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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?
“You loved her,” Isobel said.
“Worshipped,” Scrimshaw corrected. “But more ludicrous than that, let us not forget, she loved me.” He gave a short ironic laugh. “Not just him—the poet. But me as well. I, the epitome of our own penchant for self-destruction. Do you know how difficult . . . how impossible such a feat must have been?”
“Yes,” Isobel said, pressing a hand to her own heart, certain she could feel echoes of the same pain that resonated within him. “I do.”
For a long time, the Noc remained quiet. He lowered his arm to his side, and when he spoke again, his words came soft, almost too low for her to decipher.
“There are chords in the hearts of the most reckless which cannot be touched without emotion. Even with the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be made.”
Isobel thought she might have heard those phrases somewhere before—or read them. Maybe in one of Poe’s works, though she couldn’t recall which.
“You have conquered, and I yield,” the Noc went on to say, his words doubling midsentence when a second caustic voice rose to join the first. “But I’ll advise you not to allow my return. Because your final play, girl, effective as it was, stands with us as too grievous an onslaught not to seek vengeance for. I grant you a reprieve, but not forgiveness. One cannot give what he does not possess for himself.”
With these words, another vision shimmered into view before him, superimposing itself over the first. Similar in composition, though a hundred times more familiar, an alternate memory unfurled, causing the room to transmute yet again.
In Virginia’s stead, Madeline, clad in her violet evening gown, her hair pinned with that rhinestone comb, now occupied the bench of a grand piano, the same one that sat in the parlor of Varen’s house.
The built-in shelves of blacked-out picture frames materialized on the wall at the phantom’s back. Decorative curtains spilled down to flank the window.
Everything looked just as it had the first time Isobel had seen the memory through the TV, on that night she’d found Pinfeathers waiting for her in her family’s living room. And again, after she’d entered the reversed dreamworld version of Varen’s house.
The memory. Could it have switched because . . . ?
Slowly the Noc turned in place, and Isobel had her answer.
His left eye—Scrimshaw’s—had gone empty. On his right side, a black eye blinked at her once more.
“Low blow,” Pinfeathers said. “But then, we told you to aim for the heart, didn’t we?”
“Pinfeathers,” she breathed, her shoulders sagging in relief.
“For now, yes. But while we’re all here and accounted for—mostly—allow us, if you will, to tell you one other thing before we go. Before I go. Well, make that two things.”
“Please,” Isobel said, her eyes flickering to the memory of Madeline as she played the notes of Varen’s lullaby, humming softly along. A glitch froze the scene, and then the notes and their player restarted. Distantly, Isobel wondered what it all meant, why the memories of Varen and Poe were linked to their Nocs. She knew she didn’t have time to ask for an answer to that mystery, though. Not when Pinfeathers was talking about leaving. She knew him better now than to assume his plan was merely to dissipate and depart.
She sensed that they were both done with running.
“You can’t go,” she said. “Not yet. I still need your help.”
“I have helped you,” the Noc replied. “And will yet. You’ll see. We were sleep-flying before you woke us up. Practicing what we’ve learned, crossing thresholds while trying our best not to wake you before you were ready to see us as we really are—holes and all. And what the crow has seen, the pigeon knows. Besides, you heard Fossil Face. I think you know as well as I do that it’s better for the both of us—for all of us, really—if we . . . if I don’t stick around. Though first I must attest that old scribble-necked codger is a great fat liar. That drawn-out bit about begging?” The Noc folded his arms. “Never happened.”
Isobel shook her head. “You’re making even less sense than usual.”
“Item number one,” the Noc said, ignoring her. He withdrew several steps, striding directly through the repeating memory of Madeline. As if the memory had been composed of smoke, the entire image disappeared, swirling away to once more reveal the interior of the white chamber. “Good-bye, cheerleader.”
She started after him, alarm spurring her forward. “Wait—”
“Item number two,” he said as he lifted his arms out to either side, “you should know that, as far as we can—the boy and I, that is—as much as we allow ourselves—”
“Don’t.” Isobel broke into a run.
“We really do—”
“Pinfeathers, stop!” she yelled.
