by Kelly Creagh
She let her arm sink to her side again—and felt her stomach plummet when the hand sticking out from the far end remained extended.
Twiddling fingers at her, the hand then swept out of sight.
At the sound of a giggle, Isobel pushed away from the wall. Resuming the chase, she dashed around the corner where she’d seen the arm, ending up not in the corridor she’d passed through moments before, but in altered surroundings. New, but utterly familiar.
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Trenton’s reversed north hall lay before her, its lockers and linoleum flooring still covered in the ash of last night’s dream.
Facing Isobel, her double stood in the center of the debris. Its smile was gone now, though.
With its eyes closed, the dream held a single finger to its lips, offering the same warning as the doll in the attic.
The clone then turned and went to the stairwell, where Varen’s boot prints trailed off. Isobel hurried to catch up as the specter shoved through the blue, push-bar doors that, in reality, led to the same room where she’d left Reynolds—and her body. Sliding through after the double, though, Isobel found herself in an enormous, mist-filled courtyard.
Ash rained from above, filtering over an assembly of statues.
Like ascending spirits, the winged angels jutted up through the stagnant white fog. Posted atop short pedestals and tall columns, under the domes of carved marble gazebos, standing alone on the ground or in pairs flanking mist-shrouded steps, some tilted their faces heavenward; others bowed their heads, as if in reverie or prayer.
All the stone maidens’ eyes were shut, their expressions serene with sleep. All bore Isobel’s features.
Soft as snow, the ash fell to collect in the grooves of sculpted gowns. It gathered in the folds of trailing robes, pooled in the palms of outstretched hands and on the curves of fanned seraphs’ wings.
Scattered between the figures, gnarled woodland trees twisted toward the clouded gray sky like thorn bushes, their limbs dotted with the black bodies of crows.
Nocs, Isobel thought when the ghouls-in-bird-form began cawing, rankled by the presence of her and her double.
As Isobel followed her own ghost into their midst, the birds flittered and flapped. They croaked back and forth to one another, frill feathers bristling. One of the larger birds, its plumage scraggly and ragged, launched itself from its branch to cross the courtyard. Its dark shadow skimmed the fog, and glancing up, Isobel saw the bird crane its neck toward her, as if to get a better look with its single good eye.
When the bird lighted on another knotted bough, the layers of fog thinned, and Isobel was suddenly aware of a form seated on the low brick wall directly across from her. Of feathery edges of jet hair and slumped black-clad shoulders. Someone living.
Varen.
He sat with his head hanging, his attention fixated on the small object he kept turning over and over in his hand.
Another of Isobel’s stone twins sat at his side. Arms stiff and shoulders hunched, she clutched the edge of the wall. Her wings tucked, the statue leaned toward him as if patiently waiting for him to take notice of her. Or for a kiss.
A wreath of ash-dusted stone flowers crowned her head, and the layers of her dress spilled onto the floor in folds that, like the statue itself, held only the appearance of softness.
While Isobel stalled at the sight of him, her ghost double sprinted straight for him, and disturbed by the sudden burst of movement, the crows in the trees began to squawk.
Their shouts of warning echoed across the courtyard, ricocheting from wall to wall.
Varen looked up. Setting eyes on Isobel’s double as it closed in on him, cutting a straight path through the fog, he stood. His fist closed around the item he’d been studying, and his arms fell open.
That single gesture, so helpless, caused something inside Isobel to leap out of dormancy.
Though her heart had been restarted in a literal sense once before, jogged from a state of dead matter into a beating force of life, she had not since felt the electricity of her renewed existence. Not until that precise moment when Varen enwrapped her ghost, pulling the phantom in close as it swung its arms around his neck.
His face pinched tight with pain, though, as if he knew what would come next.
Almost the instant the two collided, Isobel’s double shriveled in Varen’s grip. Its limbs fell limp and its skin sucked inward, its face hollowed out, flesh contracting. Blond hair faded to scraggly gray. Now a skull, the phantom’s head lolled backward, its jaw falling open as if in a silent scream.
