by Kelly Creagh
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In Virginia’s stead, Madeline, clad in her violet evening gown, her hair pinned with that rhinestone comb, now occupied the bench of a grand piano, the same one that sat in the parlor of Varen’s house.
The built-in shelves of blacked-out picture frames materialized on the wall at the phantom’s back. Decorative curtains spilled down to flank the window.
Everything looked just as it had the first time Isobel had seen the memory through the TV, on that night she’d found Pinfeathers waiting for her in her family’s living room. And again, after she’d entered the reversed dreamworld version of Varen’s house.
The memory. Could it have switched because . . . ?
Slowly the Noc turned in place, and Isobel had her answer.
His left eye—Scrimshaw’s—had gone empty. On his right side, a black eye blinked at her once more.
“Low blow,” Pinfeathers said. “But then, we told you to aim for the heart, didn’t we?”
“Pinfeathers,” she breathed, her shoulders sagging in relief.
“For now, yes. But while we’re all here and accounted for—mostly—allow us, if you will, to tell you one other thing before we go. Before I go. Well, make that two things. ”
“Please,” Isobel said, her eyes flickering to the memory of Madeline as she played the notes of Varen’s lullaby, humming softly along. A glitch froze the scene, and then the notes and their player restarted. Distantly, Isobel wondered what it all meant, why the memories of Varen and Poe were linked to their Nocs. She knew she didn’t have time to ask for an answer to that mystery, though. Not when Pinfeathers was talking about leaving. She knew him better now than to assume his plan was merely to dissipate and depart.
She sensed that they were both done with running.
“You can’t go,” she said. “Not yet. I still need your help. ”
“I have helped you,” the Noc replied. “And will yet. You’ll see. We were sleep-flying before you woke us up. Practicing what we’ve learned, crossing thresholds while trying our best not to wake you before you were ready to see us as we really are—holes and all. And what the crow has seen, the pigeon knows. Besides, you heard Fossil Face. I think you know as well as I do that it’s better for the both of us—for all of us, really—if we . . . if I don’t stick around. Though first I must attest that old scribble-necked codger is a great fat liar. That drawn-out bit about begging?” The Noc folded his arms. “Never happened. ”
Isobel shook her head. “You’re making even less sense than usual. ”
“Item number one,” the Noc said, ignoring her. He withdrew several steps, striding directly through the repeating memory of Madeline. As if the memory had been composed of smoke, the entire image disappeared, swirling away to once more reveal the interior of the white chamber. “Good-bye, cheerleader. ”
She started after him, alarm spurring her forward. “Wait—”
“Item number two,” he said as he lifted his arms out to either side, “you should know that, as far as we can—the boy and I, that is—as much as we allow ourselves—”
“Don’t. ” Isobel broke into a run.
“We really do—”
“Pinfeathers, stop!” she yelled.
“—love you. ” This he said while tilting backward, tipping toward the floor.
“No!” Isobel screamed, her cry echoing through the hall the moment before the crash sounded.
Bursting along all the refitted lines and reconstructed fissures, the Noc’s doubled body exploded, several shards pinging her shoes.
Isobel collapsed to her knees, her hands leaping to grasp at the skating shards as she watched the blackness in his solitary eye snap out.
The back of his skull had caved inward. The sleeves of his jacket, Varen’s jacket—their jacket—had flattened out along with the Noc’s black clothing.
In less than a second, Pinfeathers had executed his own demise, and as far as Isobel could tell, the only part of him that had survived total annihilation was his face.
Faces.
Split down the middle, the two halves lay like masks atop the debris.
Isobel took hold of the jacket.
She pulled the garment from the rubble, causing splintered bits of Virginia’s fractured portrait to tumble and scatter free, broken now for good.
“I love you, too,” she whispered into the collar, hugging the jacket close. “Both of you. ”
24
Mummer
For a long time, Isobel continued to hold the jacket close, eyes closed.
