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He actually laughed, one short half chuckle that he tried to hide by brushing at his face with the back of his sleeve. “Yeah, if your dad doesn’t call out a hit on me in the meantime.”
Isobel glanced reluctantly in the direction of the sedan, where Gwen stood next to her dad, both of them leaning against the car. Arms folded and frame tense, Isobel’s dad watched her and Varen with his circulating-buzzard face on, ignoring Gwen’s repeated elbow nudges and cookie offerings.
“Don’t worry about him,” Isobel said, raising a hand to touch Varen’s hair, which still felt silken between her fingers. “I have a feeling that as long as I play by his rules this time around, he might mellow out sooner rather than later.”
“On that note,” Varen said as he caught her hand and lowered it between them, turning it palm up, “since those rules happen to include that you’re suspended from seeing me until I go back to school, and since Robinson wants me to wait until the fall to return, I figured I’d better ask you now.”
“Ask me?”
“To prom,” he said, and he placed something small and hard in the center of her hand. His silver class ring.
Isobel’s eyes widened, but her fingers closed around the token, and she fluttered her gaze up to his. “Junior prom . . . or senior?”
“I’ll go with you to both,” he replied, “if your dad will make an exception. But you certainly picked a strange place to ask me.”
He’d said it so seriously that she had to smile. “So . . . I guess this means we’re official.”
“I’m pretty sure Gwen is Instagramming this as we speak.”
Isobel glanced over to Gwen and her father again. True to Varen’s report, Gwen had moved away from the sedan and was now holding up her cell. To Isobel’s surprise, she saw her father looming over her friend’s shoulder, squinting at the smartphone screen—probably because it magnified her and Varen. What they were doing . . .
Blushing and wondering what the hashtag on that one would be, Isobel peered up at Varen again.
“Want to give them something to talk about?” he asked, pressing a warm palm to her cheek.
“Always,” she said.
With that, Varen leaned down, and in that way of his that always caused everything else to blur away, he kissed her.
48
Dreams No Mortal Ever Dared to Dream
Tick tick tick tick tick tick—
Isobel bolted upright, her body flinging itself into motion before her brain could so much as register the source of its fear, or command her eyes to open.
Gasping, scrambling to free herself from her heavy comforter, she skittered back and slammed spine-first into her cubbyhole headboard, causing its contents to rattle. Frantic, she swiped at her arms and legs, brushing and slapping.
Her thrashing subsided as, slowly, she realized she was at home. In bed. Alone.
Isobel froze. Holding her breath, she listened hard, eyes darting across the tranquil blue darkness of her room.
Her open curtains hung stationary. Beyond her window, bits of snow gathered on the sill. And in the distance, she could just see the topmost limbs of Mrs. Finley’s oak.
There were no deathwatches clambering up her body, no ink-faced monsters or fragmented ghouls gathered in shadowy corners or lurking in her open closet. No grim palace halls visible through the frame of her uncovered dresser mirror . . .
The ticking sound continued, though, the soft noise audible even over the hammering of her heart, the rushing of her blood.
Tick tick tick tick tick tick . . .
Resonating louder in one ear than the other, the sound drew Isobel’s attention to her left, down to the open brass pocket watch that sat on the splayed, gold-rimmed pages of a familiar book.
Isobel didn’t need to read the tome’s cover to know its title. And she didn’t need to see the name AUGUSTUS inscribed on the inside of the watch’s little hinged door to know who the timepiece belonged to either.
But . . . if Reynolds was gone, how had the watch gotten here?
Tick tick tick tick tick tick tick . . .
