Isobel stared with sheer disbelief. She gawked at the image of Reynolds, kneeling in front of the headstone, paying homage before Poe’s grave, blatant and visible to all who dared to watch, imprinted forever on film.
She looked up and, at the far end of the hall, caught sight of Gwen’s swaying broom skirt. Something inside of her clicked on, and for the first time since she had found out that Varen had never returned, her mind switched to life. Her awareness spread out. Suddenly, the external world reentered her sphere of existence. She heard the lockers slamming around her, and people laughing and talking. Sneakers squeaked by on either side of her, everyone heading for the buses. Clutching the article in one hand, Isobel fumbled for her phone. She flipped it open and turned it on, thankful that she still had some battery life left. She thumbed through her address book, highlighting the first entry before pressing the send button.
Even from a distance and with the clamor in the hallway, she still heard the trill of Gwen’s cell phone. Through the net of interweaving students, she saw Gwen stop, and watched as she reached one hand into the patchwork purse slung at her side. Isobel studied her friend as she fished out her ringing phone and eyed her view screen, as though trying to decide whether or not to pick up.
Isobel stood.
Please, she pleaded in her mind. Please. I need you.
Slowly, Gwen lifted the phone to her ear. Then Isobel heard her voice just as she saw her lips move. “So, you let me get through that whole spiel, my entire tirade, but you weren’t going to let me have the dramatic walkaway, were you?”
“Baltimore,” Isobel blurted. “January nineteenth. I have to be there. ”
Gwen turned to face Isobel. Phones pressed to their ears, they stared at each other from across the expanse of the clearing hallway.
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“What?” Gwen asked, already starting back toward her again, shouldering her way through clusters of stragglers.
Isobel lowered her own phone. She held the article out at arm’s length.
Closing in, Gwen snatched it from her. “Hey!” she said, “It’s that guy! From the Grim Facade . . . ”
Gwen suddenly grew quiet, and Isobel watched her eyes grow wide behind her glasses as she scanned the brief paragraph. Meanwhile, Isobel allowed her thoughts to spiral backward to the moment when Reynolds had laid her on her mother’s wicker bench. With that memory, a new thought occurred to her, one very important detail that, until that very instant, she had managed to overlook entirely. Despite what he had said about the separation of worlds and the destruction of the link, he had still stood there, in her world, fully real and tangible.
And hadn’t Varen created the link in the first place? Wouldn’t that mean that Poe had done the same?
Isobel’s eyes narrowed. Her gaze slid back to the article in Gwen’s hand, just as she was lowering the paper. Gwen’s eyes met with Isobel’s, and her face held a wondering expression, one that went through several quick changes as the wheels of her brain spun to catch up, to draw the same conclusion that Isobel had already decided on.
Isobel was going to Baltimore. One way or another.
And contrary to what Reynolds thought, she would see him again.
Of that she was now certain.
50
From Out That Shadow
That night, Isobel waited until everyone was asleep before sneaking down the hallway to Danny’s room. She pressed in on the door, and it creaked slightly as it opened.
Her little brother lay in his bed, snoring, huddled to one side, his arm slung around a giant Transformers pillow. Drool pooled on the robot’s plushy shoulder. She shook her head, taking in the scene. If her mood had been any different, she might have risked snapping a blackmail photo. Instead, she crept inside, tiptoeing around the minefield that was his bedroom floor.
Quietly she slid into his computer chair. It squeaked as it swiveled into place, and her ears pricked up as she heard Danny stir behind her.
She ignored his groan and wiggled the mouse, causing the sleep screen to disappear. The PC hummed to life and, when the window for Google popped up, she started typing.
“What are you dooooing?” Danny moaned. “Get out of my roooooom. ”
“Shh,” Isobel said. “Go back to sleep. ”
The web page for University of Baltimore popped onto the screen.
It had been Gwen who, despite her reluctance concerning Isobel’s plan, had thought of using the excuse of visiting colleges to get to Baltimore. After Nationals, if Trenton won the championship this year, then there would be no way her mom and dad could deny her the request. Especially if she happened to utter the word “university” all on her own.
Of course, that meant Trenton would have to win.
