“Hey,” she called. “Speaking of, did you do the project yet?”
“No. ”
She watched him hoist the bucket and pour the filthy water into the tub sink.
“It’s due week after next. ”
“Yeah, I know,” he said. He set the bucket down and kept his back to her while he washed his hands. “Shouldn’t you be the one worried about that?”
“I guess so,” she mumbled, and cast her eyes to the polished floor. They’d scrubbed the place till it sparkled and she was convinced that it was actually cleaner now than it had been before Brad and the crew trashed it. If she had learned one thing for certain about Varen now, it was that he was thorough.
She looked up again and watched in silence as he opened the locker cabinet in the corner and brought out his wallet, strung with three different lengths of chain. He scooped something else out with his other hand, and when he made for the door, she stepped out of his way.
He brushed past her into the main room and deposited his wallet, coils of chains, and a handful of rings onto one of the wicker tables. Next he grabbed the plastic trash bag they’d filled during the cleanup and, pulling the plastic drawstring closed, tied it off.
“Give me a sec,” he said. “I gotta take this out. ” Isobel watched him disappear into the staff room again, lugging the trash bag behind him. She heard the back outer door open.
She glanced down at the wallet on the table and the small collection of rings. One of the rings, she realized, was his high school ring. No one could have guessed by looking at it from a distance, though. The ring’s boxy silver frame cradled a bulky, black rectangular gem in place of the traditional Trenton blue sapphire. A silver V stood in the middle of the onyx stone instead of a T and, on the side, where people usually had the school’s hawk-head emblem, there was the profile of a crow or a raven or something that wasn’t a hawk.
Her gaze drifted away from the rings to his wallet.
She glanced at the open staff door, then back to the wallet. Outside, the Dumpster banged.
Quickly Isobel snatched up his wallet and pried it open.
The first thing she found was a little plastic insert for pictures. It held a single oval photograph—the girl from Varen’s morning group, part of the woe-is-me convergence that met at the radiator next to the side doors every morning. It was the girl who had handed him the red envelope, Isobel realized, and she thought her name was Lacy. Did this mean she was his girlfriend?
The girl wasn’t smiling in the picture. She had a defiant expression on her round face, as though she were silently daring the onlooker to address her directly. She had mounds of thick black hair that fell past the cut of the photo, though Isobel knew that the black waves ended in coils dipped in red dye. She had full lips, too, painted a deep burgundy, and her eyeliner, drawn with sharp wingtips, made her huge dark eyes seem even larger. Those eyes, combined with her copper skin, made her look like an Egyptian goddess.
Varen’s music ceased without warning. Silence pulsed. Hands fumbling, Isobel snapped closed the wallet and set it back on the table amid the rings, just as he’d left it. She dropped into one of the chairs and crossed her legs, trying to look nonchalant.
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He emerged from the back room with his black booklet of CDs in one hand, his jacket in the other. He set the CD case aside and pulled on the worn hunter green jacket, the one with the silhouette of the dead bird safety-pinned onto the back. Stopping at the table, he stuffed his wallet into his back pocket and, turning halfway away, lifted his shirt to hook the chains through a front belt loop.
Isobel stole a glance.
A black silver-studded belt encircled his narrow hips. Beneath the baggy T-shirt, he was thin and pale but strong-looking. She tried not to go pink in the face when she suddenly caught herself wondering if his skin felt warm to the touch or vampire cold.
Isobel averted her eyes. She stared out the store windows instead, but she could still see his reflection in the darkened glass. She stared, watching his every movement as he set to putting the rings on his fingers methodically, one at a time. His arms, sinewy and graceful, moved as though conducting a ritual, and she blinked, unable to look away.
When he was finished, he snatched up his CD case and she snapped to.
“C’mon,” he said. “I’ll drive you home. ”
“It’s the next right,” she said, “by the fountain. ”
The headlights of Varen’s car swept over the tiered fountain as he steered them into her neighborhood, Lotus Grove. He drove a black 1967 Cougar, the interior a dark burgundy, a nice ride.
The Cougar, rumbling, purring like its namesake, rolled to a stop in front of her driveway. Isobel took her time unfastening her seat belt. She stalled, remembering how Poe had come up again at the ice cream shop. That couldn’t have been a coincidence, could it? He had to have been dropping a hint, right?
She’d thought about this the whole ride home. In truth, she’d been thinking about it ever since he’d introduced her to Cemetery Sighs. But she hadn’t yet worked up enough courage to ask. Now that she was at her house and about to get out of the car, however, she couldn’t ignore the now-or-never feeling churning in her gut.
“Listen,” she began. She shifted in her seat to look at him, though he didn’t return her gaze. Maybe he knew it was coming. She took the dive anyway. What did she have left to lose?
“Are you . . . set on doing the project by yourself now?”
He said nothing, only continued to stare forward out the windshield. Isobel waited but, deciding not to hold her breath, took his silence as a yes. She grasped the door handle and pulled, not about to argue that she didn’t deserve it.
“I get off of work at five on Sunday,” he said, and she paused, one foot on the pavement. “Can you meet after that?”
