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Of course, it would finish both Nocs. Was that why she was hesitating?
And why hadn’t Pinfeathers returned? Couldn’t he do so now that Scrimshaw was distracted? Now that his guard had been lowered?
“Lenore,” the Noc whispered, and as he spoke the word, the decorative molding and flaking gold paint of the once-decadent walls began to melt away, becoming plaster.
Worn wooden boards bled through the dingy ivory dance floor, seeping through like a spreading stain.
Against all inner urgings, Isobel continued to wait and watch as the room morphed around them. The walls smoothed and squeezed inward. The ceiling dropped low.
In mere seconds, the ballroom had transformed, its macabre scenery replaced by the cramped interior of a meager and sparsely furnished sitting room.
Oblivious to the shift, Virginia played on.
Individual notes, clunky at first, tinkled forth from the instrument, whose flat back met flush with one of the four unadorned walls. Against another, orange flames crackled in a tiny fireplace.
“Ever with thee I wish to roam—
Dearest, my life is thine.
Give me a cottage for my home
And a rich old cypress vine.”
As she sang, Virginia’s melody evened out. The notes became more certain, as light and airy as Virginia herself.
“Removed from the world with its sin and care
And the tattling of many tongues.
Love alone shall guide us when we are there—”
The last note, higher in register than the others, caused her voice to crack. Startled, Virginia paused.
She lifted a hand to her lips. Bringing fingers away, she frowned at the smear of crimson that blazed against her pale skin.
Blood, Isobel thought, suddenly realizing this moment was not a random dream or imagining as she’d first thought. Instead it was another memory. Like the one Pinfeathers had transported her into that morning she’d found him at the fountain.
Reynolds had testified that that memory, the one depicting Poe’s death at Reynolds’s own hands, had been “stolen.” But if that was true (and, at this point, considering the very little she knew for sure about Reynolds, there could be no telling), then had Scrimshaw been the owner of that stored memory—as well as this one? Had both memories originated from Poe himself?
At first glance, it would seem so.
On the night before their project was due, Varen had described this moment of Poe’s life to Isobel: Virginia playing the piano, singing for her husband and her mother. Then the appearance of blood—the heralding sign of consumption. Tuberculosis. Death.
“Eddie?” Virginia said, and she swiveled in her seat to look toward Scrimshaw, her face childlike in its expression of confusion and alarm.
Freeze-framing, the replay stopped there.
Isobel, startled from her reverie, channeled her focus once more to the image of the upside-down crow and steeled herself to charge the Noc.
But her feet stayed grounded, because she knew she’d waited too long.
He’d surfaced from his trance. That had to be why the scene before them had halted. Any second now, he’d turn on her and it would be over.
“Years later, she finished it,” the Noc said, pointing one blue claw at Virginia. “By then, however, she’d already been devoured from the inside out. From this day forth she lived—if indeed you could call it living—as though Death himself had taken residence within her very heart. A death as red as the blood that never ceased.”
Isobel’s clenched hands slackened. Maybe, she thought as she listened, she could still make her attack. Or rather, finish the assault she’d already unwittingly initiated.
If she aimed accurately, said just the right thing, was it possible her words could inflict more damage than her fists?