From there, things wouldn’t get truly difficult, until she was in the city, in Baltimore. It would be sneaking off and getting into the locked cemetery that was going to be the tough part.
“I was having a good dream,” Danny mumbled. She heard him roll to face the wall. “I was an only child. ”
“So go back to sleep. ”
Isobel typed “Athletics” into the search field. The only return was for an athletics club. “Damn it,” she hissed. She pressed back and, returning to Google, typed, “University of Maryland + Athletics. ” When the page loaded, she clicked the first option, and the sports page splashed onto the screen in a flash of red, yellow, and black. And there, dead center, was a photo of the football team.
“Home of the Terrapins?” she whispered aloud.
“It’s two a. m. ,” Danny whined. “Aren’t you still banned from life?”
Isobel squinted at the little image of the mascot. Apparently, a terrapin was some sort of turtle. Weird.
She went to a drop-down menu and clicked “Spirit Squad. ” The page went black before the Terrapin cheerleaders flicked onto the screen. Girls wearing big ear-to-ear smiles and bright red uniforms trimmed in black dominated the monitor. A few of the pictures showed squad members suspended in midair, doing high-difficulty stunts. Not too shabby, she thought.
She scrolled down and there, just below a championship portrait, was the info she needed. Yes—they competed.
“Turn the screen off!” Danny growled. “You suck. ”
Isobel closed out of the page. She powered off the monitor, then stood.
Stepping around Danny’s beanbag chair and kicking aside his school shoes, she lowered herself to sit on his bedside.
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“Guuuh,” he snarled into his pillow. “What do you want?”
Isobel pulled up her knees and lay down on the edge of her brother’s narrow twin-size bed. Turning to face his back, she looped an arm over him.
“Get off me,” he growled, but made no move to pull away or push her off.
For a long time, he let her lay there, and she stared at the back of his head, at the part in his dark hair, and then at the wall, at the Darth Vader poster that loomed over them.
“You’re a freak,” he muttered.
“I know,” she whispered.
The hum of Danny’s computer slowed and went out, the PC going back to sleep.
“I’m sorry your boyfriend’s still missing,” he said, his words startling her, catching her off guard.
She felt a sudden straining pinch behind her eyes. Her throat constricted, and she swallowed against the impulse to cry. She shut her eyes, and despite her best efforts, a warm tear tumbled from her cheek, hitting the sheets beneath her.
“I hope they find him,” he said.
“Yeah,” she managed, the rust of emotion caking her voice, “me too. ”
Danny grew quiet again, and beneath her arm, she felt his breathing deepen. She watched and felt his side lift and lower. The steady motion rocked her arm and, like a balm, smoothed the pain back down.
Carefully, Isobel unfolded herself from D
anny’s bed, doing her best not to wake him again. She put her bare feet onto the carpet and wove her way through his room to the door. She slipped down the darkened hallway and into her own room, taking care to ease the door shut behind her, turning the knob to silence the click of the latch. Then she did what until that very moment she had forbidden herself to even think of: She retrieved Varen’s jacket from her closet and, sitting with it on the edge of her bed, clutched it to her chest.
She pressed the collar to her lips, breathed him in. The coarse fiber still held his essence, reminding her of the moment they had been so close. She traced the length of one sleeve with her fingertips, remembering the feel of his body pressed against hers and the taste of his lips.
Isobel pulled on the jacket, threading her arms through one sleeve at a time. The weight of it settled onto her shoulders. She hugged herself, imagining that it was him who now held her and not this vacant shell, this last remaining relic.
She felt, and heard, the right pocket crinkle.
Isobel froze.
Without looking, she slipped a hand inside . . . and touched the edge of smooth paper.
She pulled free the folded slip. A note.
Its ash coating powdered to nothing at one pass of her thumb. Lips parted, she gaped at it, half expecting it to dissolve from her touch.
It didn’t.
She slowly opened the paper, handling it as though it were a wounded sparrow. She could tell from the uneven, crushed folds that it had been crammed into the pocket, hastily stowed away by its author, as though to put it out of sight before it could be seized.
Purple writing, his writing, dominated the page in quick yet beautiful curves and loops. Her eyes traced the lines, soaking up each sentence, one word at a time.