Still Varen refused to release the double. He held tight to the bones even as they broke apart.
Transforming to ash, the entity’s remains fell through his grip, cascading into the vapors that swirled in their wake.
Varen lowered his arms. He looked up, his face smudged with the gray dust of the phantasm’s essence. His dull eyes, despondent, black as nothing, flicked to Isobel.
A beat passed, and she knew how this must seem to him. That a replay was about to begin.
When he began striding quickly toward her, she felt her heart stop all over again.
Isobel’s terror returned, dousing the bittersweet spark that had flickered awake inside her.
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Dropping open of their own accord, her arms invited him in the way his arms had her ghost.
But Isobel could sense what Varen intended to do. He’d send her away like he had last night. He’d obliterate her to nothing to prevent her from deteriorating in front of him again.
Reliving her demise over and over, seeing her image all around him, frozen in the form of these cold, unfeeling monuments locked in eternal sleep—this had become his fate in this horrendous realm. His existence.
This was his darkness.
His hell.
But she wasn’t dead. And she wasn’t ready to be sent back, either. Not yet.
Brushing aside the nagging memory of Reynolds’s warning not to interact, Isobel focused her mind on doing the only thing she knew to do. The only thing that would hold any power at all.
More power than any words.
Shifting her thoughts, she channeled her concentration on one single objective.
To do what a mere dream could not. And change everything.
13
Within the Distant Aidenn
The light that she summoned came cold.
Though it didn’t match the sharp blast of warm sunlight Isobel had called forth in her mind, it did accomplish the goal of halting Varen.
He swung toward the silver glow. Pearly like moonlight, it streamed through the surrounding windows of the courtyard’s high walls, bouncing off the fog, which, though Isobel commanded it to disperse, refused.
Frowning, she clenched her fists tight at her sides.
She had to fight to keep the light there. Doing so felt like trying to maintain tightrope balance, or shoving against an invisible wall.
She didn’t understand. She’d never had to strain like this before to affect something in the dreamworld.
After Reynolds had taught her how to alter her surroundings and shown her the power of lucidity in her dreams, she’d been able to take control. In the past, her battle had been in recognizing her power, not wielding it.
She should be able to annihilate this gathering of statues like she had the duplicates of herself in the hall last night, or the deathwatches in the attic.
But the cold memorials remained, solid and imposing.
Varen’s gaze returned to her, and the sight of those two unchanging black eyes sent a spear of sorrow straight through her. The poison of that stare proved fatal to her light.
Her glow winked out. Darkness returned, and a new fear opened wide inside of her.
Varen. He had to be the force she’d been fighting against.
These constructs around her were of his imagination. His subconsci
ous had to be what was holding it all in place. In his unbending belief that she was gone, he had created an immovable fortress.
The fog swelled thicker as Varen stepped forward again, closing the distance between them. Lifting a hand, he touched her cheek.
Isobel’s eyelids flickered, and she waited to feel herself crumple as she had last night.
She didn’t fade out, though. And neither did he.
From the trees, the crows’ cawing rose in a drone. All of them rasped the same deranged call, as if urging Varen to act on his impulse, to dispense with her and deliver them all from her presence.
As the seconds ticked by, though, she began to wonder if . . . if he could be stalling.
Was it possible her attempt to prove her realness, however feeble, had achieved this small pause, this brief moment of uncertainty?
Isobel seized the chance. Placing her hand on his sleeve, she tilted her face to his and clamped down hard on both his wrist and her thoughts.
Then, as though they’d been there all along, awaiting the return of her resolve, Isobel’s imagined rays of light returned. Bursting through the windows, sharper and more intense than before, the beams sliced through the ramparts like blades, shredding them. The Gothic facade of the castle evaporated, eaten through by the heat of Isobel’s beckoned dawn to reveal the innumerable trees of the woodlands. Varen whipped his head away from her, looking to the eye of blinding light that bled his violet horizon gold.
