by Kelly Creagh
When none of those things happened—when nothing happened—Isobel’s yearning for air became an all-consuming need, and it occurred to her that delivering a swift death was not what Lilith had in mind.
The demon wanted to watch her struggle, to drink in her final throes as she drowned slowly in its clutches.
But she’d come so far. Survived too much. Risked everything . . .
Isobel kicked her legs again, though no longer in an effort to escape. Now she hoped only to fend off the fog of unconsciousness that had begun to steal over her, lulling her toward the last bat of her eyes, since her final breath had already been taken.
Varen, she thought, her fingers wrapping the sinewy wrist of the hand that held her. Where was he?
Shhh, a woman’s voice hushed in her head. Sleep now, so you can awaken safe in your new bed. Forever and always home . . .
Of course, Isobel thought dimly, lids drooping.
The demon’s plan was to seal her away. That open tomb. Halloween. The blue marble crypt. Lilith’s own vault.
Total darkness. Complete and everlasting.
The very fate Isobel had threatened the demon with in the ballroom.
Gritting her teeth, Isobel summoned one final burst of strength, attempting a second time to tear the creature’s grip away.
She succeeded only in ripping more of the clinging silk.
Shhh, the voice in her head shushed. Then, out of nowhere, the same voice began to sing.
“Hush-a-bye my little bird
Hush-a-bye my child”
Gwen’s lullaby. Isobel recognized the melody immediately.
“I have lost a love so great
Oh, woe is me. ”
So, Isobel thought, her body slackening, that’s what the lyrics meant.
The singing turned to humming then, one melody to another, and Gwen’s lullaby morphed into Madeline’s. Varen’s.
Isobel’s lids fell closed at last under the weight of the soothing refrain. Her arms drifted open, her body preparing to indulge in the lethal inhale it so wanted to take.
Don’t you ever tire? Scrimshaw’s voice echoed over the humming.
Too late to turn back now, Isobel heard Gwen say.
Good-bye, cheerleader . . .
Good-bye, Isobel thought, just as her back collided with something solid. The ocean floor?
No, she thought when she felt an arm loop around her waist—pulling her in close against a body.
The moment seemed so familiar. Like it had happened once already.
Isobel opened her eyes to slits. As her mind attempted to make sense of murky shapes, garbled sounds, and hazy colors, she wondered if it was now her turn to relive old memories.
Pinfeathers, pulling her from one side of the veil to the other . . .
Then her clouded brain registered a look of rage contorting the demonic face that still hovered inches from her own. Lilith’s pitted eyes weren’t fixed on her anymore, though. They were locked instead on whatever—whoever—had taken hold of Isobel.
Isobel grabbed the hand gripping her, feeling for claws, but she found strong fingers instead.
A glint of silver sparked in the fringe of her vision.
Was that . . . ? Her arm shot out, and as soon as her fist closed around the veil-wrapped hamsa, the demon’s hands unlatched from her like loosed manacles.
Recoiling, Lilith’s face fractured down the center, spilling clouds of black and violet ink.
The creature opened its mouth in a soundless shriek, palms pressing to its rupturing face.
Then, before Isobel’s lungs could collapse, forcing her to inhale the swirling ink, the arm encircling her wrenched to one side—transporting her.
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A sharp splash crashed in her ears as she felt her body depart suddenly from the crushing ocean, hurtling through a wall of water into . . . a room?
Inhaling with a rattling gasp, lungs filling to the brink, Isobel fell, tumbling hard with her savior onto carpet.
A hand grabbed her by the shoulder, and the world swam by in a whir as she was thrown onto her back. She caught a brief glimpse of glittering crystal shards, violet flames, a rolling ceiling of smoke.
Then Varen’s face, drenched and shocked, appeared over her.
Jet hair streaming, electric-green eyes wide and darting, he scoured her form, his expression lit with a mixture of panic and disbelief.
