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Isobel stumbled backward, away from the railing, nearly tripping over her feet.
She hated feeling this defenseless against him. It was true she could wound him if she got lucky. But what could she possibly do to him, when clearly they both knew he was the one with all the answers?
For the first time since she’d met Pinfeathers, Isobel found herself fearing that any second he would evaporate and be gone, taking with him her one solid connection to Varen.
“Tell me he’s okay,” she said, pleading. “Please. Tell me the dream in the bookstore was a lie and that he still knows I’m coming. Tell me he has the ribbon.”
She watched Pinfeathers as he stepped toward her slowly, even gracefully, and it occurred to her that he was moving that way on purpose, as though making a conscious effort not to alarm her.
The hilarity of that thought might have made Isobel laugh if she hadn’t been so close to tears.
The Noc stopped at the railing. He extended his arm out to her, his hand opening like a bear trap.
“Come,” he said, “there’s something you need to see.”
Isobel shook her head. “I’m not touching you,” she said. “And I’m not going anywhere. There’s no way.” She took another step backward, her heel meeting with the concrete curb. She could run if she wanted to. She knew that. She also knew that if he wanted to catch up to her, she wouldn’t get very far.
Pinfeathers did not lower his hand. He didn’t come any closer, either, but stayed behind the railing as if to say, This is as far as I go.
“No tricks this time,” he said, “no false realities. Just a memory caught in passing. Something that might interest you. You said yourself that I can’t hurt you.”
Isobel’s eyes darted from the serrated edges of his shark’s teeth, clamped together through the open pit in his cheek, to the needle-point tips of those crimson claws.
Despite his macabre exterior, everything about him in that moment, from the planted way he stood to his grave, ascetic expression, resonated through her like an echo.
“You’re . . . different,” Isobel said, the urge to turn and run dissipating like the white fog of her own breath. “Why? What happened to you?”
“Change of heart?” he said through a thin smile that was as bitter as it was brittle.
Though her body screamed against doing so, Isobel took a tentative step toward him. She told herself it was a test step, just to see how he would react.
His smile faded, his expression becoming suddenly sober and serious—more human than she had ever seen it. Almost . . . recognizable.
Pinfeathers’s claws clicked together as he beckoned.
Isobel took another cautious step toward him, then another.
She had come here tonight in search of Varen’s ghost.
Maybe, Isobel thought as she cleared the distance between them, finally fitting her hand into the Noc’s porcelain grip—just maybe—she’d found it.
His hand closed tightly around hers, the claws of his fingers and thumb crisscrossing one another like some kind of wicked locking mechanism.
He squeezed hard, and Isobel opened her mouth in a silent gasp of pain.
Just when she thought she’d made a terrible mistake, her hand yielded and his fingers passed through hers, as if she’d suddenly become as intangible as a mirage.
Almost as if preparing to waltz, Pinfeathers stepped backward, drawing Isobel forward. But her body remained paralyzed, rooted in place while some separate part of her began to slide forward, drawn by his pull.
It felt as if she were being peeled away from herself.
And that, it seemed, was exactly what was happening.
Her vision went double while the open-air sounds of night, wind, and rustling leaves became muted in her ears. Then, in a flash, everything disappeared, winking to crystal white.
She floated in a world of nothing, weightless, alone, and strangely unconcerned about what had just happened or where she was or if she would come back. It was like teetering between waking and falling asleep, and it made her wonder if this was what dying felt like.
Something pulled at her, and her senses returned.
