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As difficult as it was for her to relinquish her hold on him, she let her hands fall to her sides.
For a long time, Varen only stared at her in that unreadable way that always left her feeling scorched from the inside out. She wanted so badly to whisper her own I told you so, but she held her silence, letting her persisting presence speak for her.
Memories make better weapons than words, Pinfeathers had said, and Isobel hoped that, for both her and Varen’s sakes, the Noc’s final scrap of wisdom would prove as true as his warnings.
Lifting his hand at last, Varen grazed hesitant fingertips along her jawline, his touch tentative and unsure, as if he were testing the realness of a polished window to see if the glass could truly be there. Or if it was all just air.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he murmured, and Isobel remembered that he’d uttered these same words before, in that forever-ago moment.
Was he still testing her? Waiting for her to repeat old lines and reveal herself as yet another hallucination, another nightmare waiting to self-destruct and eradicate the remaining fragments of his sanity?
“You’re right,” Isobel replied, resting a hand on his sleeve. “I shouldn’t. But that’s why I am here. Because . . . neither should you.”
He frowned, pain flickering across his face.
“It can’t really be you,” he said. “I know it can’t.”
“Why not?” Isobel asked, offering him a rueful smile. “I mean, don’t you think it’s at all romantic, the idea that love could conquer death?”
Alarm flashed in Varen’s eyes. He snatched his hand away as if she’d burned him.
When he began to back away from her, Isobel knew she’d struck a chord. The chord?
Of course Varen would recognize the question; he’d once posed the same one to her. On that night she’d stayed late to help him clean up after Brad and the crew had trashed the ice cream parlor where he’d worked.
And maybe it was the fact that Isobel had returned Varen’s own words to him, instead of repeating something he’d heard her say in the past. Or maybe the combination of all her efforts had finally compounded, cornering his convictions. Whatever the reason, Isobel could tell that Varen’s room for denial had at last been obliterated.
He knew she wasn’t a dream.
But as Varen’s eyes widened, his shock morphing into terror, her burgeoning sense of relief quickly drained away.
As he continued his retreat, the singer’s muddled crooning died out. The light from the stage flickered, creating a strobe effect. The phantom goths began to move, heads turning in Varen’s direction. Slanted slits appeared on every cheek, oozing blood.
“That’s not possible,” Varen mumbled, shaking his head. “You are not possible.”
Isobel frowned, confused by his reaction. She reached for him, but as she did, another girl’s arm shot out from the crowd, snatching Varen by the sleeve. He wheeled away, jerking free, but another hand latched onto his arm.
When he looked to the girl who clutched his sleeve, instantly the figment became the bleeding and bedraggled Black Dress Isobel.
“It’s time to go,” Isobel heard the dark double say. “Come with us,” echoed an identical voice as another duplicate stepped to his side.
Isobel started forward, but the surrounding goths shifted to block her path. She shoved against them, but they refused to budge. Varen’s thoughts were taking over again, building in power to overthrow her own.
But this time Varen had lost the control he’d exhibited before.
“Varen!” Isobel shouted, trying to insert herself between the barricades of bodies that separated them.
“Don’t worry, Izo,” came a male voice, one Isobel had not heard for a long while, but one she knew well all the same. “I got this.”
Another arm appeared, reaching out from the blanket of shadows behind Varen. Its heavy hand fell on his shoulder, and the connection sent a ripple through the scene Isobel had created, causing it all to rupture.
The goths and the doubles and the stage and the walls all dissipated to vapor. The dance floor became pavement.
A nighttime blackness took the place of flashing lights, pierced only by the single streetlamp that sprouted from the leaf-strewn parking lot.
Even in the darkness, though, Isobel could discern whose hand was tightening its grip on Varen’s coat.
Dressed in his letter jacket, his frame once more hulking and rigid—strong, unlike the last time she’d seen him—Brad Borgan, Isobel’s ex, made quick work of tossing Varen backward into the side of the Cougar that materialized just as Varen collided with it.
