That time remained steady helped to solidify the notion that she had to be awake. And why was he just sitting there anyway? Was he waiting for her to offer him leftover Christmas cookies and a glass of milk?
Finally his sullen silence became too much.
Raising the trophy, she took a quick step toward him, feigning the intent to strike, as though he were a snake she could scare off.
His eyes alone flicked up. He shot her a withering glare.
“Mature,” he said.
Isobel felt her face burn. His response, so infuriatingly snide, left her wishing she’d gone ahead and taken a crack at his jaw instead of pretending. Now she’d given him the upper hand, the knowledge that she wouldn’t attack unless she had to. Something even she hadn’t known until that very moment.
“You’re—You’re not supposed to be here,” she said, stammering in her effort to remain calm.
“We could also argue that I’m not supposed to be,” he replied. “But one thing you and I seem to have in common, cheerleader, is our knack for existence. Though it would appear I’m not quite as adept at evading destruction as you. For there you are. ” He pointed at her with one curved claw. “Yet . . . here am I. And if you look carefully in between, you can see everything we knew would happen. Or wouldn’t,” he added with a flippant wave.
His gaze returned to the floor.
Isobel shifted uncomfortably where she stood.
While she was used to his speaking in riddles, she didn’t know what to make of his uncharacteristically dour mood. Was it just a show? Another game?
“Look,” she said, raising the trophy again and aiming it at him as though it were a gun she could blast him into bits with. “I already know this isn’t a dream. So tell me how you’re doing it. How are you entering the real world again?”
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He laughed, a low, deep sound that sent a cold shiver running through her.
“Still so convinced that everything revolves around you,” he said, at last drawing himself to a standing position, his spindly frame towering over a foot above her own.
Despite the sudden rush of adrenaline that gushed through her veins, Isobel refused to allow her body the backward step it so desperately wanted to take. Instead she remained rooted, determined not to do or say anything else that would betray her escalating fear. Even though she knew Pinfeathers held no power to harm her physically, everything about him, from his caustic voice to the twitchy birdlike way he sometimes moved, terrified her.
“Dreaming aside,” he went on, “how can you be so sure your world is the real one?”
Without waiting for an answer, he began to take slow and cautious steps toward her, as though she were the cornered animal poised to either strike or bolt.
It was certainly how she felt.
Widening her stance, Isobel clutched the trophy close to her, wishing it were an ax instead of a flimsy piece of plastic affixed to a tiny block of granite.
“I swear, if you so much as try to touch me . . . ,” she warned him, the threat trailing off as she began to consider her options.
Now that she was face-to-face again with the nightmare creature in all his gruesome glory, he appeared less vulnerable than she remembered. Not only that, but Isobel couldn’t seem to recall why she had thought the trophy would have done her any good as a weapon. Why did she seem to have a knack for trying to defend herself with stupid objects anyway? Why hadn’t she done herself a favor, feigned an interest in baseball, and asked her parents for a Louisville Slugger for Christmas?
Unable to hide her fear any longer, she began quivering all over, her stomach clutching at the memory of the monster’s thin, pale lips fastened to hers. She couldn’t take that kind of torment anymore. Worse, she didn’t know what she would do if he dared assume Varen’s form in front of her even one more time.
As her courage began to collapse in on itself, Isobel started to realize how wrong she’d been to think the Noc couldn’t harm her. Obviously, he could. In more ways than she knew.
As though sensing her heightening alarm, Pinfeathers halted his advance.
“I can’t help it that I’m susceptible to you,” he whispered. “You know that. It’s just that you’re so . . . unreal . . . and so I have to touch you. If only to be certain that I’m not the one who’s dreaming. You see, I hear that sort of thing is going around. ”
“This isn’t a dream,” she snapped. “I know I’m awake. I know what’s real and what’s not. I know you can’t hurt me, and now what I want to know is how you’re getting here. I’m not asking again, and if you won’t tell me, I will smash in your foul, ugly—”
“We are here,” he growled, edging closer again, crimson teeth bared in a grimace, “because of what we know. And that is how. She taught us. And what one can do, so can the other. ”
Isobel watched him closely, too distracted by his continued approach to absorb his meaning. “What—what are you saying?” she stammered. “That the other Nocs can—?”
