by Kelly Creagh
“What did she look like?”
The simplicity of the question surprised Isobel. She thought about it for a moment, once again envisioning the woman who had appeared to her in the inverted dream version of the bookstore attic, luminous in swaths of white gossamer and tumbling veils. “She was . . . well, she was beautiful,” she admitted. “And at first, that’s all I could think when I saw her. She had white skin, like marble. And long, thick black hair. Tons of it. ” As she spoke, Isobel traced her fingers through the air around her own hair, her hands gliding down past her shoulders and, before she knew it, all the way to the floor. “She wore layers of white veils that wound down to her feet. And her eyes . . . ” Isobel shook her head. She would never in her life forget those eyes. “They were black. Completely black. ”
She glanced up, realizing that she’d been lost in thought. She focused on the distraught expression that her friend now wore. It was so unfamiliar to her that Isobel had to backtrack mentally through her words, wondering what she had said that Gwen had found so disturbing. Then again, hadn’t Gwen already witnessed the worst for herself at the Grim Facade? Like Pinfeathers and the Nocs—those hollow demons, shape-shifting monsters with shattered faces and razor claws, that had followed Isobel from their world to this one.
Maybe, Isobel reasoned, Gwen was still trying to wrap her head around the concept of there being another dimension. Though, given everything that had happened, Isobel knew there weren’t too many other conclusions left for Gwen to draw.
“Did she tell you her name?” Gwen asked, her words slow, her voice laden with such dead seriousness that it made Isobel pause before answering.
“Varen called her Bess, I think,” Isobel said, still trying to gauge the source of Gwen’s sudden trepidation. “But then, when I asked her, she said her name was Ligeia, which was weird because I knew that was a character from one of Poe’s stories. Then she said that she had many names. She called herself—”
“Lilith,” Gwen whispered, her face white.
Isobel’s mouth popped open in shock.
Quickly Gwen stood. Dashing to the bed, she snatched up her purse and coat. Then, stooping to gather her shoes, she stuffed everything under one arm, opened Isobel’s door, and darted out into the hall.
“Gwen!” Isobel leaped to her feet. She rushed out of her room, only to find her friend already halfway down the stairs. She resisted the urge to call out, not wanting to alert her parents, who were still in the kitchen, and barreled after her.
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Gwen did not pause when she reached the foyer. Opening the front door, she shoved her way through the outer storm door and vanished into the darkness with a swirl of skirts.
Isobel caught the storm door just as it latched.
“No,” she rasped, and fumbled to turn the handle. Outside, she could see Gwen hurrying through the winter bluster toward the old 1990s navy-blue Cadillac parked across the street.
Managing at last to twist the handle, Isobel pushed the door open. She stumbled into the cold, down from the porch and through the darkened yard, only realizing she didn’t have shoes on when the snow soaked through the thin layer of her socks. She ran despite the bitter sting.
“Gwen!” she shouted, no longer caring who heard. “Stop!” Her voice echoed, reverberating through her silent, still neighborhood.
Ahead of her, Gwen faltered, tripping over the now snow-caked hem of her skirt before colliding with the driver’s-side door of the Cadillac.
Isobel heard the jangle of car keys. She ran faster.
“Gwen!”
“I can’t talk to you!” Gwen shouted, whirling to face Isobel, who skittered to a halt. “Ever again. ”
Isobel gaped at her. Gwen, in turn, swiveled away and, pulling the car door open, sank inside the Cadillac, shoving her things into the vacant passenger seat.
Isobel forced herself to move and caught the door before Gwen could pull it shut. “Why are you doing this?” she demanded. “How did you know—?”
Gwen put her key into the ignition and twisted it. The Cadillac rumbled to life, cutting Isobel off. Its headlights sprang on, illuminating the curtain of cascading snow.
“May God protect you,” was Gwen’s only answer before she tugged the door free from Isobel’s grip. It slammed shut with an echoing clap.
