Her thoughts jumbled in her head like a scrambled signal as she tried to comprehend how Pinfeathers knew about her plan to go to Baltimore and find Reynolds. Then, all at once, it dawned on her.
“That night with Gwen,” she said. “The shadow I saw moving around in my room, that was you, wasn’t it? You were there, listening the whole time. You have been spying!”
“The other was wise to run,” was all he said.
“And then later outside the bathroom door. You were—”
“I told you, cheerleader,” he said, his tone infuriatingly calm as he fit one final fragment into position, wincing as it snapped into place. “The jacket wasn’t me. ”
Grabbing one of the loose straps on his coat, he threaded it through the corresponding buckle with practiced ease and pulled, cinching the thin black material back over his chest. He did so again with the topmost buckle, once more concealing the spiderweb patch of hairline cracks. Then he stood, unfurling himself limb by spindly limb from the base of the fountain.
Isobel stumbled backward, away from the railing, nearly tripping over her feet.
She hated feeling this defenseless against him. It was true she could wound him if she got lucky. But what could she possibly do to him, when clearly they both knew he was the one with all the answers?
For the first time since she’d met Pinfeathers, Isobel found herself fearing that any second he would evaporate and be gone, taking with him her one solid connection to Varen.
“Tell me he’s okay,” she said, pleading. “Please. Tell me the dream in the bookstore was a lie and that he still knows I’m coming. Tell me he has the ribbon. ”
She watched Pinfeathers as he stepped toward her slowly, even gracefully, and it occurred to her that he was moving that way on purpose, as though making a conscious effort not to alarm her.
The hilarity of that thought might have made Isobel laugh if she hadn’t been so close to tears.
The Noc stopped at the railing. He extended his arm out to her, his hand opening like a bear trap.
“Come,” he said, “there’s something you need to see. ”
Isobel shook her head. “I’m not touching you,” she said. “And I’m not going anywhere. There’s no way. ” She took another step backward, her heel meeting with the concrete curb. She could run if she wanted to. She knew that. She also knew that if he wanted to catch up to her, she wouldn’t get very far.
Pinfeathers did not lower his hand. He didn’t come any closer, either, but stayed behind the railing as if to say, This is as far as I go.
“No tricks this time,” he said, “no false realities. Just a memory caught in passing. Something that might interest you. You said yourself that I can’t hurt you. ”
Isobel’s eyes darted from the serrated edges of his shark’s teeth, clamped together through the open pit in his cheek, to the needle-point tips of those crimson claws.
Despite his macabre exterior, everything about him in that moment, from the planted way he stood to his grave, ascetic expression, resonated through her like an echo.
“You’re . . . different,” Isobel said, the urge to turn and run dissipating like the white fog of her own breath. “Why? What happened to you?”
“Change of heart?” he said through a thin smile that was as bitter as it was brittle.
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Though her body screamed against doing so, Isobel took a tentative step toward him. She told herself it was a test step, just to see how he would react.
His smile faded, his expression becoming suddenly sober and serious—more human than she had ever seen it. Almost . . . recognizable.
Pinfeathers’s claws clicked together as he beckoned.
Isobel took another cautious step toward him, then another.
She had come here tonight in search of Varen’s ghost.
Maybe, Isobel thought as she cleared the distance between them, finally fitting her hand into the Noc’s porcelain grip—just maybe—she’d found it.
His hand closed tightly around hers, the claws of his fingers and thumb crisscrossing one another like some kind of wicked locking mechanism.
He squeezed hard, and Isobel opened her mouth in a silent gasp of pain.
Just when she thought she’d made a terrible mistake, her hand yielded and his fingers passed through hers, as if she’d suddenly become as intangible as a mirage.
Almost as if preparing to waltz, Pinfeathers stepped backward, drawing Isobel forward. But her body remained paralyzed, rooted in place while some separate part of her began to slide forward, drawn by his pull.
It felt as if she were being peeled away from herself.