“Yeah. ”
“Good,” he said. “Nobit’s Nook is a bookstore on Bardstown Road, you know where it is?”
She nodded. She knew where it was.
“I’ll be there at five thirty,” he said.
Sold, she thought. “Five thirty Sunday,” she echoed, and grabbed her stuff, climbing out before he had time to change his mind. She shut the car door behind her, waved, and jogged up the slope of her lawn to her front door. She dug around in her gym bag in search of her keys, but when she tried the handle, she found the door unlocked. She slipped in, careful not to make any noise, since her parents had probably gone to bed sometime around eleven.
Once inside, she fished out her blinking phone and flipped it open. The LCD light lit up, showing seven missed calls—what? Oh crud, Coach always had them turn off their phones before a game, because she hated hearing them go off in the locker room. Had she left it on silent this whole time? Mom and Dad were going to—
“Where have you been?” A familiar voice broke through the darkness. Isobel’s eyes flew wide. She turned and saw her mom sitting at the dining room table and her dad right next to her, neither of them wearing their happy faces.
“And who was that?” her father asked.
9
Intangible Forms
Grounded. That was her sentencing for the rest of the weekend, mostly because Isobel hadn’t been able to come up with a satisfactory excuse as to why she hadn’t checked her phone sooner. When her mom and dad had asked where she’d been, she’d done her best not to lie, saying that the crew had gone out for ice cream after the game and that they had lost track of time. To the question of who had brought her home, Isobel had only shrugged, saying that it had been someone from school. She could tell that her dad especially hadn’t liked that answer, but he didn’t interrogate her any further about it, either.
She wasn’t ready to talk about what had happened at the ice cream shop. She certainly wasn’t ready to tell her parents that she had broken up with Brad. Or even admit that the crew was no more. Not when she’d scarcely had time to p
rocess everything herself. Mostly, though, she felt reluctant about mentioning Varen’s name at all, as if, somehow, that could only invoke further disaster.
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And so, between bouts of sulking and trying not to think about losing all of her friends in one night, or about the crazy way Brad had acted or about how awkward things would be at school on Monday, Isobel spent most of that Saturday trying to devise a plan as to how she was going to meet up with Varen the next day. Of course, she already knew that it would have to involve sneaking out.
By late Sunday afternoon, when her dad had plunked himself in front of the TV, she also realized that, if she wanted to greatly decrease her chances of getting caught, she would also need to position a lookout.
Convincing Danny proved to be more difficult than usual. She started off the bidding by offering to do all of his chores for the week because, in the past, whenever she’d been desperate for a favor, that one had usually done the trick. This time, however, he passed on that proposal as well as on the prospect of collecting her allowance for the next two weeks.
Normally one for immediate gratification, Danny surprised her by cutting an unusual deal, one that would involve Isobel putting on a part-time chauffeur hat after her birthday in the spring, after she finally got her car. The negotiation reminded her of a Mafia do-or-die session, complete with Danny threatening to make her life miserable should she “renege” on any one “clause” of their “agreement,” and it made her realize how enterprising her little brother had become since starting middle school. But she figured that her parents would probably make her tote him around to some degree, anyway. And so, after reminding Danny how he watched way too much TV, Isobel reluctantly conceded.
“But I’m not picking your friends up or taking everybody home to ten different places,” she said before taking his offered hand.
To this, Danny rolled his eyes, giving her hand a stiff shake. “That’s why we have bikes. Duh. ”
“So what am I supposed to do if Mom and Dad try to go in your room?” Danny asked this while watching her load her backpack with a notepad, pens, and the books on Poe she’d checked out from the library.
“Don’t let them in,” she said. Honestly, hadn’t they already gone over this?
“Yeah, but I can’t keep them out. You and I both know that I can hardly keep myself out. ” He added this last bit while leaning against her vanity and opening one of the drawers.
“Well, you’d better,” she said, shutting the drawer again. “You know the deal is off if they find out. ”
That ought to add a little extra incentive, Isobel thought.
She pulled on her backpack and walked over to her open window. Cool air breezed in, stirring her lace curtains, blowing in the scent of rusty leaves and that singed autumn smell that was almost spicy. So far it had been a nice day, if just a little bit cooler than Isobel liked. At least it didn’t look like it was going to rain.
She straddled the window ledge, ducking her head down and out before climbing fully onto the roof. They lived in a split-level, so there had always been a little outcrop she could slip out to sit on if she needed to be alone.
Isobel steadied herself on the decline, the coarse shingles scraping and crunching under her shoes. She tried not to look over the ledge of the gutter. Instead she glanced over her shoulder to see Danny leaning out, looking after her.
“Remember,” she said, but she didn’t have to finish.
“If they start to ask questions, you have a headache, and you’re asleep. ”
“And?”
“And keep a watch out at the garage door, because you’ll be back by the stroke of seven thirty and in time for dinner or else you’ll turn back into an alien and be deported to your home planet. ” Danny recited all this with his chubby face cupped in his hands, his elbows propped against the window ledge. He flashed a smile at the end.
Isobel rolled her eyes and turned to shuffle along the roof, careful to keep her footing square and sure against the sloped terrain.