In the shadows of the dreamland, he waits. He watches the gaping window to the world he had so longed to open. Now flown wide, bleak and empty, ravaged—like him—it grants his wish. He belongs.
It cannot compare to the memory of her eyes. Blue azure, warm as a summer sky.
If he could but fall into their world.
Would that he had.
Now he writes the end to the story that past its Midnight Dreary—that too late an hour—has its own without him. It was always, he knows now, meant to end this way.
Like that circle that “ever returneth into the selfsame spot. ”
My beautiful, my Isobel. My Love. You ask me to wait. And so I wait.
For all of this, I know, is but a dream.
And when, in sleep, at last we wake,
I will see you again.
Isobel stared at the paper in her quivering hand, able to do little more than trace and retrace, through her searing vision, the deep violet ink that comprised that final line.
Despite its literal meaning, she knew that he had meant it to say “good-bye. ”
Never, she thought, trailing a fingertip over the swirl of those carefully crafted letters. A thousand times never. They were entwined now, irrevocably. Ever since that day he had set his pen to her skin. And if this rift that stretched between them now extended beyond the confines of time and space, of dreams and reality, she still had to believe that there was a way to cross it, still a way to keep her promise. There had to be.
Slowly, Isobel lowered the note, lifting her free hand to brush away the tears that fell.
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A chill of ice air rushed up behind her, causing her to start. The breeze stung her dampened cheeks and combed cold fingers through her hair. She twisted to peer over her shoulder.
Her window. It was open. She frowned, unable to recall having raised it.
The lace curtains fluttered and whispered in the brisk wind, the white gauze of their fabric slipping and uncoiling against the panels of her wall with every swell, creating a sound like the rush of distant waves.
The winds picked up again, growing fiercer, with a hint of the sharp, bitter tang of the oncoming winter. The breeze tugged and jerked at the note in her hand, as if to snatch it from her grasp.
Refolding the paper, Isobel stood with a shudder. She pulled the jacket tightly around herself, wrapping her arms in close. She rounded her bed and went to her window, but paused at the sight of its reflection in her dresser mirror. There, around the square of black and empty night, she watched the white lace curtains flutter and snap. They waved at her like twin ghosts in the wind until, she thought, one took the shape of a familiar figure—a shrouded, translucent form—with skin the perfect whiteness of snow.
Epilogue
He stood on the farthest edge of the cliffs, boots caked in ash.
Like clawed fingers, the black rocks jutted out over the torpid waters far below, pointing toward the distant horizon. A vast motionless sea, canvas white and still as death, spread itself wide and long before him. It met, in the distance, with the thin black line that separated it from a torn violet sky.
At his back stood the skeleton ruins of the once-grand palace, now a crumbling structure forged of forgotten words and thoughts long since given to slumber.
Varen closed his eyes, allowing the dead nothingness around him to numb his mind and still the rhythms of his body until all he knew was the buzz of static, that dull vibration, as familiar to him now as breathing. His concentration drew to the cool, soft sensation of the pink satin ribbon wrapped around one hand, held tight in his fist.
“Is that why you return to this place each night?”
At the sound of her voice, musical and deep, Varen opened his eyes, though he did not turn. If he looked, then he would only be trapped again, lured by that ivory seraphim face framed by those endless waves of black.
His gaze narrowed on the horizon. He held his silence as the winds stirred, brushing his hair from his eyes. It flicked cold fingers at the bare skin of his arms.
“But do not forget that it was she who left you here. ”
Far below, the frost white seas began to churn. The waters turned choppy until restless waves lapped at the rocky cliffs, as though to test their resolve to stand.
There was a billow of white gossamer to his left as she floated to stand beside him. The gales picked up with yet more speed, whipping her hair wildly about her face.
Below them, the sea’s voice rose from a whisper to a roar. Waves crashed, throwing themselves as though in suicide upon the pointed rocks.
The wind howled past them, lifting her veils into a violent dance. The satin ribbon rippled and snapped. Varen clutched it tighter.
“Standing here, so alone for so long . . . Do you not grow cold?” he heard her ask.
He stared forward, unblinking, as a knife of blue lightning sliced the sky.
“No,” he said.
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