And that, it seemed, was exactly what was happening.
Her vision went double while the open-air sounds of night, wind, and rustling leaves became muted in her ears. Then, in a flash, everything disappeared, winking to crystal white.
She floated in a world of nothing, weightless, alone, and strangely unconcerned about what had just happened or where she was or if she would come back. It was like teetering between waking and falling asleep, and it made her wonder if this was what dying felt like.
Something pulled at her, and her senses returned.
Looking down at her side, she saw her hand still clutched in Pinfeathers’s grip.
Disoriented, Isobel glanced up to find herself no longer standing in front of the fountain. Gone were the houses and the trees, the cars and the flickering lamps. In their place stretched a long and dark corridor, lined on either side by plain utilitarian doors. All of them were closed.
She looked up at Pinfeathers, who pressed a single bloodred claw to his lips, calling for silence. Then he loosened into smoke and, with a rustle and flit of feathers, re-formed as an ebony bird, perching on Isobel’s left shoulder.
The weight of the bird’s body felt almost nonexistent, as if even in this form, the Noc was still only hollow within.
Aiming his beak forward, he gave a hoarse and urging croak.
She faced the dimly lit hall, which seemed to stretch on forever into a far-reaching pit of blackness. She wondered where Pinfeathers had brought her and why, but the bird only bobbed his head and snapped his beak with several impatient clicks. Clearly he wanted her to proceed.
Isobel did so with cautious steps, her footfall making no sound on the worn floorboards.
Between each of the doors, antique oil lamps burned with steady yellow flames, their glass holders warping the light into hourglass shapes along the barren walls.
The scent of kerosene and the antiseptic smell of iodine mixed with alcohol permeated the air. Beneath that, though, Isobel could detect another odor, a hint of putridity like the stale reek of a sickroom.
A quiet squeaking drew Isobel’s attention to the right, and she soon saw someone gliding toward them—a woman dressed in white.
She stopped cold. Fear pierced her gut like a spear, holding her in place.
A trap, she thought. She’d been stupid enough to trust Pinfeathers, and now it had landed her right where she should have known it would, straight into Lilith’s waiting grip.
As the woman drew closer, however, her figure became more discernible, and Isobel saw that instead of white veils, she wore what appeared to be an old-fashioned nurse’s uniform. With a starched white cap sitting atop her pouf of dark brown hair, she looked like a costumed actress straight out of a period movie. A matching apron cinched her narrow, corseted waist while long, heavy skirts swished around her feet.
The woman, her gaze intent on the path before her, took no notice of Isobel as she bustled by, even as her skirts nearly brushed Isobel’s legs.
Behind the woman, a teenage girl, dressed in the same uniform, wheeled a gurney, the source of the high-pitched squeaking. On it, an old man with skin like raw dough lay prone and listless.
Isobel turned her head to watch their grim procession as they passed.
A hospital, Isobel thought. She was in some sort of old hospital. But why would Pinfeathers have brought her to such a place?
He’d called this a memory, and clearly she was viewing something from the past, but when? With the gas lamps and the way the nurses had been dressed, Isobel’s first guess was the 1800s. But if they’d gone back this far, then whose memory could this possibly be? Certainly not Varen’s.
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A low wailing drew Isobel’s attention forward once again.
There, at the very end of the passageway, a door that she knew had not been there a moment before swung open by itself.
Pinfeathers cawed softly in her ear and, with a loud flutter and flick of feathers, took flight from her shoulder. She watched the bird soar ahead of her, flapping his wings, then shooting straight through the open door and out of sight.
Isobel hurried down the corridor after him, preferring to have the company of a monster than to be left alone in this place.
As she drew closer to the door, the wailing emanating from within grew louder and more distinct. The sound began to build toward shouting, and soon—screaming.
“REYNOLDS!”
The cry, ragged and frayed, caused her to stop in her tracks. Standing frozen in place within the frame of the door, she took in the scene before her.