“This may be none of my business,” she heard Danny say from behind, “but can I ask why you’re risking life, liberty, and limb to sneak out?”
“Normally,” Isobel began as she reached the far edge, where she knew her mother’s white wood lattice met with the roof, “that sort of information would be classified. ” She drew off her backpack and dropped it to the grass below. Then she turned and lowered herself, extending a leg over the ledge, feeling around for purchase. The tip of her shoe slid into a slot on the lattice. “But since you asked . . . ” Gaining a foothold, she began to descend. “I’ve got to go do my homework. ”
* * *
The door creaked, and a belt of rusty bells clanged as she entered the old bookstore.
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From the outside, Isobel could tell that the building had once been someone’s house, the painted bricks chipping green paint, a crumbling chimney visible on one side of the roof. Inside, the musty air held an antique thickness, and the scent of dust and aging books combined to make breathing a chore.
The front room stretched before her long and narrow, lined with rows of tall, sturdy bookshelves that reached almost to the ceiling. Overhead, the tired light fixtures burned a dull gold, adding little relief to the accumulated shadows.
Isobel inched in. She didn’t see Varen anywhere, but then again she couldn’t see much of anything yet. Carefully she stepped around a mound of ancient-looking tomes gathered near the door. She thought that this place must be in violation of at least ten different fire codes. She moved between two shelves and thought about calling out but for some reason, couldn’t bring herself to break the dead silence.
Isobel’s gaze passed up and over the marked spines of countless books, every item categorized by its own number and date, and it made her feel almost as though she were walking through catacombs.
When she reached the end, she peered around the shelf to see a counter. Well, really, she saw a lot of books piled on top of something that at one time must have been a counter.
Behind it sat an old man with crazy, flyaway white hair sticking out every which way around his head, like he’d caught his breakfast fork in a wall socket that morning.
He scowled at her with one large, piercing gray eye, the other eye pinched shut. In his lap was an enormous leather-bound book, open to a page somewhere in the middle.
“Oh, ah . . . ,” she said, and jabbed her thumb over her shoulder, as though he’d need to know she’d come in through the front door. “I’m just looking for someone. ”
He kept staring at her with that one eye, and it made her think of how a bird eyes a worm.
“Uh. You don’t . . . happen to know . . . ” She trailed off, transfixed by that eye.
Creepy much? He didn’t even blink.
Isobel took a step back and pointed over her shoulder again. “I’ll just let myself—”
He snorted, loud and abrupt. She jumped, ready to turn tail and scuttle outside to wait for Varen on the street. They could just go to Starbucks and study, because this was too freaky for her. Before she could take so much as a single backward step, though, the man’s pinched eye flew open. He stirred in his seat, blinking rapidly, sniffing.
“Oh, oh,” he grunted. He straightened in his armchair and squinted at her with both eyes, one of which she saw was a dark muddy brown, though it looked almost black in the dim lighting. “Where did you come from, young lady?”
Isobel stared at him, having to break her gaze away to glance back at the front door—to the sunlight and the sidewalk and the sane people walking their dogs.
“Oh, don’t let this get to you,” he said, aiming the tip of one finger at the large gray eye. “It’s glass. ” He wheezed out a haggard laugh. “Glad you came along. ” His laugh dissolved into a loose cough. “Or I’d have slept the day away,” he added.
“I’m—I
’m supposed to meet someone here,” Isobel murmured, and then was sorry she’d opened her mouth. All she really wanted to do was go back outside and stand on the sidewalk.
She’d passed a nice café on the way that would maybe work as a compromise, and they could work there instead. She didn’t even see anywhere to sit down in this place.
“Oh, yeah?” He coughed again, though he might have been laughing. She couldn’t be sure. She watched him coil one wrinkled fist against his mouth. His shoulders shook as he wheezed into his hand, his cheeks puffing like a blowfish.
When he stopped coughing, he let out a relieved sigh. “He’s upstairs,” the man grunted, and pointed one knotted finger toward an archway, which led into a back room that Isobel could see was (surprise, surprise) filled with still more books. “All the way to the back and up the stairs. Ignore the sign on the door. ”
“Uh, thanks,” she said, but he’d already bent his head and gone back to reading. Or sleeping. It was hard to tell.
Turning, Isobel passed through the archway and into the back part of the store. She found the door he’d told her about against the back wall. Tall and narrow, it looked like the lid of a coffin. Her first thought was that it must be a broom closet, but she didn’t see any other doors around, and this one did have a sign on it. Actually, it had two.
DO NOT ENTER
That was the first one. The second sign, written by hand on a yellowing slip of coarse paper, bore another warning.
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BEWARE OF BESS
Who, or what, was Bess? she wondered. More important, which sign was the one she was supposed to ignore? Isobel glanced over her shoulder toward the front room. She didn’t really feel like going back to ask grandpa-coughs-a-lot, and he did say to go upstairs.
Isobel grasped the tarnished brass knob and turned. The door squeaked open, revealing a long, narrow staircase that stretched steeply upward. Square shafts of white sunlight shone down from a window at the top, a million dust motes dancing in and out of the beams.
All right, she thought. If these were the stairs she was supposed to go up, then where was this Bess?
“Hello?”