Nevermore

Midway down, she stopped.

Her dad stood at the base of the stairway, his back to her. He held the front door open, allowing in a gust of cold morning air. Before him, on the porch, right in the space where she had fully expected to find Varen Nethers, there stood two men Isobel had never seen before. Each of them wore a starched white shirt and a dark tie. Both were clad in long, brown overcoats, their faces set with blank, unreadable expressions.

Confused, she watched as the taller, dark-haired man flipped his wallet open for her father to see. There, in the center of the bill fold, she caught the gleam of a silver badge.

Police? What were the police doing here?

She edged farther down the stairway, staying close to the wall, but halted again when the tall man’s gaze shifted suddenly from her father to focus on her instead.

“Detectives Scott and March,” the man said, and flicked his wallet closed. He eyed her as he stuffed the bill fold into an inside pocket of his coat. “Are you Isobel Lanley?”

Her dad swung around, seeming surprised to see her standing there, frozen on the stairs. He glanced between her and the two detectives, his own expression darkening with uncertainty and suspicion. “Can I ask what this is about?”

Isobel felt her knees giving, her legs losing the strength to support her. Dread welled in her chest. She shook her head, willing the scene to stop. She wanted to wake up again and for everything to start over before it could go wrong. But it was too late for that. Something was wrong. Horribly wrong. She sensed it, like an invisible presence in the room.

It was the shorter, red-haired detective who spoke next. “We’re investigating a missing persons report that we believe your daughter may have some information about.”

“Who?” asked her dad, but Isobel already knew who. Like the missing piece of a puzzle, the horrible truth clicked into place.

She suddenly felt dizzy, nauseated. The room seemed to go fuzzy in the corners of her vision.

“You are Isobel, I take it?” asked the red-haired detective. His eyebrows arched as he regarded her, his chin tilted downward, as though he were trying to prompt her, to remind her of her own name.

Stunned, she stared straight through the space between the two men. Like an illusion, the detectives, the foyer, the harsh morning light, and her father all melted away until each of them became no more than a distant pinprick in her awareness. Her mind freewheeled backward through the chaos and hell that had been the night before.

Reynolds. In the graveyard. He had lied to her.

He’d lied.

In that moment, the truth of it seemed so simple to her, so simple and so glaringly obvious. But then how could it be true? How, when he had brought her Varen’s jacket? Varen had given it to him, hadn’t he?

Her jaw fell slack. Of course. If he’d lied to her, then there would have been nothing to stop him from lying to Varen, too. He could have told him anything, and even now, Varen could be trapped there, still waiting.

For her.

Reynolds’s words rushed back to her. He is . . . home now, as well.

She covered her mouth with her hand. She heard those damning words again and again, his voice ringing clear in her mind, like the reverberating drone of a funeral bell.

She sank down onto one step, feeling herself disconnect from reality.

He had called her a friend. He’d saved her, and because of that, she had wanted to believe that he had saved Varen too. And so she had drunk down every word as truth. She had swallowed his poison so easily. How could she have been so stupid? She should have known that he would have said whatever he had to, whatever it would take to get her to destroy the link. To part the worlds.

He had meant it when he’d called her his enemy.

Isobel felt her body hitch as she drew in an involuntary gasp of air. She hadn’t even realized that she’d stopped breathing.

Lilith had been right, she thought with a sudden pang of bitterness. Reynolds had kept the truth to himself the whole time. He had tricked her and sent her in on her own, with false hope, fully expecting her to die.

A barrage of emotions coursed through her all at once. Hurt, anger, betrayal.

Loss.

So this was what his speech on the porch had meant. His last soliloquy before his grand vanishing act. I won’t be found, he’d said.

“Miss Lanley,” the tall detective pressed, “do you know anything about the whereabouts of Varen Nethers?”

Distantly, she registered this question.

Yes, she thought. Yes, I do. He’s in a horrible place where no one can reach him. He’s in a world of ash and black trees and broken people, held hostage to a demoness who will possess him for eternity.