Nevermore

One by one, she flicked on light switches as she reached them even though it wasn’t that dark inside. The false light afforded her little comfort. The silence was too thick. Her fingertips brushed the walls as she passed through the hall, moving toward the kitchen, where she knew she could find a cold ginger ale and maybe something to eat. She opened the fridge, opted for a Sprite, and drank half before closing the door again.

Isobel figured her fever last night had probably caused her mother to call the school for her that morning. So where was her mother now?

No school today. She couldn’t say that she wasn’t grateful. There was no way she’d have survived a repeat of the day before.

Isobel shut her eyes, trying to block Varen’s smooth, pale features from forming in her mind, but that only caused him to materialize more vividly. Grasping the handle of the fridge, Isobel rested her forehead against the cool surface. The cold felt so good against her skin. She turned to press her cheek there too. Wake up, Isobel. What’s the deal? Why can’t you get over it already? He’s just some guy. Some guy who’d she’d dreamt was having dreams about her. How completely whacked was that?

Why did he have to be so . . . so . . .

Isobel let out a growl of frustration, pushing off from the fridge. She took a noisy slurp from her Sprite and made a beeline straight for the pantry. She was going to pull a major Danny and find some Chips Ahoy to scarf down for breakfast.

She reached for the cabinet door and stopped.

A glint of gold on black caught her eye.

She looked, and the Sprite slid out of her grasp. It thumped onto the floor, and soda spread across the tiles with a quiet hiss.

There, on the kitchen table, sat the large, familiar black book, autumn sunlight gleaming off the gold-lined pages and the embossed title that read The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe.

“No!”

She grabbed the book and swept it from the table. It hit the floor, falling open on the kitchen tile.

Isobel drew back, her arms huddled against her body, her fists balled into tight knots beneath her chin. She could feel herself shaking. This couldn’t be for real, she thought. This couldn’t be happening. She’d thrown it away. She’d gotten rid of it. Last night had been a dream.

She stared down at the book. She watched a trickle of soda crawl across the floor toward it, and despite everything in her being telling her not to, she inched forward. Her shadow settled over a picture in the open book, a large black-and-white image of a pale-faced, sunken-eyed man.

A neatly tied cravat laced his neck like a fancy noose. A rumpled jacket, so black it nearly blended into the portrait’s background, was fastened in the middle by a solitary button. The man’s wide forehead gave way to sorrowful, downward-slanted brows. And then there were the eyes themselves. Dark wells.

Crouching, Isobel lifted the book out of the soda, which had begun to pool at its edge. She found herself at once entrapped by those eyes, transfixed because they seemed to stare right back at her, pleading with her in earnest for . . . for what?

Her gaze trailed down to the caption: “Ultima Thule” daguerreotype of Poe taken November 9, 1848, less than a year before the poet’s mysterious death.

Ultima Thule. Why did that sound familiar?

Isobel stared once again into his eyes. There was something about them, the way they pulled her in, the way they only dimly reflected the light, the way they resembled two black, coin-size holes.

She slammed the book shut.

17

Dead Air

Isobel sat staring vacantly at the video game images that flashed in front of her eyes. She hadn’t the slightest idea what she was watching—some overdramatic vampire slayer game Danny had switched on when he’d gotten home from school. Blades swiped, blood splashed, and zombies screamed.

She’d spent the better part of the day right there on the couch. She’d turned on the TV initially for the noise, for some kind of normal sound to surround her until her mom returned from the grocery store. That, and she’d needed something to ground her, to let her know she was really awake and not still asleep—that she wasn’t locked in some perpetual dream within a dream.

But she hadn’t found much comfort in knowing that she was, indeed, awake and in the real world. Not given what had happened, what she’d seen in her dream—what she’d found in the kitchen.

“Isobel!”

She jolted, looking up to see her mother standing behind the couch, holding a hand over the mouthpiece of their portable phone. “Isobel,” she said, lowering her voice, her brows knitting. “Did you really not hear me calling you?”