“That Gwen girl told me you were in trouble. ” Danny shook his head, his bangs falling into tear-filled eyes. “She said not to let you go anywhere if I saw you, but how am I supposed to stop you when I know you won’t listen?”
After not hearing from her again, Gwen must have gone into Isobel’s locker, snagging Isobel’s bag so she’d have an excuse to stop by the house without seeming suspicious. She must have found Danny sitting outside—and her worst fears confirmed. That Isobel had never come home as she’d instructed.
Why had Gwen been so insistent about Isobel going home, anyway, if her note to Varen hadn’t been found yet?
Isobel also wondered if Gwen had seen or heard about the damage wrought on Eastern Parkway and the strip mall. Had her parents? Probably. But only Gwen would know for sure that the incident was tied directly to her.
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Like Danny, her mom and dad and best friend—wherever they were—had to be going insane with worry. And now that Isobel’s letter to Varen had surfaced, her parents would know that their suspicions had been right—that she had remembered everything all along.
“That’s his jacket, isn’t it?” Danny asked, calming at once, his voice going flat. “That guy. ”
“Danny, listen—”
“No!” he yelled, jerking away from her. “You listen! He’s gonna kill you, Izzy! I saw him do it!”
Isobel’s jaw dropped.
“That’s what I’ve been seeing in the dreams!” Danny shouted, using the back of one sleeve to try to clear away the tears that wouldn’t stop. “He’s always there. Every time you try to go after him, he kills you. He turns you into a skeleton and you fall apart. ”
Danny’s words brought with them a flash of recognition. She thought about Varen in the courtyard of statues. Could it be that Danny had seen—and misinterpreted—different versions of the scenario Varen had been reliving? Versions of the same scene she had witnessed? It sounded so. But . . . how?
“It’s going to happen for real this time,” Danny said. “Izzy, please. ”
“No, it’s not. ” The words I promise leaped to the tip of her tongue, but Isobel held them in check. She couldn’t say it. Not when she had another promise, still unfulfilled, to keep.
“Why?” Danny asked her, the sorrow and confusion in his voice making her stomach churn with shame. “Why do you care about him more than you do about us?”
“Danny, it’s not like that. You don’t und—”
“That phone call last night wasn’t about you,” he said, and for a split second, Isobel wasn’t sure what he was referring to. Then she remembered the discussion they’d overheard as their father had entered through the garage door. “Dad was talking to his and mom’s lawyer. ”
Shocked, Isobel grabbed his arm. “What?”
“After Baltimore, Mom told Dad she wanted a divorce,” he said. “I’m not supposed to know, but I overheard them talking last night. Dad’s trying to fix things. That’s the real reason they were going on that stupid date, except now they’re not because they’re out looking for you!”
“I . . . ,” Isobel started, but everything within her had already collapsed in on itself, suffocating anything she might have said. And what could she say? Nothing. Nothing at all. Because she could see by her brother’s lost expression that it was all true. And they both knew it was her fault.
“Danny . . . I’m sorry. ”
“No,” he said, taking a step away from her. “You’re not. You did this all before, and now you’re going to do it again. ”
Turning, he hurried to where he’d dropped his phone. He picked it up and, dialing, pushed out onto the front porch.
“Dad!” Isobel heard him say seconds later through a choked sob. “Dad, come home right now. She’s here, but I know she’s not going to stay. She’s going to leave again. So come home. Please hurry. ”
Isobel moved to go after him but paused at the door.
She had time, she told herself, to cross into the dreamworld once more. But if she was going to do that, if she was going to leave her family and Gwen behind again, then she would need to create a distraction of her own. A diversion that would lead them all away and, at the same time, keep them together. As safe as possible in this reality.
Isobel pushed through the screen door and, crouching by her backpack, dug through her coat pocket to retrieve her cell. Flipping it open, she ignored the string of texts and missed call alerts and sent a quick reply to the fifteen messages Gwen alone had sent.
