Nevermore

He spoke fast, his words heated. “Do you not see what has become of him? He is no longer part of your world.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“It is true enough,” he said. His coldness cut her like a blade of jagged ice. “And if you do not follow me now, it will be too late for you, and all for whom you care.”

“Are you Poe?” She surprised herself with the question.

“Edgar is dead. He is the fortunate one.”

“Then you knew him,” Isobel said with authority, sure of the truth behind that statement as soon as she spoke it aloud. There had already been too much evidence. Too much proof.

“That’s why you’re here now, isn’t it? This all happened before, didn’t it? To him? To Edgar.”

“The past, too, is dead.”

Isobel stared at him in disbelief. They continued to stand opposite each other, neither of them moving while an invisible force seemed to pulse between them—an intangible sensation like the push of opposing magnets.

“Fine,” she said at last.

He whirled and strode into the passageway on the right again. Clearly he expected her to follow. Isobel did not move.

“I don’t need you,” she called after him. He stopped again. She spun away from him and stooped to gather her shoes. “I don’t need your secrets.” She slipped on the once pink flats, now caked in grit. “I’ll find him myself.” She rose, smoothing back a straggling strand of hair from her eyes, and turned toward the passageway on her left.

“Stop,” he commanded.

She ignored him and kept walking, certain that before her lay new chambers. New nightmares.

“He wouldn’t leave me behind,” she called.

“You are so certain?”

“Yes. Because just like you, he’s not everything he pretends to be,” she said. “And even though you’re saying this now . . . you still didn’t leave Edgar, did you? You helped him get back, didn’t you? So don’t tell me there’s no way!”

“Isobel.” His voice, a whisper, came sharp now. Wounded.

Her stab in the dark had done more than just graze the truth. It had found the very marrow . . . good enough at least to strike a deeper chord in the monotonous dirge that was Reynolds.

She would leave him with that.

She kept her steps steady into the darkness and the dampness. Ahead, through the webwork of shadows, she saw that the passageway turned sharply. Around that corner, she knew she would find herself utterly alone.

“Isobel,” he hissed after her. “If you turn your back on me, you leave me with no choice but to turn my own on you. Continue and we are as good as adversaries.”

“Then at least now I know.”

Determined, she took the turn sharply without so much as a backward glance. Another damp stone corridor stretched before her.

Darkness there, and nothing more.

Her footsteps were her only company now. Even the voices behind the walls had ceased. She did not expect Reynolds to follow. She knew enough about him now to understand that he meant what he said. He had his own agenda. His own ghosts to chase.

Just as there was no way to know what lay ahead, there was no way to know how much time she had left. It was safe to say that midnight was close, though.

But maybe—just maybe, she thought as she rounded the next corner, where ahead she could make out a dim aura of deep purple light—she was closer.

42

A Vow

Isobel came to the place where the next torch stood. Here the dank passageway smelled of kerosene and must. Orange flames cast their glow over a deep purple stained-glass window set into the stone wall, and she knew that beyond it lay the purple chamber of Poe’s story.

There was no hidden door or secret nook leading in as with the green chamber, however. At least none that she could find in the wall or on the floor.

Stepping around the torch, Isobel sidled up to the narrow window and pressed her hands flat against the stone wall beside it. She passed her fingers over the grooves and mortar, feeling for some clue to a way in. She leaned her shoulder to the wall and strained to hear either voice or movement. The heat from the fire, warming her face and arms, threw her shadow onto the wall beside her. She heard nothing at first, but soon she sensed a fluttering from within.

She pulled back, lowering her gaze, and focused hard on the purple glass, as though that would cause the rustle from within to amplify. In one corner of the window, she saw a pinprick of yellow light shining through. It was a hole, a tiny dime-size notch missing from the stained glass.