Oblivion

It would do her no good to run. She knew that. But that was what Pinfeathers had told her to do. And so, turning, Isobel ran.

The trees whizzed by on either side of her. Beneath her, the pavement flowed fast like a black river. She wouldn’t look behind her, though. She wouldn’t waste precious time like she had during that first run. Because there wasn’t going to be any escape this time around. No secret guardian to slip through the veil and fight in her stead. No Pinfeathers to absorb death for her.

Scraping asphalt, her sneaker skidded on the road, bringing her to a stop as, straight ahead, a haze of black-violet smoke congealed into a humanoid shape.

Isobel wheeled away from it. She charged in the opposite direction, but Scrimshaw met her there, too, uncoiling right in front of her, re-forming fast—too fast.

Too close to try to dart away again, she swung at him, but he caught her fist in his fierce clay grip.

“Do you remember this place, my dear?” he asked, crushing her hand in his.

Isobel cried out. Her legs buckled, the pain sending her to her knees.

“Being that it is our place of meeting, is it poetic or trite, do you suppose, that it would also be our place of parting?”

Lifting a boot, the Noc kicked her hard in the shoulder. He released her in the same instant, sending her sprawling.

She landed with an oomph, all her breath expelling the moment she connected with the pavement.

Though her body screamed for air and her muscles demanded that she start running again, Isobel forced herself to lie still. With her face hidden under her splayed hair, she could only hope that the Noc would take her for unconscious, would lower his guard. . . .

If she couldn’t get away, then she would have to do as Pinfeathers had told her. She would let him in close.

She could feel him drift near, sense his shadow falling over her.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Scrimshaw said. “That Pin-featherbrain’s little plan will work—oh yes, I heard. I’ve been listening the whole time. Our hearing, you see, it’s very acute.”

Damn it, Isobel thought when he grabbed her by the ankle. She rolled onto her back as he dragged her toward him, but before she could raise her hands to try to ward him off, he knelt over her. With his red-clawed hand, he gripped her throat, holding her down.

Curling her fists, Isobel fastened her arms at her sides and waited, hoping Pinfeathers would come through, that somewhere inside, he was fighting.

“And just as I have heard you, he can hear you now. Isn’t that lovely?” Scrimshaw continued, his smile reappearing as he pressed the indigo claws of his free hand into the soft flesh of her belly, preparing, she knew, to drive them through her. “So don’t forget to scream really pretty for him.”

Involuntarily, Isobel’s thoughts drifted to the Grim Facade. To a moment so similar to this one, except there it had been Pinfeathers hovering over her. What had she done then?

“Knock-knock,” Isobel said, startling herself with how calm she sounded.

Apparently, the prompt was enough to startle Scrimshaw as well. His smile fell, and he stiffened. A look of confusion flashed on his crackled face, replaced quickly by a glare of annoyance. Tilting his head at her, he blinked in that filmy-eyed, birdlike way that made her stomach turn.

“Whoooo,” Scrimshaw began, his cracked upper lip twitching into a sneer, “is there?”

Isobel uncurled a fist. If there was one thing she had learned for certain about these creatures, it was that they could not resist their own insatiable sense of curiosity.

Imagining a door at her back, she felt the ground beneath her shift.

She groped at her side, relieved when her fingers stumbled over a knob.

“The woodlands,” she said, and, grabbing the knob, she twisted.

21

Head Games

Isobel let go as the door under her swung wide, dumping them both into the open air above a landscape of snarled tree limbs.

Freefalling with the Noc, she grabbed the lapels of his green jacket and jerked to one side, flipping his hollow frame under her.

The ground rushed to meet them, and she knew she had him.

They’d hit, and he’d be crushed for sure.

Just as long as he didn’t—

Scrimshaw screamed in her face, the sound like metal grating rusted metal, and the Noc dissipated into smoke. Isobel fell through the swirls, crashing into the bed of ash alone, sending up plumes of dust.

She scrambled in the smog and pulled herself up. Ignoring the pain radiating through her jolted limbs, she took off, bolting headlong into the woodlands.

Legs and arms pumping, troops of charcoal trees flying past on either side, Isobel began to regret the knee-jerk choice of once again crossing the border between worlds. Another stern warning that Reynolds had once given her somehow, through the raging vat of her panic, bubbled to the surface of her consciousness.