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Breathing long and slow, she detected an almost imperceptible trace of Varen’s scent: dried orange peels, crushed leaves, and incense. Along with the aroma came the bitter taste of the dust of this world and, perhaps, of the Nocs, too.
She would have shuddered at that thought if she’d allowed it to linger. She might have even let herself cry.
But Isobel didn’t have the luxury of indulging in either form of release. There was still so much hanging in the balance, so much piled on her shoulders. Even more than before. Because now . . . now she really was alone.
Pinfeathers had believed in her, though. And along with his confession of love, the Noc had suggested that somewhere deep beneath the outer layers of his consciousness, Varen shared the conviction that Isobel would come for him. If that hadn’t been true, Pinfeathers would not have sought her out. Not if there wasn’t still a chance she could turn this all around. He wouldn’t have risked bringing Scrimshaw this close just to warn her about an inevitable and inescapable end. Or even to say good-bye . . .
He wouldn’t have played Lilith’s game that way.
And if Isobel hadn’t still been a threat herself, would Lilith have needed to form such an elaborate weapon against her by recombining the Nocs?
No, Isobel thought, opening her eyes. She wouldn’t.
Pulling herself to her feet, she looped the jacket around her shoulders. She threaded her arms through the sleeves, allowing its familiar weight to settle into place.
Even if its embrace could not warm her, the feel of its stiff yet well-worn fabric and the memories it carried still gave her comfort.
She scooped her hair, gritty from all the ash, out from beneath the collar, but paused when again that nagging sensation of being watched tingled along her spine.
Heeding its call, Isobel turned away from the wreckage of the Nocs’ commingled forms.
Her heart stammered a beat, confusion rattling her.
There, standing in the center of a single remaining black tile, one of Isobel’s cheerleader pawns watched her.
But . . . if the others had gone, if her concentration had fallen away from maintaining their presence, was it possible that one could linger?
As a test, Isobel sent a dismissing thought at the figure. When the doppelgänger remained, though, Isobel knew her own mind couldn’t be responsible for its existence. She doubted it was one of Varen’s imagined phantoms either, because, squinting at the copy, she saw that it bore a matching scar on its cheek.
That detail, more than anything, warned Isobel that something more insidious was at work.
She began walking toward the duplicate.
“You,” Isobel said, but stopped when the pawn spoke in perfect unison with her.
Nails of ice pricked her skin, and this time, Isobel took a long moment to formulate the words she would speak next. Because now she had no doubt to whom she was speaking.
“I know it’s you,” Isobel said, and again, the double matched her words, its inflection timed exactly with Isobel’s to create an eerie echo effect.
“You led me to the courtyard, to Varen, on purpose,” Isobel went on, doing her best to ignore the copy’s mimicking speech. “That was you in the hallway at Trenton, too, wasn’t it? In that dream you told Reynolds to take me to. You were the one holding the stack of papers. Am I right?”
Going quie
t, Isobel waited for a response, but it never came. The double only stared, blinking when she did.
Isobel sneered, a flash of fury igniting inside of her.
“Haven’t you learned yet not to mess with me?” she asked, walking forward again, and this time the duplicate did not copy her.
Instead, as Isobel drew closer, it began to deteriorate.
Turning sallow, the entity’s skin shriveled, sucking inward, clinging to the underlying framework of bone like cellophane. Its eyes welled black, sinking farther into its head with each of Isobel’s approaching steps. But Isobel didn’t stop, because the distortion only helped to affirm what she already knew.
“What’s the matter, Bess?” Isobel hissed. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say I was making you sick. ”
This had happened before when Isobel had neared Lilith while wearing the hamsa necklace. Nestled under Isobel’s shirt now, it bolstered her with the same strength Gwen’s presence had given her that morning at the cemetery. The charm’s small and steady pressure, coupled with the obvious effect it had on the demon, helped to remind Isobel that a power greater than this monster standing before her did exist. It had helped her once, and would again.