In an instant, he dispersed into smoke, rushing her like a gust of wind.
She had no time to scream before the tendrils of vapor wrapped around her throat.
Isobel dropped the trophy. She heard it thud against the carpet in the second before she lifted her hands to claw at the looping threads of swirling mist.
Her nails scraped her own skin, but the tightness remained.
“We didn’t want to be right about you,” his voice seethed in her ear.
Isobel twisted. Stumbling backward to escape, her heel caught on the brick ledge of the fireplace. She fell, almost landing in the hearth.
The inky swirls whisked around her and Isobel held her breath, afraid of what would happen if she dared breathe in any part of it.
“But we were,” he whispered as he re-formed and crouched over her, hands braced on his knees.
Turning his head to the side, he glared at her through one black eye the same greedy way a bird inspects a shining beetle.
She watched his teeth, serrated and gleaming, part and come together through the cavity in his cheek as he spoke. “All along. We were right. ”
Isobel fought the urge to shut her eyes, to shut him out. “You know you can’t hurt me,” she said, more in an effort to affirm that to herself than to him. “You can’t do anything. So why do you keep coming back? What do you want?”
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“There,” he said, leering at her, cupping her chin with one cool clay hand. “Good for you, cheerleader. You’re finally asking the right questions. ”
He drew his hand slowly back, his claws grazing her cheek. Isobel winced as the razor tips raked her skin. There was no pain. Only the surge of dread as his face drew nearer to hers. “I want what I thought we both did,” he said.
Isobel kept her eyes squarely on his, wide and unblinking. Meanwhile, she trained the fringe of her vision on the wrought-iron stand that sat only inches to her right, her attention zoning in on the handle of the fireplace poker sticking out of the very middle.
“You don’t scare me anymore,” she said, even though she could tell by the wistful smile he wore that he knew it was a lie. She didn’t care. She only needed him to stay distracted long enough for her to make her move. “So why do you keep trying?”
He brushed his thumb across her lips. “I guess you’re not as easy to forget as we’d hoped. ”
Growling, Isobel jerked her head away from him. She lifted a knee and kicked hard.
His body loosened, and her leg went through smoke.
Seizing her chance, she rolled onto her side, groping for the iron poker. It rang out with a low clang as she snatched it from its stand. Scrambling to her feet, she began taking swipes at the darkness around her.
The poker sliced through the tendrils again and again with no effect. The haze slid back from her, and Pinfeathers’s face, translucent and vaporous, re-formed within the tangle
of violet wisps.
“Your necklace,” he snarled. “It’s a clever trick, but it won’t help you. ”
Isobel charged him, the poker whistling as it arced through the air. Again the monster slithered back, his face dissolving, lost once more amid the thickening murk.
“It’s true she won’t be able to touch you,” hissed his disembodied voice, the violet mist now drifting toward the ceiling and out of Isobel’s batting range. “But at this rate, she won’t have to. ”
Isobel eyed him as he took solid shape again, his back pressed into one high corner, his arms outspread to brace himself, heels planted against the wall behind him, making him look like an enormous spider.
With that thought, Isobel stooped and grabbed her trophy where it lay on its side next to the couch. She launched it at him.
Pinfeathers caught the trophy with one clawed hand. His face screwing up with rage, he flung it back at her. Isobel yelped, clutching tighter to the fireplace poker as the trophy smashed the fat-bellied lamp that sat on the end table just beside her.
“Listen to me!” he railed. “Why won’t you ever listen to me?”
“Give me one good reason why I should!” Isobel screamed back at him.