MEET ME AT THE DANCE
Clamping the phone shut, she made sure Danny saw her stuff it into her bag again.
“He wants to talk to you,” Danny said.
Isobel glanced at her little brother, but her focus landed on the back-lit screen he held out to her and the photograph he had assigned to their father’s contact info.
Dressed in the makeshift Edgar Allan Poe costume he’d donned for Isobel and Varen’s project, his fake black-comb mustache on his upper lip as askew as the spray-painted cockatoo hanging from his shoulder, their father sat at the kitchen table, a goofy, too-serious expression plastered across his made-up face. He aimed the tip of a black pen at the camera. At her.
“Isobel,” she heard her father’s voice buzz on the line. “Are you there? You answer me right now. Do you hear me?”
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Isobel took the phone from Danny and saw the tension knotting his brow ease slightly.
“Isobel, damn it,” her dad said, his voice growing louder, more frantic. “I said answer me!”
She didn’t raise the phone to her ear. Instead she stared at that picture. Studying it, she took in all the details—memorizing every last one. Just in case.
“Izzy?” her father said, and now his voice came soft, almost too quiet to hear. “If you’re there, for the love of God, please say something. ”
“I love you—Mom, too,” she said. “And I’m sorry,” she added before driving her thumb into the end button.
26
Crisscrossed
Isobel turned her back on her brother, unable to meet his gaze again.
Re-entering the house, she dropped his cell to the floor and, dodging the cracked picture frames that littered the foyer floor and steps, pounded up the stairs.
The eyes in the photos seemed to watch her as she passed: Danny in his Scout uniform, Isobel in last year’s cheerleading portrait, all four members of her family beaming in front of the Christmas tree two Decembers ago.
Their mother and father’s wedding photo . . .
The storm door slammed a second time.
“Isobel, stop!” Danny yelled, and she heard him thundering after her.
Veering down the hall, Isobel hurried into her bedroom. She shoved the door closed just as Danny reached it.
“Open the door!” he yelled, banging, twisting the knob, but she’d already locked it.
She spun to face her room, which someone had ransacked.
The contents of her dresser drawers lay strewn across the floor, and nearby, the sheet she’d thrown over her mirror sat in a heap.
Atop her cubbyhole headboard, the numbers on her digital clock flickered and jumped.
In the center of her bed, laid out like it was waiting for her, rested Isobel’s tattered pink dress. The same one Gwen had bought secondhand and altered for her to wear to the Grim Facade.
But Isobel had buried the gown away in the bottom drawer of her dresser.
Seeing it exhumed from its resting place and arranged with such care across her comforter, she now doubted her father or mother could have been responsible for the raid.
But who, then?
“Dad’s coming,” Danny said. “He’s on his way. You won’t get far, so you might as well open the door. ”
Tuning out her brother’s frantic knocking, Isobel ventured with slow steps to stand at the foot of her bed.
She remembe
red how Gwen had chosen the gown specifically for its hue, knowing Isobel would be the only one in such a color at the underground goth party.
In a way, the dress had been meant as a beacon, a signal that had allowed Varen to spot her easily amid the sea of black-clad bodies. To make her a light in the dark.
Gwen’s plan had worked, too. Varen had found her right away.
What was more, he’d known her right away.
Isobel placed a hand on the dress, fingers grazing the hemline and torn tulle of its poufy underskirt.
Along with the grit and grime embedded in the material, once pink but now pale gray, black blots of her own blood dotted the dress’s lace overlay and stained the underlying skirt.
The dress had changed so much since she’d first put it on. Almost as much as she had . . .
Varen, Isobel thought. All this time, he’d been seeing different versions of her. The scar-free Party Pink Isobel, Cheerleader Isobel, Bleeding Black Dress Isobel. Dead Isobel.
But . . . what if she dared appear to him as a blended version of herself? The past and present merged together? Would that help him believe it really was her?
