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“The hamsa.” Isobel lifted a hand to her collar. She brushed the silver metal of the charm, which had grown warm against her skin. “You said she told you to give it to me. Why?”
“Protection,” Gwen said. “She said you would need it. So don’t take it off.”
Isobel’s fingers left the charm. Reaching up, she snapped the lock on her window into place. Grabbing the lace curtains, she pulled them closed, then glanced over her shoulder to see Gwen rifling through an outer pocket of her messenger bag.
“It wasn’t just my grandmother who I saw in the dream, though,” Gwen said. “There was somebody else there too. The whole time, the two of us were just wandering around this mazelike garden, all enclosed and made up of tunnels covered in roses.”
Like flint striking in the dark, Gwen’s words snatched Isobel’s attention.
“What did you just say?”
“A rose garden,” she said, and removed a white sheet of paper from her bag. “Sort of like a network of rooms and tunnels covered in roses, all of them red. That’s the only way I know how to describe it.”
Images of a dome-shaped room surrounded by roses flashed through Isobel’s mind, telling her that she had been there too. She could even picture a screen of falling petals, the velvety slips of red tumbling between her and someone else, someone leaning in close.
“At first Bubbe and I were alone. But then I saw someone moving through the garden. When he passed by one of the archways, he stopped to look in our direction, like he was surprised to see us there. And then I woke up. But not before I realized who it was.” Gwen stood.
Varen, Isobel thought. Not only had Gwen dreamed about the same place she had, she’d seen Varen there too.
Unfolding the paper, Gwen stepped toward her, holding it out.
Confused, Isobel took the white sheet, an Internet printout of the same black-and-white image of the cloaked and kneeling figure that Mr. Swanson had passed back along with her and Varen’s essay.
Reynolds.
Isobel’s grip tightened, the paper crunching in her fist.
“Him,” Gwen said. “It was him.”
10
White Noise
Isobel lay awake that night.
She’d left her door open, giving her a clear view of the darkened hallway.
Occasionally flashes of light sparked from behind Danny’s door, though it seemed as if the headphones she’d given him had done the trick of blocking out the sound of sword swipes and repetitious cries of agony.
So far, however, the renewed silence wasn’t helping her get to sleep any faster. All things considered, she could have been tucked away in the presidential suite at the Hilton and still be watching the walls wide-eyed.
As midnight came and went, not being able to drift off became its own brand of torture. Especially since, right then, sleep was the one thing she wanted more than anything. Because unconsciousness was the only way she knew to slide back the screen standing between her and Varen.
If she fell asleep, if she began to dream, then maybe he would find her again. Even if she only remembered snippets when the sun rose, even if she woke as soon as she saw him, it would still amount to more than she had now.
At the same time, Isobel could not forget the horror of that morning’s encounter with Pinfeathers.
Before climbing into bed, she’d taken care to grab her “Number One Flyer” trophy from her dresser. She kept it buried beneath the covers with her, one hand wrapped around the plastic golden cheerleading figurine, confident that the statue’s hard granite base would provide enough of a blunt edge to smash in the Noc’s face.
The Nocs were brittle, hollow creatures, their hard outer shells as fragile and breakable as porcelain. But they also held the power to transform themselves to smoke, to slither around in violet, inklike swirls, sliding through the air as intangible wraiths. The trick to shattering one was catching it in solid form, getting it to hold still long enough to land a blow.
Isobel had managed to inflict significant damage to Pinfeathers once before, kicking in one side of his torso and snapping off an entire arm.
She already knew Pinfeathers must have managed to rebuild himself, though. When he had appeared to her that morning, taking on Varen’s form, he’d had both arms. The lightning-bolt scar zigzagging down his bare torso now explained itself as well.
Isobel’s hand tightened around the trophy.
The Noc might have caught her off guard that morning, but Isobel knew that Pinfeathers’s power lay in his ability to surprise her—an advantage she would not allow him to have again. Not now that she knew he’d found a loophole through which to enter her world again.