“I told you before,” Isobel went on, stopping three feet from the silent demon and its hollow, penetrating stare. “You won’t get what you want. No matter what you do, how hard you try to get rid of me or to twist Varen’s mind, you won’t win. I’ll find him because I always do. You should know by now that you can’t stop me. You haven’t yet. And when he wakes up from this nightmare and sees that I am real, we’re both going to put you back into that filthy stone box you crawled out of. And that’s where you’re going to stay. Forever. ”
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Now a ragged corpse, its cheerleading uniform hanging limp from an emaciated frame covered in gray, weblike flesh, the demon smiled at her.
Revealing two rows of sharp and spindly needle-teeth, that grin seemed to dare Isobel to venture a single inch nearer.
But when she stayed put, the demon slowly lifted an arm, extending a skeletal fist toward her. Through those disintegrating fingers, Isobel glimpsed something small clutched in the wraith’s grip.
“Death comes for us all eventually,” the double said at last, again using Isobel’s own voice. “Sooner for some than others, though nearly always sooner than expected. Especially, as you just witnessed, in regards to those we hold most dear. ”
The demon opened its hand, those awful fingers crumpling toward the palm where there rested a small wad of what appeared to be pink construction paper.
Isobel hitched a quick breath when she recognized the crushed origami butterfly as the very same she had made at her family’s kitchen table the evening before.
“And to think,” Lilith said with a giggle, her voice going guttural and low, mutating to match her decomposing body, “they actually believed I was you. ”
With that, the entity fell apart into ash—just like all the other pawns.
Oh God, Isobel thought as she snatched for the crushed paper butterfly, rescuing it before it could float to the floor with the rest of the demon’s discarded guise.
The paper felt too real in her grasp.
Her mom and dad.
Danny.
25
Disturbances
“Mom!” Isobel shouted, and as she burst through the front door of her family’s home, all around, objects rose into the air.
“Dad!” she called into the solemn emptiness of her house.
Lifted from their hooks, the picture frames lining the wall floated in separate directions. To her right, the empty umbrella stand flipped end over end, drifting lazily by.
She looked behind her, through the open door she’d made in one wall of the white chamber.
The dilapidated ballroom still lay on the other side, making her uncertain whether she’d actually crossed back into reality. If there was a reality left to cross into . . .
Isobel slammed the door shut, blocking out the visual of ash and death. Almost in unison with the deafening bang, the floating objects hit the floor with a collective clomp.
A corresponding thump sounded from the living room, and snapping her head in the direction of the archway, Isobel scanned the space for a sign of anyone.
Miscellaneous mundane artifacts littered the floor: the TV remote, her mother’s paperbacks, a cardboard drink coaster, one of her little brother’s video-game controllers.
But where was Danny? Her mother and father?
Isobel’s gaze locked on the mantel clock, its hands spinning around each other in endless freewheeling circles.
Running fingers through her matted locks, Isobel tried to get a handle on herself, on her surroundings. Yes, the clock was spinning, but the layout of her house wasn’t reversed. So this couldn’t be the dreamworld. Not . . . not unless she really was too late. Not unless the veil had already eroded and the two worlds had merged.
Then again, how else did she think Lilith could have crossed to this side?
Had the attack from Scrimshaw merely been a distraction? A diversion thrown at her for no other reason than to keep her occupied and away from Varen while Lilith used him to finish her plans for destruction?
No. No. It couldn’t be. The butterfly had to have been a lie. Her parents and Danny, wherever they were, they had to be okay.
“Mooooom!” Isobel wailed into the house, her mind spiraling further into chaos as it flipped from one horrible conclusion to another. “Dad! Dan—!”
The sound of the front storm door opening made her whirl around in time to see the inner knob turn.
As the door swung wide, Isobel took a retreating step.
