.”

Cal cast a look back at the door. As a ghoul, he had much better hearing than Dean and me, and I’d entrusted him with keeping watch. “Is there some way we can figure it out?”

“Well, Archie’s letter talked about the top of the world,” I said. “The Arctic Circle somewhere would make sense. The Proctors steer clear of there.” The accepted story was that great viral creatures flourished under the polar ice, but I didn’t know the real truth. Regardless, there was something there that kept the Proctors out of the cold, unclaimed waters and led them to keep everyone else out too, with blockades and patrol boats. It made as much sense as any other location on earth.

“Not to put a damper on the party,” Bethina said, “but you can’t just grab a skiff and row up to the Arctic Ocean. That’s a long journey, and you need an ironside boat. I saw a lanternreel on the subject when I was a girl. About the expeditions and such.”

“I guess I’ll figure it out when I get to the Bone Sepulchre.” I shrugged, feigning a confidence I didn’t feel in one iota of my being.

“There’s a submersible that runs from Innsmouth,” Dean spoke up. “Usually up to Nova Scotia and beyond, ferrying fugitives into Canada.” He took out his pack of cigarettes and tapped it against the table. “But I wager that for the right price they’d go all the way to the top. The captain’s a tough nut—not afraid of going under the ice.”

I looked at Dean, pained. “You know I don’t have any money.”

“There’s things other than money,” Dean said. “But they’re not pirates. They won’t take you unless I vouch for you. And if I vouch, I’m coming.” He took out a Lucky and stuck it behind his ear, and I could tell by his posture I wasn’t going to get to argue.

I didn’t want to appear scared, but I did want Dean along. Without him, I’d be alone, at the mercy of whatever cropped up between here and the Bone Sepulchre. “That’s fine.”

“Getting out of the house isn’t going to be easy,” Cal said. “Neither your dad nor Valentina is exactly asleep at the wheel.” He cocked his head and then jerked a thumb at the door. “Speaking of. Someone’s coming.”

“Don’t worry,” I told all three of them. “That part I’ve got covered.”

Valentina was in the library, and for a minute I thought Archie was with her before I realized she was seemingly talking to herself.

“No, I don’t know when.” A pause. “Stop it. Stop pushing. It will happen when it happens.”

I knocked twice, softly.

There was a clatter from inside, and then Valentina yanked the door wide. “What, Aoife?”

“Listen,” I said. “I’m sorry about what happened before. I shouldn’t have fibbed. But I really would like to use the Munin.” I wrapped my arms around myself and shivered in the ever-present drafts that ran through the Crosley house like the vapor trails of dirigibles. “It’s kind of dreary in here.”

“I know,” Valentina sighed. “It’s meant to be a summerhouse. Open windows, cool ocean breezes and all that.”

“Maybe just for an hour or two a night?” I wheedled. “You can even watch me if you want.”

“You’re a big girl, Aoife,” Valentina said. “I trust you’ve learned your lesson?”

“Oh, yes,” I said. “I won’t touch the journals. I just want a little peace and quiet and space.”

“Fine,” Valentina said. “Honestly, I’m glad to see someone so enamored of the old bucket. Always hated the damn thing when my father would pile us all in it for family trips.”

“It’s a beautiful craft,” I said. It was a relief to say one thing, at least, that wasn’t a lie.

“You know what it means, Munin?” Valentina asked. She absently straightened a few books on the shelf before her. “Before the Storm, the Vikings and such worshiped a father-god, a man who put out his own eye for the wisdom of the world.” Valentina brushed a stray curl behind her ear and looked past me, to something only she could see. “To replace the eye, the Allfather had two ravens named Hunin and Munin that flew out into the world every day and brought back what they had seen. Hunin and Munin—‘thought’ and ‘memory.’ ” Valentina smiled. “My father always did have a flair for the dramatic.”

“So does mine,” I murmured.

“Anyway, the dusty wisdom of that particular bird is all yours,” Valentina said. “But you and that boy are not to canoodle in there. You get me?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “Loud and clear.”

“I thought you were a brat when we first met,” Valentina said. “Sheltered and petulant. I’m glad I was wrong.”

“Me too,” I said as she brushed past me and left the library. When I turned back to take stock of the books, I was startled by a gleam of metal from the shelf where she’d stood. I pulled out a few volumes, then a fat handful. I recognized the simple brass box, the aether tube and the speaker and receiver. It was an aethervox, a long-range variety, wired into an antenna on the top of the house. Valentina hadn’t been talking to herself.