Fury overcame him. With a deafening howl, he dove for her, claws outstretched.
Isobel swung the poker again, but he dispersed at the last second, splitting into multiple wisps, each separate strand whisking off in its own direction until she wasn’t sure which way to turn.
“Because,” his voice seethed, seeming to come from everywhere at once.
Isobel went suddenly still as she felt the tendrils return, wrapping their way around her waist from behind before transforming into arms.
She felt him pull her to him. His voice, acidic and sharp, buzzed in her ear. “Soon . . . I’ll be all that’s left. ”
“I told you”—Isobel raised the poker and jabbed it backward—“not to touch me!”
The iron rod sailed through nothing, the momentum of the action serving only to knock her off balance.
She teetered, catching herself on the armrest of the love seat before wheeling around, swiping blindly and wildly in all directions until a sharp click brought a burst of bright light into the room.
Isobel spun to find her father standing in the living room archway, one hand still fixed on the light switch, bleary eyes aimed directly at her.
He watched her with a hard, confused look, his expression a mix of shock and disbelief.
There was fear there too, she thought.
Fear for her. Fear of her.
He raised one palm toward her, as though she were a careening car that needed to slow down.
“Isobel?” he said, his voice husky with sleep. “What . . . what are you doing?”
She heaved in sharp, quick breaths, and her gaze darted all around the room.
But Pinfeathers was gone.
The TV was off too, its screen black.
At her feet, the end table lamp lay in shards, and her Number One Flyer trophy was facedown amid the mixture of broken slivers.
“Isobel?”
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She heard her father draw nearer, saw his shadow stretch wider as he made his way toward her. Yet she still flinched when he wrapped a hand around the fireplace poker clutched between her own hands.
Finally glancing up at him, Isobel watched his red-rimmed eyes scour her face as though in search of some evidence that she was still, in fact, his daughter.
“Isobel, honey,” he began again, using one hand to brush back a lock of her hair while at the same time attempting to extract the poker from her grasp with the other. “Are you even awake right now?”
All at once, she felt her focus return. Her eyes met directly with her father’s.
She let go of the poker, releasing it into his tugging grip.
Parting parched lips, she spoke at last.
“I—I don’t know. ”
12
Grim Returns
Contrary to Gwen’s Christmas Eve prediction, it took an entire week for most of the snow to melt. Still, icicles hung from the roofs and sides of homes and businesses, dripping from gutters like strips of torn lace. Like crusted barnacles, hard clumps of charcoal-colored sludge clung to the underbellies of cars and trucks.
The world had a drowned and washed-out look by the time Isobel returned to school, and though the thick coating of white had receded, no color had returned to take its place.
Even the grass looked gray, poking up through the lingering swiss cheese patterns of snow on Trenton High’s front lawn.
But despite the lack of scenery, Isobel was glad to finally get out of her house, even if it felt like she was simply leaving one prison for another.
A light rain began to fall as she stepped through the line of rumbling buses and the lingering haze of exhaust fumes.
She stopped to stand on the sidewalk that led up to the school’s side entrance.
Hooking her thumbs in the straps of her backpack, she scanned the building’s regal structure. Far above, beyond its ridged outline, tattered clouds crawled across a slate sky. Flashing silver in the overcast light, the windows did their best to coordinate themselves with winter’s drab gray palette, to blend in just like everything else. Just like her.
It was January now. A new year. Exactly two weeks until Poe’s birthday.
After her second strange encounter with Pinfeathers, though, Isobel had stopped having dreams about Varen. Or anything, for that matter.
Like the falling snow, her connection to the other side, to him, had abruptly ceased to be, leaving her small collection of recent experiences to thaw in the stark glare of reality.
To her left and right, students passed her, hurrying to silence and stuff cell phones into pockets and bags. At first Isobel didn’t think anyone noticed her. Then she made the mistake of removing the hood of her sky-blue parka as she entered the school.
