Nevermore

The woman took a step toward her, the train of her veil whispering against the floor. This time Isobel did not argue with her instincts. She backed away, bumping into the table behind her. She lowered one hand and, keeping the other clutched around Varen’s black book, steadied herself.

“You yourself, Isobel,” the woman continued, “could be nothing more than a shadow, someone else’s dream who is, themselves, someone else’s.”

“I don’t think that makes much sense,” said Isobel, only because it was the first thing that sprang to her mind. If she could keep the chatter going, maybe she could make it to the staircase, to the door. But then, she couldn’t leave yet. Where was the link between realms Reynolds had told her to find? Wasn’t that the whole reason she was here in the first place?

Why hadn’t she found it yet? Hadn’t Reynolds said she would know it when she saw it? And even if she did find it, how the heck was she supposed to destroy it?

“I have been watching you,” the woman said, “ever since that night you first entered his dreams.”

Her back pressed flat to the wall, Isobel inched her way toward the stairwell. The woman pivoted where she stood, and the white gauze swirled tighter around her form, like the garb of a mummy. Through the screen of the veil, the black pools of her eyes followed Isobel’s every movement.

“At first you were just another coal added to the fire. Fuel for his hatred, and I’d have had reason to thank you. Then his dreams changed.” Underneath the gauze, her head tilted to one side and her delicate brow knitted, as though she did not quite understand this observation. “Uninvited, you invaded the corners of his subconscious and intruded on our time. Your mere image became a nuisance, a distraction.” Her open palm snapped shut into a hard fist. “In this room, it was not I who was the ghost, but you. And so I sent them for you while they still could obey. You were, after all, yet an uncertainty in his thoughts. They would have had you that night too, if not for the aid and protection of your masked guardian.”

It took Isobel only a second to realize that she was talking about the night she left the bookstore, the night in the park. She recalled what the blue Noc from the crypt had said. Had he been there that night too? Only then she hadn’t been able to see the Nocs. And the voice that had whispered for her to run? Hadn’t the blue Noc also mentioned her “masked friend”? Of course. It only made sense now that it had been Reynolds trying to warn her.

“In the end, however, you shall have little to thank your secretive friend for,” Lilith said. “In time I shall discover him as well, and he will soon find that I have a special fate for those Lost Souls who betray me.”

“Why are you doing this?” Isobel demanded. “Why Varen?”

“He is not like others, is he?” she asked almost wistfully, and floated to the oval window. Through it, Isobel detected new light, warm and orange, like a streetlamp. “He is special, even in regard to those who have come before him,” Lilith continued. “Like them, he holds the ability to receive and interpret the shades and shadows of the dreamworld, to bring life and body to new ones, such as the Nocs. What is more, though, is that energy within him that drives him to destroy as much as he creates. The only thing he lacks is control. That in itself is what makes him so perfect. Tonight he is to finish my story. Tonight, when you are gone for good, he will set me free.”

Uh-oh, Isobel thought. Say what? Rewind. What was this “gone for good” business? Isobel flashed a forced smile as she fumbled backward, edging farther and farther toward the stairwell. Apparently, despite Isobel wearing his jacket, Lady-Lovely-Locks didn’t quite seem to get that Varen had left the proverbial building. It was about time for Isobel to make her exit too, link between worlds broken or not.

That was when the thought hit her. Instinctively she clung tighter to the sketchbook. The answer came to her in a flash, and suddenly it made all the sense in the world. It was all there.

Varen’s doorway into the dreamworld. Lilith’s story. The Nocs. This was the bridge between realms, his way in, on its way to being her way out. The link Reynolds had told her she would know—she held it in her very arms!

Lilith, too, seemed to see the light of realization in Isobel, because she turned and stared through her with those hole-black eyes. “It’s too late,” she said, “for you to do anything. He cursed you the night he wrote your name within those pages, for now you are part of the story. That is how you are able to see us fully in your world. Or did you not wonder?”