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Along with the grit and grime embedded in the material, once pink but now pale gray, black blots of her own blood dotted the dress’s lace overlay and stained the underlying skirt.
The dress had changed so much since she’d first put it on. Almost as much as she had . . .
Varen, Isobel thought. All this time, he’d been seeing different versions of her. The scar-free Party Pink Isobel, Cheerleader Isobel, Bleeding Black Dress Isobel. Dead Isobel.
But . . . what if she dared appear to him as a blended version of herself? The past and present merged together? Would that help him believe it really was her?
Sitting out in plain view this way, the dress seemed to suggest the idea all on its own. As if that had been the exact intention of whoever it was who had pillaged her things.
Isobel glanced at the door, which had gone quiet.
Danny, she figured, must have retreated down the stairs. Had he gone outside to try calling their parents again? Or even the police? Maybe he’d gone to retrieve her phone, like she’d wanted him to, to see what she’d texted.
Whatever the case, Isobel would be gone by the time he returned.
Quickly she shucked her clothes and donned the dress, managing somehow to zip up the back on her own.
The cool satin lining hugged close to her skin, the bodice only slightly looser than it had been on Halloween.
Pulling on Varen’s jacket as a final touch, Isobel turned to face the door. She stopped, though, caught off guard by the sight of herself in her unveiled dresser mirror.
With her face smudged, her hair caked with grime, and her dingy skirts crinkled and stained, she looked as if she’d just survived an explosion.
Well, she thought wryly, taking in the ensemble, at least I match.
Tearing her gaze from the mirror, she started for the door. She reached for the knob, one of her sneakers causing the floor to creak.
“He said you’d be wearing that jacket when I saw you again.”
Isobel halted at the sound of her brother’s voice, which came muffled through the door. Startled both by his words and by the fact that he was still there, that he must have been there the whole time, she lowered her hand.
“He said that when you had it on, that’s when I would need to tell you . . .”
She frowned, somehow doubting that by “he” her brother could be referring to their father.
Moving right up to the door, Isobel pressed her hands flat to its surface and waited, but for a long while, Danny didn’t say anything else. Then, just when Isobel was tempted to ask who he’d meant, he spoke again.
“Last night was the first night he ever talked.”
“Who?” Isobel heard herself ask, even though she already had an inkling.
“The black bird,” Danny replied.
Isobel’s eyes widened, her suspicions confirmed. Her breath caught in her throat as, suddenly, it made sense how Danny had been seeing things in the dreamworld—how he’d been seen in the dreamworld.
What the crow has seen, the pigeon knows, Pinfeathers had told her in the moments before destroying himself.
Danny, she thought, remembering how Scrimshaw had referred to her little brother as a pigeon.
Could Pinfeathers have been taking Danny into the dreamworld, showing him Varen’s nightmares about her on purpose? But . . . why?
“He’s really real, isn’t he?” Now her little brother didn’t sound like himself at all. His voice had gone small and afraid. “The dreams. They weren’t just dreams, were they?”
“Whatever he told you to tell me,” Isobel said, “it’s . . . important, okay?”
“He said that you should know it was never about you,” Danny replied. “He also said that you have to ‘remind us of who we are.’ He said you would know what that meant. . . . Do you?”
Isobel didn’t answer. Instead she waited, her eyes searching the blank white surface in front of her as if it could provide the aid Pinfeathers’s cryptic message failed to offer.
