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She hadn’t heard that rumor. Of course, there had been the usual stares and whispers that morning, but she’d gotten out of the habit of paying attention. She had been preoccupied with the dream itself, replaying it again and again in her head. And then she’d been waiting for Detective Scott to appear in the doorway of her first class. He’d never shown up to question her, though, and neither had Mr. Nott or any of the other administrators. And maybe that was because they’d been preoccupied themselves—not with her, she now grasped, but with the possibility that Varen had been in the building.
“I know hearing his name bothers you,” Gwen said. “Actually, I can tell it does worse. I can tell that it rips your heart out and crushes it every time. You know that’s why I don’t talk about him or ask what happened, don’t you? Not because I believe you when you tell me you don’t remember. And it’s not because I think you need space, either. It’s because I can tell it kills—literally kills you to remember. And because until this morning, I thought the truth could wait until you were ready. Because I thought it was all over. Clearly, though, it’s not. Is it?”
Isobel sucked in a sharp breath and held it. Prying one hand free from the seat, she latched onto her door handle and squeezed hard, wishing she’d decided not to come after all. Really, what did she think she was doing? Hurrying the inevitable?
If talking to Varen hadn’t worked before, why had she thought it would do any good now?
“I know you think you can wait me out,” Gwen said. “I know you think you can keep giving me the silent treatment just like you do everybody else. But I promise you, I am the bad haircut photos you wish you could delete from the Internet. I am the dumb cheer-mixed pop-song mash-up beat-boxing in your head. I’m not going to go away. We’ve been through too much. ‘We’ as in ‘me too.’ That crap in the hall, Izzy. What the hell was it?”
“Please,” Isobel said, “don’t ask me.” She tried to release the sharp breath she’d taken moments before, but it stuck in her lungs, lodged inside of her along with everything she wasn’t saying.
“Listen to me, Isobel,” Gwen began again, “I am tired of tiptoeing and I’m tired of being shut out. This involves me, too.”
“I don’t want it to,” Isobel said. “Not anymore. I’m sorry. We—we shouldn’t have come. We need to go back.”
“Errrh. Wrong answer. Sorry, but you don’t get to be sorry. And I think we both know it’s waaaay too late to turn back now.”
Open this door, Pinfeathers had once told Isobel, and no matter what, you’ll never close it.
“Isobel.” Gwen snapped her fingers. “Wake up!”
“I am awake.”
“Then start talking.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“Try the truth this time,” Gwen said. “You might feel better. I know I will. But then, this isn’t about me, is it? I mean, I only risked my life. I only hauled my ass across three states to help you find him. I only had my arm cracked on a tombstone. I listened when no one else would. I believed you. I believed in you. For what? For you to ignore me like I was never a part of it? I want you to tell me why Varen isn’t here. Why he didn’t come back. There. That’s a good place to start. One, two, three—go.”
“I—he—” Isobel jerked her head in the direction of a passing mausoleum, her eyes meeting for an instant those of the alabaster angel who watched from within, clutching the hilt of a sword between her hands.
“Yeah, I don’t think that’s summing it up enough for me,” Gwen said. “You’re gonna have to do a little better.”
Isobel squeezed the door handle harder, resisting the urge to pull. Her other hand went to her seat-belt latch, her thumb pausing on the release button.
This all felt wrong. Her surroundings felt wrong. The conversation felt wrong.
She wasn’t dreaming, though. She couldn’t be.
“You found him,” Gwen said. “You talked to him. I know you did.”
Feeling suddenly too warm in her coat, Isobel pressed her forehead to the cold window, wanting out—out of the car, out of this cemetery, out of her own skin.
“Fine,” Gwen snapped. “Let’s skip that one and come back. Moving on to the more immediate question. Whose boot prints were those in the hall?”
Nausea crept over her, causing her head to swim. Saliva rushed into her mouth.
“Stop the car,” Isobel said, but Gwen sped up, taking the twisting turns harder.
On either side of the winding blacktop, endless granite markers and squat tombstones dotted the hilly landscape, crowding all the way to where pavement met with grass. No cemetery could be this big, could it? And that obelisk . . . Hadn’t they passed it already?
“Tell me what happened,” Gwen demanded, her voice trembling with equal parts hurt and fear. “I deserve to know.”
In the distance, Isobel spotted an awning tent. Beneath it, an open pit. A pile of fresh red earth waited to one side and, next to that, rolls of fake green turf meant to make things appear more natural. The scene flew by and dizziness slammed into her, bringing with it the memory of being buried alive in just such a trench, dirt pouring over her in heavy clods, pressing her down, crushing her chest and filling her mouth.
The cemetery around her became a rolling sea of stone and grass. Craggy trees cropped up with more frequency, blurry black skeletons between the markers that seemed to creep ever closer. Or was the lane growing narrower?
Robed statues sprang up everywhere, some with wings, others without, some holding rings of flowers, others clinging to crosses, all of them looking straight at her.