Sitting out in plain view this way, the dress seemed to suggest the idea all on its own. As if that had been the exact intention of whoever it was who had pillaged her things.
Isobel glanced at the door, which had gone quiet.
Danny, she figured, must have retreated down the stairs. Had he gone outside to try calling their parents again? Or even the police? Maybe he’d gone to retrieve her phone, like she’d wanted him to, to see what she’d texted.
Whatever the case, Isobel would be gone by the time he returned.
Quickly she shucked her clothes and donned the dress, managing somehow to zip up the back on her own.
The cool satin lining hugged close to her skin, the bodice only slightly looser than it had been on Halloween.
Pulling on Varen’s jacket as a final touch, Isobel turned to face the door. She stopped, though, caught off guard by the sight of herself in her unveiled dresser mirror.
With her face smudged, her hair caked with grime, and her dingy skirts crinkled and stained, she looked as if she’d just survived an explosion.
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Well, she thought wryly, taking in the ensemble, at least I match.
Tearing her gaze from the mirror, she started for the door. She reached for the knob, one of her sneakers causing the floor to creak.
“He said you’d be wearing that jacket when I saw you again. ”
Isobel halted at the sound of her brother’s voice, which came muffled through the door. Startled both by his words and by the fact that he was still there, that he must have been there the whole time, she lowered her hand.
“He said that when you had it on, that’s when I would need to tell you . . . ”
She frowned, somehow doubting that by “he” her brother could be referring to their father.
Moving right up to the door, Isobel pressed her hands flat to its surface and waited, but for a long while, Danny didn’t say anything else. Then, just when Isobel was tempted to ask who he’d meant, he spoke again.
“Last night was the first night he ever talked. ”
“Who?” Isobel heard herself ask, even though she already had an inkling.
“The black bird,” Danny replied.
Isobel’s eyes widened, her suspicions confirmed. Her breath caught in her throat as, suddenly, it made sense how Danny had been seeing things in the dreamworld—how he’d been seen in the dreamworld.
What the crow has seen, the pigeon knows, Pinfeathers had told her in the moments before destroying himself.
Danny, she thought, remembering how Scrimshaw had referred to her little brother as a pigeon.
Could Pinfeathers have been taking Danny into the dreamworld, showing him Varen’s nightmares about her on purpose? But . . . why?
“He’s really real, isn’t he?” Now her little brother didn’t sound like himself at all. His voice had gone small and afraid. “The dreams. They weren’t just dreams, were they?”
“Whatever he told you to tell me,” Isobel said, “it’s . . . important, okay?”
“He said that you should know it was never about you,” Danny replied. “He also said that you have to ‘remind us of who we are. ’ He said you would know what that meant. . . . Do you?”
Isobel didn’t answer. Instead she waited, her eyes searching the blank white surface in front of her as if it could provide the aid Pinfeathers’s cryptic message failed to offer.
She rested her forehead against the door.
No. She didn’t know what, specifically, that meant. And she still didn’t know why the Noc had sought out Danny instead of her. Maybe he’d had to in order to protect her from Scrimshaw.
And if Pinfeathers had taken her to the dreamworld instead, wouldn’t her brain have interpreted things the same way Danny’s had? Varen destroying her over and over?
Then she might have truly gone insane.
Maybe Pin had known Lilith’s plan to use Isobel against Varen. As a means of luring him into this destructive state of mind. Into becoming this destructive force . . .
Could Pinfeathers have overheard the demon and Reynolds talking—plotting?
Isobel didn’t know the answer. But the Noc never seemed to take the direct route where logic was concerned. Any logic other than his own, that is.
“Is . . . that it?” she asked. “Is that everything?”
“He said memories make better weapons than words. ”
Again Isobel waited. And just when she thought her brother had finished, his muffled voice spoke again.
“And . . . there was one other thing. ”
“What?” Isobel asked.