“Wait!” Isobel shouted, staring into the driver’s-side window through her own distraught reflection at Gwen as she shifted the car into gear.
“Open the door!” Isobel slammed her palm against the glass. “Gwen, if you know something, you have to tell me! Gwen!”
Isobel heard the engine rev. The rear tires spun before gaining traction.
“You can’t just leave like this!” Isobel screamed. She latched onto the handle of the driver’s-side door and pulled, only to find it locked. “Gwen! You’re the only one I have. You’re the only one who knows the truth! Please!”
The car lumbered forward, snow groaning as it compressed beneath the tires, the frozen handle tearing free from Isobel’s grip.
“Gwen!”
Whining, the Cadillac gave a grating screech as it swung around her in a wide arc. Isobel turned where she stood, her hair whipping in her face as the car sped past her with a guttural growl, its headlights slashing through the darkness.
The crimson taillights flared. Isobel stared after them as Gwen swerved, fishtailing around the stop sign at the end of the street and speeding out of sight.
5
Shadow of a Shade
The wind tugged at the sleeves of Isobel’s T-shirt. It pulled at her hair and clung to her bare arms. But she no longer felt the cold. Only the sandlike sting of the snow as it raked her chapped face.
She stood statue straight in the diffuse lamplight, her gaze locked on the set of tire tracks that snaked their way through the inch-thick layer of snow.
Her throat felt tight, crammed with so many unspoken questions.
She forced herself to swallow them while she waited for car lights to reappear, for the Cadillac to turn the corner. For Gwen to come back.
But nothing happened.
Gradually the frigid knife-edge cold crept back into her awareness, and a shudder racked her frame.
How long could she stand out here like this, waiting?
Never long enough, she thought, because Gwen wasn’t going to come back.
Isobel looked up. She stared at the countless specks that rained down around her, each white flake highlighted against the black backdrop of night, like a thousand falling stars in a dead sky.
She had to wonder if this sensation of being shredded and left to the wind, of being left behind, could even touch what he must have felt the moment he’d realized she wasn’t coming back for him. That he was alone. Utterly and completely alone.
“Hey!”
Isobel glanced over her shoulder toward her house.
Danny stood in the doorway, washed in a glow of warm light. Squinting at her and leaning out, he looked like a plump bird poking its head out of a cuckoo clock.
“What are you doing?” he shouted.
Isobel hugged herself tightly against a sudden whip-snap of frozen wind and forced herself to move, stalking back toward her house with hunched shoulders. By the time she reached her front yard, her feet had gone completely numb. So much so that she could only feel the downy softness of the snow itself along with the frozen grass blades as they crunched beneath her heels.
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Danny stepped back when she reached the porch. He gawked at her, actually holding the storm door open to allow her room to enter. His eyes grew even wider as she stepped inside.
“You went out there without shoes?” he asked. “Are you crazy?”
She didn’t answer. Against the warm inside air, her skin flared fire hot. Her feet prickled, the numbness slipping quickly away, replaced by the sensation that th
e Oriental rug she stood on had been transformed into a bed of burning coals.
“Mom’s been calling for you,” Danny said. He watched her with wary uncertainty, as though he couldn’t be sure she was even listening. “It’s . . . time to eat. ”
“Tell them I’m not hungry. ”
“Uh . . . it’s Christmas Eve. ”
“Then tell them I’m sick. ”
He arched a questioning brow at her.
She pushed past him and made a beeline for the stairs.
To his credit, he didn’t try to stop her, and it was his silence that told Isobel he would do what she’d said.
When she reached the top landing, she slipped into the bathroom.
Shutting the door behind her, she made certain to lock it.
IT WASN’T LONG AFTER ISOBEL climbed into the steaming bathwater that the knock came. She could tell by the faint triple tap that it was her mother who stood outside the door.