As Isobel’s sun rose higher, the slanted shadows of the trees and stone angels shifted, rotating in unison like a thousand synchronized clock hands.
The fog vaporized, and Isobel’s heart swelled in sudden triumph. That she’d penetrated Varen’s illusionary kingdom had to mean he’d lowered his guard. Enough for her to slip into a tiny crack of hope he had to be harboring somewhere within. Hope that, beyond all reason or doubt, she would find a way keep her promise.
Unconstrained, her summoned sunbeams ricocheted through the woodlands. Patches of moss sprang to life, crawling up the tree trunks. A blanket of lush grass rolled outward in every direction, forming a floor of eye-stinging green.
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Without allowing her concentration to waver—even for a moment—Isobel continued to alter each element of their surroundings as it occurred to her, knowing she had to create something Varen himself would never conceive. She needed to build a dream he would know had come from her. The real her.
So she imagined the craggy tree limbs sprouting countless buds, and in an explosion of pink, a million tiny blossoms burst into bloom. The sudden eruption of color sent the crows fleeing into the overcast sky, their simultaneous liftoff releasing a cascade of petals that tumbled like confetti between her and Varen.
Laced with the scent of cherry and vanilla, the flurry replaced the flecks of falling ash. More petals poured from the sky where the crows swarmed in a mass of black, their cries of shock turning to shrieks of fury.
But Isobel ignored the Nocs, and, focusing next on the statues, those lifeless forms that represented her memory—her presumed loss—she shattered them all into still more blossoms.
Pink spilled onto green, petals settling into a patchwork carpet.
High above, the Nocs drew in tighter and, circling, formed a dense whirlpool. Flapping, cawing with growing agitation, the birds focused the eye of their spinning storm directly overhead.
While Varen looked to their gathering ranks, Isobel took the opportunity to cast the sky above the ghouls—the final unturned element—a brilliant blue.
Blue azure, she thought, recalling the shade Varen had named her eyes in his final letter.
Without consciously meaning to, she’d rendered for him the world he’d wished for in that note. Her world, complete with the warm summer sky he’d longed for in the moments after he’d believed all was lost.
Varen’s gaze dropped away from the birds, returning to her in confusion.
The flecks of pink caught in their clothes and their hair, collecting in the collar of Varen’s black coat and on the cuff of the sleeve she still clutched, even though he’d long since lowered his hand from her cheek.
“How can you write me out,” she whispered, “if you never made me up to begin with?”
Fear flashed in his eyes. Varen recoiled. As his arm jerked from her grip, their surroundings shifted again.
The crystal blue of Isobel’s sky melted to coal-fired orange. The horizon blazed crimson. Shivering, the canopy of flowers dissolved to dust. The grass beneath them withered, and the trees crackled dead in one fell swoop.
Her spell broken, Isobel reached for Varen, unwilling to let him slip through her fingers again. But the army of Nocs chose that moment to descend. Swooping low, the birds cut between them in a fierce current of feathers and ripping talons.
Lifting her arms to shield herself, Isobel swung away from the sharp hooks that tore at her. The creatures attacked from all angles, their wings whooshing loud in her ears, rubbing out all other sound.
“Varen!” she shrieked.
An arm hooked her around the middle from behind, drawing her close.
Yanked to one side, Isobel felt herself leave the fury of attacking birds and re-enter a realm of muted noises and blurred shapes—the veil.
But how—why had—?
“Gluttons for punishment, aren’t we?” a low, static voice whispered in her ear. “We both just keep coming back. ”
Looking down as the arm that held her loosened, Isobel caught sight of claws.
“Wait,” she gasped, but the Noc—Pinfeathers—had already released her.
She felt a familiar tug at her midsection and flew forward. Everything blurred into one colorless smear, and with a whoosh and a snap, she rejoined her body. She opened her eyes to find herself lying on the floor in the gym, but still in the gray-white between-space of the veil.