“He made me promise to tell you ‘I told you so. ’”
Isobel looked down at her feet. She tried hard not to smile, but it was either that or cry. She allowed the smile, and it came sad and small.
There was no need to wonder what Pinfeathers meant by that statement. She already knew this was his way of ensuring he got the last word. Of leaving Isobel with a final proclamation that would underscore everything he had ever tried to warn her about.
Of course, like nearly everything he ever said, that phrase could hold a double and opposite meaning. “I told you so” might have been meant to underline his promise that he would still help her. Or to provide proof of the confession that he loved her.
Maybe he’d meant the phrase in every way possible.
She would never know. Not for sure.
Isobel took hold of the doorknob.
“Izzy?” she heard her brother say, and his voice sounded farther away now, fading out, as if he were floating off.
As Isobel drew a clear image of Varen in her mind, though, she knew that, in truth, she was the one who was phasing out, departing into another realm.
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“Yes?” she answered.
In her periphery, she saw the smaller objects in her room begin to rise and float, her scattered clothing and her “Number One Flyer” trophy.
“I love you,” her brother’s voice echoed, sounding now as if it were emanating from the bottom of a deep well.
The words sent a sharp pang through her, and turning the knob, Isobel ripped open the door again.
Her brother was gone, though.
In his place waited windowless stone walls, a winding spiral staircase, and far below, a bottomless well of pure darkness.
27
Amid the Mimic Rout
There was no banister. No railing. Only the looping ribbon of stairs and, at their center, the abyss.
With one guarded step, Isobel crossed out of the reality she knew into the realm she dreaded. Placing a hand to the cold stone wall to ground herself, she peered up—and found an exact replica of the descending view.
An upside-down flight
of steps, like the coiling underbelly of a serpent, wound up and away forever.
Fighting a wave of vertigo along with the sense that she’d somehow been transported into an optical illusion, Isobel turned to face her room again. Her door had vanished, though, and as she stared into the grooves and cracks of the stone surface, nausea crept over her.
Swallowing, she concentrated on the solidness of the step beneath her, the sense of gravity pulling her down, holding her in place.
While she thought she could move if she didn’t peer over the edge of the stairs again, she doubted she could bring herself to climb any higher than she already was. So, shifting, legs shaking, she angled herself toward the descending path. Not willing to risk losing her equilibrium a second time, she kept her focus on where the steps anchored into the wall.
Down and around, down and around. Down, down, and down.
The farther Isobel went, the deeper the black helix seemed to wind, making her wonder if she could be venturing underground.
She considered stopping to alter her surroundings, to open a wall or create another door. But would that only lead her away from what she sought? Who she sought?
Isobel thought of Varen’s name over and over. She pictured his face. The stairwell didn’t change, though. No doors appeared. And yet each time Isobel completed a revolution—or assumed she’d completed one—she kept expecting to encounter an archway or a window. Something.
But there was only rough stone, mortar, and more stairs.
Halting, she pressed her spine flush to the wall. She flicked her eyes to the inverted set of steps above and wondered why her thoughts weren’t working.
Every time before, when the images in her mind had been clear, when she hadn’t been battling distractions like the Nocs or Reynolds, the dreamworld had, in some form or another, always presented her with a pathway.
But even when she’d entered the dreamworld through the veil earlier that day, her thoughts, she reminded herself, had failed to take her directly to Varen. Instead they’d led her to the cluttered attic, which housed the remnants of the Varen she knew from before. The fragments of his subconscious. Pinfeathers.
True, she had found her way to the courtyard, to the real flesh-and-blood Varen. She knew now, though, that that had been Lilith’s doing.
Like Reynolds, the demon had wanted Isobel to find Varen—to interact with him. Yet even though it seemed as if Reynolds and Lilith shared the goal of igniting the fuse to the bomb Varen had unwittingly become, Isobel still wasn’t sure the two had the same endgame vision.