Soaking in the hot water, her bare knees tucked against her chest, Isobel pictured her dad and little brother sitting at the dining room table, her mother’s holiday china empty before them while the turkey cooled on its platter.
In this house, missing a family meal (let alone Christmas Eve supper) was like missing a military roll call. If you were absent without leave, a member of the troops would invariably be dispatched to seek you out.
“Isobel?” Her mother’s voice came muffled through the door. “Everything okay in there?”
Isobel set her chin on her knees. “Just . . . my stomach,” she lied.
“Izzy,” her mom tried again, “Danny said that he saw you standing outside in the street just now. Is everything all right? Did something happen?”
Isobel narrowed her puffy eyes, glaring at her distorted reflection in the tub faucet. Her face looked curved and muddled, like the image in a funhouse mirror.
“Izzy?”
“I just . . . wanted to see the snow. ”
“In your socks, honey?”
Isobel scowled. Couldn’t Danny keep his mouth shut about anything? At the very least, she hoped her ten bucks had actually bought his silence about Gwen having been there. She doubted he’d said anything, though. It would have been difficult for him to mention without incriminating himself in some way. Besides that, Isobel knew that her mother wouldn’t have hesitated to bring up an unannounced visitor first thing. Especially if that visitor happened to be the nefarious Gwen Daniels, bad influence extraordinaire.
Deserter extraordinaire, Isobel thought.
Until that moment, she hadn’t allowed herself to get angry at Gwen. She’d been too confused, too lost in the aftershock. Her brain couldn’t seem to sort through, let alone comprehend, the sequence of that evening’s events.
Worst of all, Isobel kept telling herself that Gwen hadn’t really meant it, that she’d be back. As soon as she got out of the bathtub, Isobel would go to her room and find ten texts and at least three voice mails waiting for her on her cell phone.
Deep down, though, she knew better than to hope for that.
Gwen’s fear had been too real, her words of warning too final. She had known the name Lilith. It had meant something to her. Something terrible. Bad enough to send her literally fleeing.
Isobel bit her bottom lip, an endless stream of questions ping-ponging back and forth in her head. How could Gwen have known that name? Why had it terrified her so much?
“He’s worried about you, you know. ”
Isobel’s eyes shot toward the bathroom door again. She’d almost forgotten that her mother was still there.
She knew that by “he,” her mom must have been referring to Danny, though she hardly thought such a statement could be true. The only reason he pretended to care about her right now probably had more to do with the great opportunity it provided to keep their parents distracted and his pathway to the TV unobstructed.
“We’re all worried about you,” her mother went on. “You’ve been so distant. It’s like living with a stranger. It’s scaring us, Izzy. ”
At these words, Isobel felt a gentle shift take place inside her, like a set of scales tipping. Her brow softened as she recalled the anxious expression on her little brother’s face when he’d stepped back to let her in from the cold. Her dad’s numerous attempts to extract some kind of meaningful conversation out of her also came to mind. And now her mother was standing just outside the door, doing her best to lure Isobel back from the ledge everyone thought she must be teetering on.
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Her mom’s voice came again, less muffled than before, as though she was standing as close to the jamb as possible. “It’s been this way ever since . . . ”
Her mother’s hesitation made Isobel tense.
“As much as you’ve been trying to hide it, Izzy,” she went on, “I know what this is about. This all has something to do with that boy, doesn’t it?”
At the barest mention of Varen, the nodule of fear within Isobel exploded. “No,” she snapped before she could stop herself. “It doesn’t have anything to do with him. ”
Even to her own ears her words sounded pale, unconvincing.
“Isobel. I know—”
“You don’t know. ” Fresh tears filled her eyes, causing the room to swim. Isobel blinked and the tears fell, searing the skin of her already raw cheeks.
After all her effort to hide the truth, her mother had still seen right through her. Her whole family had.
And now, with Gwen gone and her mother and father tuned to her every move, how would she ever get to Baltimore?