In the center of the room sat a narrow bed. A dark-haired man lay on the white sheets, his face gaunt and sickly pale. He writhed amid the tangled linens, howling and moaning while, above him, a thick smear of rippling black clouds spread wider against the ceiling.
“REYNOLDS!” the man on the bed shrieked.
Beside him, a young doctor dressed in a black coat, the white collar of his shirt rumpled and sweat-stained, stooped over his patient.
“Edgar!” the doctor said as he wrung the struggling man’s pallid hand, oblivious to the otherworldly storm that churned above them. “Edgar, you are safe!”
Poe, Isobel thought with dull shock. This man twisting in agony before her . . . it was Poe.
Her eyes grew wider as they swept upward, toward the fog roiling directly over his bed. Sharp faces and snatching claws swam through the haze, surfacing to snap at their tormented victim like frenzied sharks.
Terrified, Poe whipped his head from side to side on his pillow as though the rest of him were bound by invisible fetters. His chest rose and fell with quick breaths. He moaned and ground his teeth, the veins on his broad forehead bulging, standing out like blue cords.
That was when Isobel saw it—the thin silver string that stretched between the vapors whirling above the bed and the center of Poe’s heaving chest.
The quivering strand seemed to be made of a luminous and ethereal light, as wispy as gossamer.
Poe arched against the bed, shouting, while streams of shadows began to pour out of the tempest. Swirling tendrils of black smoke invaded the room, shooting out in every direction. The streams floated through the air like coils of ink in water and glided across the floor, skimming the walls before forming into the wraithlike figures of the Nocs.
But these were not the Nocs she knew.
Though they had hollow, shell-like bodies, they did not possess the red tint to their quill-coarse hair and claws like Pinfeathers and the others. Instead their claws were a deep blue, their hair and teeth indigo.
Then Isobel realized that she did recognize one of them. It was the Noc from the marble crypt she had stumbled into while in the dreamworld, that same creature who had asked her help in piecing himself back together. Here he appeared complete. Intricate carvings lined the salt-white skin of his naked chest. Etchings of ships tossing amid tumultuous waters sailed across his porcelain torso, while the detailed image of a diamond-scaled sea serpent wound its way down the length of one arm.
Scrimshaw, Isobel thought, remembering his name in a flash.
The Noc moved to hover over Poe. Leaning down, he grabbed for Poe’s other hand, his claws digging into his wrist, threatening to puncture the skin. The creature grinned. Mocking the doctor, he began to whisper in Poe’s ear.
“You made the mistake of trying to outsmart yourself again, didn’t you?” he hissed. “Now look where it’s got us. ” He pointed a claw toward the ceiling. “Trapped. Right in the eye of the storm. ”
“Edgar,” spoke a voice from within the fog.
The first sign of white came in the form of veils, the gauzy, silken material fluttering amid the eddying maelstrom.
Dropping Poe’s hand and shrinking back, Scrimshaw dissolved into wisps with the clipped cry of “Teka-lili!”
The other Nocs followed suit with the same strange outburst. They shot away in different directions, slithering into the walls and between the floorboards like snakes.
Poe’s screaming intensified when Lilith’s face surfaced through the murk.
The clouds of darkness rolled back from her flawless features. Her white arms, encircled in twining veils, stretched out from the abyss.
Her hands fastened around the silver cord as though grabbing hold of a rope, and she began to use the swaying ethereal strand to pull herself from the vapors.
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“Edgar,” she whispered again, her dark hair flying back into the tumult that raged behind her. “You are bound to me. You must return. ”
“REYNOLDS!” Poe screamed again.
The utter despair in his voice shook Isobel from her shock-induced trance. She looked around, searching for something—anything she could do to stop the torment.
She spotted Pinfeathers, still in bird form, perched in the sill of the rain-spattered window. With a flap of his wings, he took flight, soaring across the room, circling to light on her shoulder. His movement from one corner of the room to the other, unnoticed by Poe, Lilith, or the doctor, reminded her that there was nothing she could do. Nothing at all. Because the events unfolding before her had already transpired.