Isobel turned her head away, coughing and sputtering. Behind Varen, the wall undulated and rippled, still liquid at the point through which they’d entered until it snapped solid. As she drew in breath after breath, Isobel took in the sight of ornate gold frames everywhere, each encasing its own fractured glass.
He’d transported them into the mirrored corridor from that morning’s dream.
Along with the green mechanic’s jacket and her own bedraggled, sodden pink dress, Varen’s usual black clothes and coat had returned.
Reflected in every splintered shard of glass, Isobel saw herself and Varen, their pale, drenched faces repeated into infinity by the cracked mirrors that bounced them from one wall to the other and back again.
“You have a reflection,” Varen said between gasps, his tone accusing.
“We,” Isobel wheezed as she sat up, one hand tightening around the hamsa still in her fist, the other clutching his sleeve, “need . . . to leave. ”
Varen’s expression changed, his bafflement melding with something that just might have been hope.
“You’re alive,” he breathed. “We both are. ”
But before Isobel could answer, a crackling sound drew their attention to the frame-filled wall.
Tink went one of the glass shards as it leaped free of its mirror.
A trail of water poured from the crack.
Tick. Tack. Crack.
More shards sprang from their frames, each releasing its own stream. Trails of water flowed down the wall, soaking the carpet.
“Get up,” Varen ordered as he shot to his feet and, grabbing her, pulled her after him.
Ting. Another shard flicked into the hall, this one unleashing a forceful horizontal spurt. The leaks kept coming, with more frequency now, springing to life with hiss after hiss.
Then the whole wall bowed, emitting a low groan. The legions of reflected Varens and Isobels began to warp with it, ready to buckle under the pressure of the ocean that seemed to have followed them.
The demon, Isobel was sure, would not be far behind.
Tugging her after him, Varen started down the hall at a run, hurrying them toward a gilded archway that filtered into being as they neared the end of the hall. Had he made the escape route for them? Of course, he must have. But where was he taking them?
Isobel fumbled after him on rubber legs, her feet heavy as clubs.
“Wait,” she pleaded.
Pausing, Varen turned to her.
“What are you doing?” he asked as, with quivering hands, Isobel strung the hamsa’s chain around his neck, trying to keep her fingers steady enough to knot the chain, since the clasp had been broken.
“There isn’t ti—”
The walls at the opposite end of the hall blew out their mirrors with an earsplitting crash.
White rapids gushed into the hallway, turning it instantly into a canal.
The torrents raged toward them with a deafening roar, proving Varen’s curtailed warning true: There was no time, no place, to run.
Grasping Isobel close, Varen ducked her head into him.
He swung her away from the approaching floods, shielding her with his body just before the booming waters bowled into them both.
34
Darkness and Decay
WHOOOOOOOSSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHH.
Cringing, Isobel clung to Varen.
But the floods did not tear them apart as she’d expected.
Instead she and Varen remained s
tanding, unaffected by the wall of water that became something else the moment it met with their joined figures.
Ash.
Cascading past them in a billowing cloud, the dust settled across the hall with a hiss.
A tinkling sound drew Isobel’s gaze upward.
Through the haze, she saw the ash-coated chandelier above them sway.
Then it fell, plummeting straight for them.
Isobel dropped her head. She held tightly to Varen, shutting her eyes in anticipation of the impact that—again—never came. She felt only the spray of dust and knew that he must be the reason why.
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Just as he could create—the gilded door frame, the corridor, this palace, the seashore—Isobel knew that Varen could also abolish. He had to have destroyed the rapids and the falling chandelier.
With his awareness had returned his control. But was it strong enough to pit against Lilith’s?
Isobel pushed back from Varen, blinking cinders from her wet lashes. She scanned his collar, where the dust had already begun to seep into his soaked clothing, turning to muck. Her fingers finding the charm she’d managed to secure there, she tucked it beneath his shirt.
Comforted by the knowledge that he was protected, that as long as the hamsa remained on his person, Lilith could not lay a hand on him, Isobel allowed her aching shoulders to sag.