I turned the dial, watched the aether swirl inside the clear glass tube at the top of the vox for a moment as it warmed up, but only static greeted me when the speaker clicked on. The vox was tuned to a dead channel.

Whoever Valentina had been speaking to, she didn’t want anyone else to know.

I covered the vox again. It couldn’t help me now, and I knew I couldn’t afford to accuse Valentina of anything; I’d just lose all the credibility I’d gained with her and my father, and I’d never be able to slip away and find the Brotherhood.

After I’d hidden the vox, I went up to my room to pack a few things and meet Dean before I lost my nerve.

Despite Conrad’s naysaying, running away went pretty smoothly. Dean and I slipped out separately to the Munin, where I made sure to turn on all the lights and find a station on the aether tubes to send noise back toward the house. Cal and Bethina waited in the shadow of the boxwoods by the porch. The hard part was up to me.

The Crosley house had bright arc lamps mounted on the four corners, a standard precaution against ghouls in unprotected areas. Dean glared at them. “You got an idea for those? Your old man is gonna see us the minute we make a break.”

I hefted the small ditty bag I’d picked up from Valentina’s dressing table. “I’ve got it covered. Help me find the transformer box.”

We crept around the house, keeping below the windows. Valentina was at the piano again, Archie was sitting near her scribbling in his journal, and Conrad was sitting across from him doing the same. The very image of the good son. I guessed that left the black sheep role for me.

Dean helped me get the cover off the box that controlled the aether flow to the exterior lanterns, the transformer hissing as it converted the elemental gas to electrical impulses.

I pulled a handful of Valentina’s hair curlers out of the bag and, using a careful, delicate touch, shoved them one by one between all the circuits. The ceramic protected me from an electrical current, and the fat rollers pushed the wires off the contacts.

There was a shower of sparks, the snap of aether against air, the scent of burnt paper, and then the gardens all around the house went dark. Only the glowing hulk of the Munin was visible in the shadows, like a lamprey floating in a black sea.

We crept back to the ladder. My heart thudded. We didn’t have a lot of time before Archie noticed the house was dark outside and came to see what had happened.

Dean started to climb after me, but I stopped him. “No. It’ll be less dangerous if there’s only one of us.”

We’d gone over the plan, all four of us, again and again that afternoon, but I was still nervous. Dean stayed behind, grumbling. “Be careful, all right?”

I nodded my assent as I scrambled up the ladder and across the cabin into the pilothouse. I flipped the switches to turn on the fans and felt the Munin strain against its ties.

Now it was a race against time and physics. Almost sick to my stomach, I skidded back to the ladder and slid down it, skinning one of my knees. I hit the ground as the first tie-down snapped, a whip crack that echoed through the black night like a bullet.

Dean ran to me and helped me up, and together we ran.

As far as distractions went, a runaway airship was a pretty good one. We were already a hundred yards from the house when the outside lamps came back on. I could hear Archie and Conrad shouting.

I felt one last stab of guilt for what I’d done, and then it was washed away by the cold night air stinging my chest. Dean and I moved, holding hands, our feet striking the frozen earth. The branches of the topiary animals tugged at my jacket as we ran through the darkness.

I knew it was only my imagination turning every rasp and rustle of icy branches and wind into prowling ghouls and hungering nightjars, but I still gripped Dean as hard as I could.

We’d arranged to meet Cal and Bethina beyond the grounds, and we stayed quiet until we were well down the road. Not only because of my father, but also in case anything else was watching. Traveling at night was dangerous, but it was our only chance to make it to Innsmouth unobserved by either Archie or Proctors.

I just wished Conrad hadn’t been so stubborn. I wished he could have been here with me.

But what I wanted rarely came to be, so I just hunched deeper into my jacket, shouldering the small bag of things I’d taken from Valentina’s house, and ran.

The house already seemed infinitely distant, and I turned back to the gravel road, lit to a white ribbon by moonlight, spotted with black where the ice had melted and formed reflecting pools for the stars above us.

We came to a signpost, CAPE COD and GLOUCESTER and INNSMOUTH written in faded lettering on its crooked arms. It creaked in the wind, swaying back and forth.

I didn’t bother looking behind me again as the four of us took the fork to Innsmouth. Archie would be furious, Conrad would be irritable, and Valentina would probably hit the roof, but it didn’t matter to me.

In my mind, I was already on my way to the Arctic.