Isobel felt her knees grow weaker with every inch Lilith managed to draw herself from the chasm. She could feel Pinfeathers switching restlessly from foot to foot, rankled as well by Lilith’s presence, even if her visage was only a shadow from the past. Isobel knew he wanted to leave and hide just as the other Nocs had done. But he remained with her. And in spite of everything he had ever done to her, she was grateful.
Poe, his teeth gritted, turned his head away from the demon clawing her way toward him. He clamped his eyes shut to block it out, his face transforming into a tight knot of resigned anguish.
Reynolds, she thought. Poe had been calling for Reynolds. Where was he? Why wouldn’t he come? Why hadn’t he stopped this?
“There is nothing here that can harm you,” Isobel heard the doctor insist. “Edgar, listen to me! It’s over. Do you hear me? Whatever has happened, it is over!”
For one instant, the world turned black. Isobel blinked, trying to regain her vision. She felt Pinfeathers’s talons clamp her shoulder more tightly. Then the blackness lifted and that was when she realized someone else had entered the room, walking through her.
A tall, cloaked figure now stood before her.
Her eyes traveled up his broad back, stopping at the wide-brimmed fedora hat that sat atop his head. She saw the edge of a white scarf.
Reynolds.
Lilith’s attention broke from Poe, and she blinked in surprise as Reynolds drew forth one of his twin cutlasses. Her lips peeled back from sharpened teeth in a snarl. “Stop, you fool!” she hissed. “You’ll kill him!”
Poe grew suddenly still on the bed. Isobel watched as he rolled his head to face the doctor, uttering something indiscernible while Reynolds coiled his arm, preparing to strike.
“No!” Isobel shouted, her cry rising in exact unison with Lilith’s.
In the next instant, Reynolds slashed his sword forward in one clean swipe, severing the silver cord that stretched between Poe’s body and Lilith’s clu
tching hands.
The demoness howled as the cord snapped in two. Her face contorted with fury as the silver light vanished from her grip. She flew up, sucked into the ceiling, while the fog transformed into a whirlpool. Then, in a rush, the miasma dissipated, swept into the smooth plaster until no trace of its presence remained.
Isobel gaped, watching as Reynolds stepped aside and sheathed his sword.
Her gaze fell to Poe, who now lay lifeless, his eyes glazed and unseeing.
“Edgar,” the doctor called.
The figure on the bed made no response.
Reynolds turned, and as he began to stride toward her, a wave of hatred washed over her. With a scream of rage, she threw herself at him, fists swinging.
Pinfeathers fluttered up and away from her, feathers flying, his rasping squawks filling the silent room.
Isobel’s fists passed through Reynolds’s ever-calm visage. He walked through her without so much as a ripple, and Isobel’s efforts sent her stumbling forward.
She stopped and, looking up, froze to find herself standing at the foot of Poe’s bed. She watched as the doctor reached out a trembling hand to close the two sightless eyes, which seemed to have been fixed directly on her.
As he did so, the surrounding walls, floor, and ceiling fell away like playing cards, throwing Isobel into a bottomless vat of darkness.
She fell backward through the dark, and as she did, a glimmer stole her attention. A silver cord glowed in the expansive nothingness, terminating in the center of her body.
It wavered like a ribbon caught in the wind as she flew back and back, falling faster and faster.
Then, suddenly, the cord snapped taut. It began to pull her forward, like a kite being reeled from the night sky. Light broke through her consciousness, and from a place high above, she saw herself—her body—standing in front of the fountain on Varen’s street, her arm still extended as though to take Pinfeathers’s hand, even though the Noc was gone.
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She could see there was someone else there now. A stranger, who approached her from behind.
A jab of fear sent Isobel rushing toward herself. The world whirred into a blur as her two selves snapped into one.