She glanced up to Varen, meeting his gaze, his green eyes grave and searching.
For one heartbeat, she let herself bask in his complete return to lucidity. To himself.
But the brief flash lasted no longer than the instant it took for Varen to turn his head and look away from her. Toward the far end of the hall, from where the waves had rushed them.
Reluctantly Isobel shifted her gaze in the same direction.
Flecks of ash swirled through the devastated hall, providing the only barrier between Isobel and Varen and the white demon who, like an ivory idol, watched them from less than ten yards away.
Behind Lilith and through the ragged mouth of the wrecked hall lay an endless assemblage of trees, a hazy silver light glowing through their prison-bar trunks.
Lilith’s face, unveiled, stark and whole once more, showed all the emotion of an ancient ceremonial mask. Like the walls around them—like this entire world—her features had become caught in a state between beauty and ruin.
Shadows nested deep within the hollows of her high cheekbones. Dark veins marbled her snowy skin, and the masses of her wild hair clung to her soaked figure in straggly strands.
Sodden veils spilled in weighty folds from her, clinging close to her narrow and gaunt frame.
The demon’s eyes, no longer sunken pits but enlarged inkwells, leaked great streaks of the same violet-black substance that had spilled from her cracked skull in the depths of the ocean.
“You forget,” Lilith said, a slick of glossy liquid sliding from her mouth to drape her chin and drench her pristine shrouds, staining the gossamer bright violet. “You both forget,” she went on, her voice low and throaty, thick with the heavy fluid, “that you cannot evade what lies within your own mind. You cannot run from yourself. ”
Varen shifted in front of Isobel, planting himself between her and the demon, who started toward them, the tips of her taloned feet poking out from the hem of her dragging robes.
“When the light at last dies, as it always dies,” she said, “darkness will devour. Be it that darkness which is your own”—pausing, Lilith locked her gaze solely on Varen, lips curling, spreading to display a jagged, stained grin—“or someone else’s. ”
Her eyes darting, Isobel checked the cracked and dusted mirrors.
She saw her own and Varen’s reflections—mere shadows beyond the filmy layer of ash.
But just as Isobel had noted once before, in the dreamworld parlor of Varen’s house, the demon’s figure cast no reflection. Now, though, Isobel noticed something else, too.
The mirrors did not reflect the Gothic, ash-strewn hallway where they stood, either. Instead the murky glass showed another hall, one lined with familiar lockers, their cobalt color only just discernable through the clinging grime.
Trenton?
“Darkness devours because it must,” Lilith said, stopping at a distance, and Isobel knew it was because of the hamsa. “And so there is no escape. ”
Isobel’s gaze flicked from one wall of mirrors to the other, recalling how Varen, in her dream, had transformed the north hall into this corridor. Did that then mean that all three of them currently occupied a space that ran parallel to that portion of school?
Raising an arm, the demon pointed one black-nailed finger at Varen. “A talisman may guard you for a time, but it can no more liberate you than can this foolish girl, who is as doomed as you. ”
“Don’t listen,” Isobel whispered against Varen’s shoulder, huddling closer, her thoughts racing to formulate a plan before the demon could inflict them with her own.
“Relent now,” Lilith ordered, “cast off the amulet, and I will allow her to live, to return to her world. Refuse, and her soul is as forfeit as yours. ”
“Varen, think,” pleaded Isobel. “There isn’t going to be a world to return to if she gets her way. And if she can’t be stopped, why go to such lengths to keep us apart? To make you believe I wouldn’t come? To let you go on thinking I was dead—that you had killed me?”
