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Had someone texted the photo to her? Or had the snapshots already splashed their way across the Internet and all of social media?
How many more minutes—how many more seconds—before those images found their way to Varen’s parents? To her parents. To the police . . .
She and Varen couldn’t afford to get caught, to be hauled off in different directions. Not now. Not without first severing their ties—Varen’s ties—to the other side. To Lilith.
Taking Gwen by the shoulders, Isobel parted their embrace.
“Gwen, listen to me. We have to—” She stopped when she noticed a flitter of shadows skirting the room.
Gwen had clearly sensed it too, because her eyes went to Varen, who stared at the ceiling.
Looking up, Isobel saw what held his attention.
A dark haze had begun to wrap the mirrored surface of the lazily spinning disco ball. Sharp faces, distorted, broken, and jagged-toothed, appeared between the smoky tendrils, causing the globe’s grid of projected light to flicker again.
“Thaaat’s . . . not a special effect,” Gwen said, “is it?”
Snapping from his trance, Varen moved. He snatched Isobel’s hand, and she, in turn, grabbed Gwen’s.
In one fell swoop, the legions of cell phones winked out, screens going black.
A screech of feedback sliced through the music, its piercing shriek killing the thudding bass and vocals.
Everyone ducked their heads and covered their ears.
Pulling Isobel and Gwen after him, Varen ran toward the glowing exit sign and the double doors beneath—the only barrier between them and the parking lot, which contained, Isobel hoped, Gwen’s car.
Girls in heels backpedaled from their path, shoes clattering while boys in dress shirts peeled away, everyone giving them a wide berth.
The colored lights dimmed, fluttered, and snapped out, plunging the room into darkness.
Screams rose, followed by an earsplitting crash.
Through the coarse material of Varen’s mechanic’s jacket, Isobel felt debris pelt her shoulders. She looked back to see Gwen’s stricken face, pale pink in the red glow of the nearing exit sign, and behind her, lying in shambles on the cleared floor, the obliterated disco ball.
Though Isobel no longer saw the Nocs, she knew they were there. All around them. All around everyone.
Suddenly the blazing fluorescents burst on; someone must have tried the main lights. One after the other, each fixture burst with a loud pop. Showers of sparks and glass rained down into the renewed darkness.
“—got a gun!” Isobel heard someone shout as people hit the floor all around her, covering their heads. Covering one another.
No, she thought. No no no.
“Isobel?!”
Her head swung toward the panicked cry.
“Isobel!” boomed the voice a second time, and as the emergency lights kicked on, Isobel saw him. Her father.
His head bobbed above the others, his gaze darting through the confusion before homing in on her.
Then her dad started running, dodging through the groups and around the couples as they scrambled past him, all of them hurrying in the opposite direction. Trying to get away.
Close behind him, Isobel spotted Principal Finch’s bald head. Mr. Nott’s glinting glasses and salt-and-pepper hair, too.
Even from a distance and with so many people dashing back and forth between them, Isobel could still mark the change that overtook her father’s expression the moment he laid eyes on Varen.
Rage. Hate. Fury.
