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But just as Isobel had noted once before, in the dreamworld parlor of Varen’s house, the demon’s figure cast no reflection. Now, though, Isobel noticed something else, too.
The mirrors did not reflect the Gothic, ash-strewn hallway where they stood, either. Instead the murky glass showed another hall, one lined with familiar lockers, their cobalt color only just discernable through the clinging grime.
Trenton?
“Darkness devours because it must,” Lilith said, stopping at a distance, and Isobel knew it was because of the hamsa. “And so there is no escape.”
Isobel’s gaze flicked from one wall of mirrors to the other, recalling how Varen, in her dream, had transformed the north hall into this corridor. Did that then mean that all three of them currently occupied a space that ran parallel to that portion of school?
Raising an arm, the demon pointed one black-nailed finger at Varen. “A talisman may guard you for a time, but it can no more liberate you than can this foolish girl, who is as doomed as you.”
“Don’t listen,” Isobel whispered against Varen’s shoulder, huddling closer, her thoughts racing to formulate a plan before the demon could inflict them with her own.
“Relent now,” Lilith ordered, “cast off the amulet, and I will allow her to live, to return to her world. Refuse, and her soul is as forfeit as yours.”
“Varen, think,” pleaded Isobel. “There isn’t going to be a world to return to if she gets her way. And if she can’t be stopped, why go to such lengths to keep us apart? To make you believe I wouldn’t come? To let you go on thinking I was dead—that you had killed me?”
“You know I cannot be destroyed,” Lilith called to him. “I am destruction. And as I am, so now are you. You will be the cause of her death.”
“If the bond can’t be broken,” Isobel countered, her words fast and low, “then why try to barter with my life? Varen, if she could kill me herself, she’d do it. She’s been trying this whole time. From that day we met for the project at the library, when I first read about her in your sketchbook. Ever since you started seeing me in your dreams. But she can’t. Not on her own. For some reason, she can’t. That’s why she sent the Nocs after me. That’s why she—”
“The tie that binds us is indissoluble,” Lilith said, louder now. “You belong to me. At least”—she paused, her smile growing wide—“until death do us part.”
Varen glanced over his shoulder at Isobel, and in that jade eye, she could read what he was thinking, what he was considering, and she knew it was exactly what the demon wanted.
“It isn’t true,” Isobel blurted, speaking faster, her own voice rising in volume. “Nothing she says is true. Varen, you know that.”
“How else can it end?” he asked her, sorrow sweeping his grime-smeared face.
“Not like this,” Isobel said, taking his hand in hers. “Not here.”
With that, she whirled and began to run, hurrying toward the gilded archway through which she could see another chamber of Varen’s palace—a grand foyer filled with standing candelabras, their milky tapers lit with violet flames. More candles lined the steps of the curving marble staircase within, one that wound up to an unseen floor.
“Ask yourself,” Isobel heard Lilith bellow after them, her voice echoing down the corridor, “where can you go that you will not bring me?”
Isobel felt Varen’s hand twitch in hers, his hold loosening. She tightened her grip as, together, the two of them shot through the doorway and into the foyer, which presented them with not just one route, but many. Too many.
Multitudes of elaborate, sprawling staircases split off in every direction. They led up and down, overlapping, endless flights of steps crisscrossing and intertwining up and away into infinity.
But stairs weren’t what they needed. What they needed was a way out. A link back to reality.
A door.
What had Reynolds once told her?
Make a door, he’d said. When there is no way, you must make a way.
Isobel conjured an image of her bedroom door in her mind—an entry point she knew would work because it had before in the woodlands with Reynolds, and again earlier with Scrimshaw.
At her beckoning, Isobel’s doorknob materialized in her grip.
Twisting the knob, she shoved, rushing through the opening and pulling Varen after her.
Her feet met with carpet. She saw her bed with its cubbyhole headboard, her ransacked dresser and messy closet.
Once inside with Varen, she released his hand and sent the door slamming shut with a bang, blocking out the grand stairwell, the armies of flickering candles, and that horrid image of Lilith standing in the gold-framed archway.
Backpedaling into the foot of her bed, Isobel frowned at the quiet that seemed somehow too intense.