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“You know I cannot be destroyed,” Lilith called to him. “I am destruction. And as I am, so now are you. You will be the cause of her death. ”
“If the bond can’t be broken,” Isobel countered, her words fast and low, “then why try to barter with my life? Varen, if she could kill me herself, she’d do it. She’s been trying this whole time. From that day we met for the project at the library, when I first read about her in your sketchbook. Ever since you started seeing me in your dreams. But she can’t. Not on her own. For some reason, she can’t. That’s why she sent the Nocs after me. That’s why she—”
“The tie that binds us is indissoluble,” Lilith said, louder now. “You belong to me. At least”—she paused, her smile growing wide—“until death do us part. ”
Varen glanced over his shoulder at Isobel, and in that jade eye, she could read what he was thinking, what he was considering, and she knew it was exactly what the demon wanted.
“It isn’t true,” Isobel blurted, speaking faster, her own voice rising in volume. “Nothing she says is true. Varen, you know that. ”
“How else can it end?” he asked her, sorrow sweeping his grime-smeared face.
“Not like this,” Isobel said, taking his hand in hers. “Not here. ”
With that, she whirled and began to run, hurrying toward the gilded archway through which she could see another chamber of Varen’s palace—a grand foyer filled with standing candelabras, their milky tapers lit with violet flames. More candles lined the steps of the curving marble staircase within, one that wound up to an unseen floor.
“Ask yourself,” Isobel heard Lilith bellow after them, her voice echoing down the corridor, “where can you go that you will not bring me?”
Isobel felt Varen’s hand twitch in hers, his hold loosening. She tightened her grip as, together, the two of them shot through the doorway and into the foyer, which presented them with not just one route, but many. Too many.
Multitudes of elaborate, sprawling staircases split off in every direction. They led up and down, overlapping, endless flights of steps crisscrossing and intertwining up and away into infinity.
But stairs weren’t what they needed. What they needed was a way out. A link back to reality.
A door.
What had Reynolds once told her?
Make a door, he’d said. When there is no way, you must make a way.
Isobel conjured an image of her bedroom door in her mind—an entry point she knew would work because it had before in the woodlands with Reynol
ds, and again earlier with Scrimshaw.
At her beckoning, Isobel’s doorknob materialized in her grip.
Twisting the knob, she shoved, rushing through the opening and pulling Varen after her.
Her feet met with carpet. She saw her bed with its cubbyhole headboard, her ransacked dresser and messy closet.
Once inside with Varen, she released his hand and sent the door slamming shut with a bang, blocking out the grand stairwell, the armies of flickering candles, and that horrid image of Lilith standing in the gold-framed archway.
Backpedaling into the foot of her bed, Isobel frowned at the quiet that seemed somehow too intense.
Something was wrong. She felt it as a buzz—an electric charge infusing the air.
Turning, Isobel scanned the pink walls, eyes flying around her room.
Everything appeared just as she’d left it. Normal. Unreversed.
And yet, when she’d made the door just now, when she’d opened it, she had not found her things floating in midair. Instead her belongings lay strewn about, scattered across the floor where they must have fallen before, when she’d left Danny in the hallway of the real world. When she’d entered the castle turret with its spiral staircase.
It didn’t make sense. Before, when a portal opened between the worlds, objects always rose.
Isobel glanced at Varen to see him staring, transfixed, into her mirror. Reflected in the glass, through the dark square of her bedroom window, beyond her white curtains and the fizzing screen of silent static were . . . the Woodlands of Weir.
Impossible. They’d crossed into reality. Hadn’t they?
Isobel swung to face her bedroom clock. It read 6:17 in brilliant blue numbers that scrambled, then steadied.
No, she thought.
Returning to the door, she ripped it open to see the gold-framed archway, the foyer, and the candles all still there, the scene missing only the veil-draped, ink-smeared figure of Lilith.
Suddenly Varen was at Isobel’s side. Again he took her hand.
“This way,” he said, pulling her back into the foyer. Isobel followed, grateful to know that he, at least, had an idea of somewhere they could go.
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Varen hurried forward to a descending set of steps flanked by two gilt candelabra, their pronged torches held aloft by the arms of two angels bearing Isobel’s features, their sightless eyes wide open.