Sunlight flooded the foyer, and with it came Danny, his cheeks red from the cold, his nose rosebud pink. Taking one look at her, he dropped the cell phone he held and rushed her. The phone thudded to the floor, joining the rest of the bric-a-brac, and slamming into her, Danny wrapped his arms tight around her middle.
Automatically, Isobel’s own arms wrapped him back.
“Danny, omigod,” she breathed, squeezing him hard, fingers gripping the nylon fabric of his puffy winter jacket.
Relief poured through her like a drug, numbing her from head to foot as a cold breeze wafted in to cool her heated face. “You’re okay. I’m so glad you’re okay. ”
“I hate you,” Danny sobbed into her shirt, and through the thin layer of fabric, Isobel could feel the sudden cascade of warm tears.
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This was real, then. Wasn’t it? Of course. It had to be. It had to be.
Glancing through the open door again, Isobel no longer saw the gruesome interior of the corpse-lined ballroom. Only her quiet street.
She’d been fooled by appearances before, though.
Keeping a tight hold on her little brother—on the boy who she hoped was, in fact, her little brother—Isobel scanned her surroundings, searching for any inconsistencies.
Across the way, squirrels darted in the branches of Mrs. Finley’s oak. Familiar cars sat in equally familiar driveways. Empty trash cans waited next to mailboxes. Normality pervaded the street, the neighborhood.
And there, sitting on the front stoop, next to her backpack and winter coat, Isobel spotted the pink paper butterfly she’d made for Danny less than twenty-four hours ago, its wings as crisp as they had been the moment she’d completed the final fold.
So the demon had lied. But why?
Because, Isobel thought, this was the distraction.
The veil still existed. Lilith hadn’t been able to traverse the barrier. Not yet. Isobel still had time. And that was what Lilith wanted to eliminate.
She had to go back. Right away. But first—she had to get away.
“I knew you were going to leave again,” Danny said, his words muffled against her. “I knew you would. I should have said something. I should have told Mom and Dad. ”<
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“Danny. ” Placing her hands on his shoulders, she tried to push him from her, but his arms only constricted. “Where are Mom and Dad?”
“Where do you think?” he snapped. “They’re looking for you. Everybody’s looking for you. Including the police. They found that letter you wrote. ”
Letter? Oh no, Isobel thought, realizing Danny meant the Valentine confession that had all but flown out of her pen the day before in Mr. Swanson’s class.
After discovering the ash in the hall that morning, she’d forgotten about the loose paper stuffed in her notebook. And she’d dropped her binder and papers in the stairwell when Reynolds showed up. Someone must have discovered her things soon after, intensifying the search for her. Surely Varen’s parents had spoken up about her visit to their house by now, too.
Isobel brushed a hand against Danny’s overheated face.
“You’re here by yourself?” she asked. Once more, her eyes trailed out the door, her gaze falling on the backpack she knew she’d left at school in her locker. How had it gotten here?
“I was supposed to go home with Trevor after school,” Danny said, his words rushing out in one long string, “but I knew no one would be here, so I took the bus home instead. Just in case you came back. Like you did the first time. When you went to that party. But the power’s out and I don’t know why, and I can only get reception outside. I tried calling you and calling you, but then that stupid friend of yours came by with your stuff. ”
“Gwen?” Isobel asked, trying to keep up with the rapid-fire stream of information.
“You left your cell in your coat,” Danny snapped, and pulling away, he shoved her. “Why would you do that?”
“Danny, calm down. ” She reached toward him again.
“Where did you go?” he demanded, ripping himself from her hands as a fresh wave of tears streamed down his reddened cheeks. “Why are you covered in that white dirt again? What’s happening?”
Isobel didn’t answer. She couldn’t. Never before had she seen her brother this upset. Not even in that hospital waiting room in Baltimore on the day she’d flatlined, when he didn’t know she was there, watching in astral form.
Maybe, Isobel thought, reliving someone’s death was far worse than experiencing the initial death itself. Certainly that had proven true for Varen. For Poe.