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She stopped when something crunched underfoot.
Amid the sooty shards of the oil lamp Scrimshaw had smashed lay the white wire birdcage, its little door open, skeleton keys strewn about like scattered bones.
Nearby, one of the keys speared the undone heart-shaped padlock, its decorative handle turning on its own, around and around, like the key affixed to the doll’s spine.
The doll . . .
Isobel whipped her head in the direction of the window. Next to the fallen dressing screen, the antique chair sat in the same spot as before, though its occupant—the life-size figurine bearing Madeline’s likeness—had vanished.
Through the open window, black cliffs cut a jagged line through the red horizon.
Isobel spun to face the fireplace. She scanned the room but saw no sign of the empty suit—nor any other trace of Varen’s father. Only the towers of boxes, the dust-covered bric-a-brac, and, sitting in the corner where she’d found the reassembled Nocs, his head bowed, hands still plastered over his ears—Varen.
Quickly Isobel sidled between the violet armchair and the desk.
Half sidestepping, half sliding, she maneuvered down the slope, then dropped to her knees beside him.
As she did, a distant pounding rose from outside the door, growing louder. And louder. Varen lowered his hands and looked up, a sheen of sweat plastering his hair to his forehead. His eyes, sunken and bloodshot, darted to the scratch-marred door.
A quiver ran through him as the echoed banging focused into the heavy stomp of climbing footsteps.
“Ignore it,” Isobel urged, clasping his face between her hands. “Pretend it’s not real. That’s what you told me . . . remember?”
His hollowed eyes cut to hers. “Tell me,” he muttered, “how did that work out?”
The pounding ceased. The knob rattled, the door clattering in its frame.
Quiet buzzed again then, so that the soft scrape of metal on metal—the key rotating in its padlock—filled the room.
Then it, too, stopped.
Isobel heard Varen draw a breath. Felt him tense. A beat passed.
Wham!
Something enormous struck the door—hard enough to cause the wood to crack.
Isobel stood. Positioning herself in front of Varen, she opened her arms to shield him as he had shielded her the night of the Grim Facade, when he’d pulled her into the warehouse’s cramped office. When whispering shadows had danced under the door.
Wham!
“Go away!” she screeched.
A third bang sent the door flinging wide.
But . . . there was nothing. No one.
Isobel glanced back to Varen, who stared past her, his gaze fixed on the empty door frame as if the horror he’d been expecting might still emerge from its dark perimeter.
“There’s nothing,” she whispered, returning to his side. “It’s over. Please. We need to go. I can take us, but we have to—”
“You were never supposed to see,” he muttered in a monotone, his eyes glazing over as they remained on the doorway.
Isobel clamped her mouth shut. Though she assumed he meant the original encounter with his father, the flesh-and-blood version of this incident, a part of her wondered if he could simply mean everything. All his inner terrors that had been exposed to her. All his darkest thoughts revealed. His secret fears brought to life.
His deepest desires personified . . .
“You ruined everything,” Varen said. “You know that, don’t you? I was going to fade out. Disappear. I wanted this. . . .”