Reynolds stood over her, his image the only clear form against the fuzzy backdrop.
Those dark eyes glared down the curved length of his rusted blade, aimed straight at her.
Through the open rift behind him, a flood of screeching black shapes—crows—rushed out to fill the ceiling.
Like blots of ink dropped into water, they began to unfurl into smoke tendrils.
Then the wisps and coils took on new shapes, pouring into an army of tall silhouettes that drew in close, encircling them both.
Staticky whispers joined into one unintelligible hiss.
“I thought I told you,” Reynolds growled through gritted teeth, “not to engage. ”
14
Emergence
Isobel focused on the sharpened blade tip that hovered less than an inch from her nose.
In her periphery, she saw the dark ring of collecting figures close in tighter, their whispers growing louder. She heard one of them hiss her name.
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“Leave,” Reynolds snapped, “now. ”
She started to speak, but silver sparked as he slashed at her with the blade.
Isobel flinched away. When she opened her eyes again, she saw that the gym had returned to normal: empty, dark, and soundless.
Reynolds was gone. The Nocs, too.
She’d emerged from the veil. Now fully awake, she’d rejoined with both her physical body and with reality.
Her limbs tingled, alive with the electric sensation of pins and needles. Though her arms stung where the crows had clawed and pecked at her, her flesh bore no wounds.
The doors leading outside still hung wide before her. White sunlight streamed through. Winter’s chilling breath blew over her, wafting across the parking lot, stirring a layer of tiny pink petals.
Isobel wrestled to her feet to survey the scene before her.
It had happened again. The dreamworld had met with reality—blended.
Hurrying through the doors, Isobel saw that the small blots of pink she had imagined into being cov
ered the windshields of parked cars, the cracked asphalt, and the sidewalk, too.
She glanced toward the gym again.
She knew Reynolds was still there, fighting in the veil. Or had he fled, leading the Nocs away?
The Nocs.
Pinfeathers . . .
Could he truly be back from the dead? But, then, had he ever really been alive?
Isobel wrapped her arms around herself, over her midsection where that clawed arm had held her. She recalled how, after Varen had written her name in his sketchbook, drawing her into his story and binding her to the link he’d created, she’d been able to see the Nocs in the real world.
After Isobel had burned the sketchbook, though, she’d also severed her ties to the dreamworld, and that had to be why she could no longer see the ghouls. But like Varen—whose ability to project into reality broke all the rules—Pinfeathers had always been the exception. What one can do, Pinfeathers had cryptically told her the night he’d appeared in her living room, so can the other.
So why, if the Noc had been restored, could she not see him now? Had he already gone? Vanished back into the dreamworld, leaving Isobel on her own?
She switched from foot to foot, hesitating. Unsure of what to do next.
Reynolds had told her to leave, but . . . where did he expect her to go?
For an instant, she thought about trying to re-enter the veil. Knowing what waited for her on the other side, however, she dared not. Her spirit wouldn’t stand a chance against all those Nocs. And she’d already jeopardized so much. She’d endangered herself and Reynolds—the only source of knowledge she had on how to break the bond between Varen and Lilith.
But she hadn’t been able to help herself. She’d had to show Varen her true nature. Show him that, like before, what he believed was a lie. And now, now she knew for sure that he still cared for her. She’d seen it in his face the moment he’d wrapped his arms around her ghost double. Yet she hadn’t done enough. Not even draining the darkness from his dead world and replacing it with light and life had been able to convince him that she’d returned for him yet again.
There was more to Varen’s darkness, it was clear now, than could be sifted through from within. More than the empty suit and the doll and the lullaby and the pieces of him that she’d found in the dreamworld. More at play in all of this than just her involvement.
You’re going to need more in there than backflips and cute tricks, Pinfeathers had said to her moments before she’d come face-to-face with Lilith for the very first time. Isobel had no doubt that the Noc had been right, like he had been about so much else, and that she would soon find herself confronting the demon once more.