AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Her eyes traveled up his broad back, stopping at the wide-brimmed fedora hat that sat atop his head. She saw the edge of a white scarf.
Reynolds.
Lilith’s attention broke from Poe, and she blinked in surprise as Reynolds drew forth one of his twin cutlasses. Her lips peeled back from sharpened teeth in a snarl. “Stop, you fool!” she hissed. “You’ll kill him!”
Poe grew suddenly still on the bed. Isobel watched as he rolled his head to face the doctor, uttering something indiscernible while Reynolds coiled his arm, preparing to strike.
“No!” Isobel shouted, her cry rising in exact unison with Lilith’s.
In the next instant, Reynolds slashed his sword forward in one clean swipe, severing the silver cord that stretched between Poe’s body and Lilith’s clutching hands.
The demoness howled as the cord snapped in two. Her face contorted with fury as the silver light vanished from her grip. She flew up, sucked into the ceiling, while the fog transformed into a whirlpool. Then, in a rush, the miasma dissipated, swept into the smooth plaster until no trace of its presence remained.
Isobel gaped, watching as Reynolds stepped aside and sheathed his sword.
Her gaze fell to Poe, who now lay lifeless, his eyes glazed and unseeing.
“Edgar,” the doctor called.
The figure on the bed made no response.
Reynolds turned, and as he began to stride toward her, a wave of hatred washed over her. With a scream of rage, she threw herself at him, fists swinging.
Pinfeathers fluttered up and away from her, feathers flying, his rasping squawks filling the silent room.
Isobel’s fists passed through Reynolds’s ever-calm visage. He walked through her without so much as a ripple, and Isobel’s efforts sent her stumbling forward.
She stopped and, looking up, froze to find herself standing at the foot of Poe’s bed. She watched as the doctor reached out a trembling hand to close the two sightless eyes, which seemed to have been fixed directly on her.
As he did so, the surrounding walls, floor, and ceiling fell away like playing cards, throwing Isobel into a bottomless vat of darkness.
She fell backward through the dark, and as she did, a glimmer stole her attention. A silver cord glowed in the expansive nothingness, terminating in the center of her body.
It wavered like a ribbon caught in the wind as she flew back and back, falling faster and faster.
Then, suddenly, the cord snapped taut. It began to pull her forward, like a kite being reeled from the night sky. Light broke through her consciousness, and from a place high above, she saw herself—her body—standing in front of the fountain on Varen’s street, her arm still extended as though to take Pinfeathers’s hand, even though the Noc was gone.
She could see there was someone else there now. A stranger, who approached her from behind.
A jab of fear sent Isobel rushing toward herself. The world whirred into a blur as her two selves snapped into one.
Isobel blinked dry and stinging eyes. She dropped her arm, her bicep screaming as if she’d been standing that way for hours, and swung around to face the person who had nearly touched her shoulder.
23
Conscience Grim
“Oh!” The woman jumped, pulling back her hand the moment Isobel whirled to face her.
Young and blond with pretty gray eyes and a complexion too tan for this late in winter, the woman, who had to be somewhere in her early thirties, wore a fashionable heather-gray coat along with matching gloves. Her hair, straw colored and straight, lay neatly arranged on either of her shoulders, making her look like a model from a Macy’s clothing ad.
The woman regarded Isobel with caution, as though she couldn’t be certain if she’d stumbled on an insane asylum escapee.
“Did you not hear me?” she asked. “I said, is this your bike sitting here in the middle of the street?”
The woman pointed behind her to Danny’s blue bike, which still lay on its side next to the curb. Isobel’s gaze darted from the bike back to the woman and then beyond her willowy form to the chrome-colored Lexus idling in the road. The driver’s-side door hung wide open, as if the woman had jumped out quickly, hoping to jump back in just as quickly.
“I—” Isobel stammered, and then looked toward the fountain again, her momentary confusion lifting at the sight of it.