She knew she wasn’t imagining the looks, the blatant stares, the whispers.
By this time, she’d grown used to them. They’d become a staple of her daily life at Trenton. Everyone knew who she was. Of course they did. She was the last person seen with Varen Nethers. “You know,” she’d heard one of the junior boys say to a group of buddies before the break, “that weird goth kid who went missing on Halloween night. That girl, the cheerleader, she’s his girlfriend. Or was, anyway. ”
Isobel did her best to ignore the gawkers and murmuring as she made her way through the hall.
It wasn’t that she hadn’t expected them to be here when she got back. She’d just hoped that there would have been enough winter-break drama and gossip to provide even a minuscule amount of distraction.
But there would be no respite.
Whispers and turning heads, glares and fleeting looks of sympathy alike followed her all the way to her locker.
She put up her mental blinders, steering her thoughts in the direction of the day’s schedule. Classes. Lunch. Classes. Practice. Dinner. Homework. Sleep.
Sleep. It was the one thing she still looked forward to. Strangely enough, it was the one thing that made her feel as though she was doing something.
But each night, the dreams refused to return.
Why, when she had finally learned how to become lucid while dreaming, when she’d discovered how to communicate with him, had he vanished from the radar?
She was sure it all had something to do with the night she’d found Pinfeathers in her living room. It was obvious now that he’d been trying to tell her something. But in the end, nothing he’d said had made any sense to her. Nothing except his mention of her necklace, the hamsa, which Isobel wore night and day, holding fast to her promise not to remove it.
Pinfeathers’s sneering face swam to the forefront of her mind when she stopped in front of her locker. She heard his words echo through her head as she di
aled her combination.
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It’s true she won’t be able to touch you. But at this rate, she won’t have to.
At what rate? What did that even mean?
“Hey. ”
Isobel jumped. She turned to find Nikki standing behind her.
“Whoa, easy there,” Nikki said as she pressed one shoulder against the door to Gwen’s locker.
“Sorry,” Isobel said. “I just . . . ” She shook her head without finishing, pulled the lock free, and kicked the dented bottom corner of her locker. The door popped open.
“Too many espresso shots in the latte?” Nikki asked. Rolling to lean her back against Gwen’s locker, she swept aside the dark swoopy bangs of her new haircut, a layered look that framed her face in sleek wisps, accentuating the crystalline blue of her eyes.
“Just . . . still waking up. ” Isobel made an attempt to smile. “I like your hair,” she said.
“Thanks. ”
Nikki pursed her lips. When she spoke again, she kept her focus on the bronze polish coating her fingernails. “Hey, how come you didn’t return any of my calls last week? Or, you know, text me back?” she asked. “And why didn’t you come to Stevie’s New Year’s Eve party? You were kind of the only one from the squad not there. ”
Isobel thought she heard a genuine note of disappointment in Nikki’s voice. Sharp as a nail file, a stab of guilt whittled its way between her ribs. She shrugged in response, deciding to try and play it down. “Sorry,” she said. “I asked, but Dad wouldn’t go for it. Apparently, the solitary confinement sentence went through to the end of the year. ”
There was a pause before Nikki spoke again, her brow scrunching with affected confusion.
“Yeah . . . but you didn’t really ask, did you?” she said, still absorbed in the lacquered paint covering her fingernails. “’Cause you and I both know your dad always lets you do squad stuff. I mean, he let you go to Nationals, didn’t he?”
Again Isobel shrugged, then stripped off her parka. She didn’t know what answer she could give now. She’d already been caught in a lie.
“Yeah. No biggie,” Nikki said. “It’s okay. I totally get it. I mean, you’ve been going through some stuff. ”
Once more Isobel threw up her mental blinders, keenly aware of the hint of sarcasm that had begun to slow-drip into Nikki’s tone. She started to shove things into her locker, stuffing her coat in without bothering to hang it on the inside hook. It tumbled out again, landing in a heap on the floor in front of her feet.