Isobel drew in a shaky breath. The prospect that she would miss her one and only chance to find him, to bring him back home—it was too much to even conceive. Shutting her eyes tight, she willed the tide of despair welling up within her to subside. It filled her anyway, leaving her to wonder if the battle for Varen’s return, for his soul, was one she could never win because it was one she had already lost.
“Izzy. ” She heard the doorknob rattle. Her mother’s voice, louder and more insistent now, sliced through her thoughts. “Why don’t you get dressed? Come downstairs to dinner. Then I’ll make us some tea and we’ll talk. Just you and me. ”
Isobel shook her head, trying to get a grip. “This isn’t what you think. ”
“Isobel, you can’t tell me . . . From the moment you and he—”
“You’re wrong!” Isobel shouted, her voice rising over her mother’s. “This isn’t about him. I don’t care about him, okay? I wish I’d never even met him. So just drop it!”
Isobel clamped quaking hands over her mouth.
A sob rose up from her depths, but she caught it before it could escape. She swallowed hard, forcing it down again.
It felt like drowning.
Torn between hoping her mom would go away and wanting her to knock again, Isobel grew still, listening.
She heard only a soft sigh, followed by feet shuffling on the carpet.
A moment later, she caught the sound of the stairs creaking and then her mother’s voice calling for her father.
“Sam? Sam . . . ”
The water had not yet grown cold, but Isobel knew she couldn’t sit there while her parents took turns conducting tag-team damage control.
Isobel climbed out of the tub, wiping the drying tears from her face with both hands. She wrapped herself in her pink robe and, tilting her head to one side, pulled her hair free from its ponytail holder. She paused, though, startled by the sight of someone’s shadow visible beneath the door.
Had her mother only pretended to leave?
“Mom?”
No answer.
She continued to watch the shadow, waiting for it to move or shift, but it didn’t budge. Instead it seemed planted, as though cast by a statue rather than a person.
“Dad?”
Again, no answer.
That left only one person. But
Isobel couldn’t understand why she hadn’t heard Danny’s clunky footfall on the stairs or his loud mouth-breathing. Despite all his ninja sentiments and Boy Scout “training,” Isobel’s little brother had never earned a badge for stealth.
“What is it, Danny? What do you want?”
Silence.
Isobel’s gaze remained focused on the space beneath the door. At last the shadow shifted, and she watched it drift backward one step at a time before fading from view.
Scowling, she hurried to unlock and yank the door open.
Brisk air seized her damp skin.
A coldness too stagnant to be a draft permeated the empty space. She saw no one on the landing or the stairs. And there was no one in the hall, either.
To her left, Danny’s door stood ajar, his room dark.
Isobel padded to stand at the banister overlooking the downstairs hallway. She scanned the empty foyer as, outside, a snowplow lumbered by. Its headlights cast a wash of white light through the house windows, sending sheets of gray shadows sliding down the walls.
“Let’s let her cool off for a bit, okay?” she heard her father say, his voice drifting from the kitchen. “She probably just needs a little space. ”
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A sudden trill of electronic music erupted from the living room, and a burst of zombie screams from Danny’s game muffled her mother’s reply.
Isobel stepped back from the banister, surprised by her dad’s words but also thankful.
She didn’t think she could have fielded any more questions that night.
The cold seeping through her robe, she turned and made her way toward her bedroom.
She stopped just outside the door, though, arrested by the sound of soft piano music coming from within. Slow and sad, the notes drifted to her through a filter of static.
Isobel pushed her door gently open.
Clear shafts of icy moonlight streamed through her curtains, throwing floral lace patterns onto her carpet and casting her surroundings into different shades of frost blue.
She slipped inside and her attention turned immediately to her digital clock radio.
The numbers on the clock glowed 8:49 in electric blue while the song, composed of overlapping notes and delayed timing, flowed forth from its tiny speakers. In the background, Isobel thought she could detect a woman’s voice humming along, but there was too much interference to be certain.