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It was a short hall. One that terminated in—a mirror?
Venturing into the center of the passage, she faced her reflection, frowning in confusion. Because she knew she shouldn’t have a reflection. Not as long as she was here in astral form. Not as long as she was dreaming.
With cautious steps, Isobel started toward the image of herself. Taking in the details of her own dust-coated figure, she tilted her cheek slightly to one side to ensure that her reflection shared her scar. It did. She drifted closer before stopping a few feet away.
The image in the mirror matched her movements—her stillness—perfectly.
Until it winked.
Isobel blinked in surprise.
Smiling, her duplicate whirled—and ran.
Isobel darted after the double.
Passing through the curtains ahead, the entity skidded to a halt, opening its arms to keep balance. Following suit, Isobel staggered to a standstill in front of the mirror, unable to fight the sensation that, without meaning to, she’d performed the exact same movement.
Next, she whipped her head around to see her doppelgänger standing under the archway at the opposite end of the corridor. The specter had whipped its head around too, giving the illusion that there was another mirror at the opposite end of the hall. Then the figment grinned again and, sticking its tongue out at Isobel, dashed to the side, disappearing into the adjoining hallway.
Isobel sprinted after, recalling as she did what she’d overheard the two cloaked figures in the cathedral say about her dream-selves—that they always went to the same place. To the same person. Varen.
She sped around the corner, and up ahead, she glimpsed a fleeting whip of blond hair as her double vanished around the next bend.
Isobel rounded the bend too, to find herself in a new corridor, this one empty.
The drapes at the far end hung motionless. She slowed as she approached them, then stopped, carefully drawing back one side of the hangings.
There, at the end of the next hall, her look-alike mirrored her stance, peeking around one drape into the connecting corridor.
Confused, Isobel pulled back. Pressing her spine flush with the wall, she glanced down the passage through which she’d just come.
Nothing. There was no one. And yet . . . one of the curtains swayed.
With bewilderment, Isobel lifted an arm, extending it out into the passage.
And an arm appeared at the far turn.
Isobel withdrew. The phantom limb copied her, vanishing, the drapes rippling. She repeated the test, and keeping her arm extended this time, she stared at the copycat arm, trying to grasp what was happening.
Had she somehow become caught in a looping illusion created by her own mind? Was this dream version of herself toying with her? Could dreams do that? Or was something else at work?
She let her arm sink to her side again—and felt her stomach plummet when the hand sticking out from the far end remained extended.
Twiddling fingers at her, the hand then swept out of sight.
At the sound of a giggle, Isobel pushed away from the wall. Resuming the chase, she dashed around the corner where she’d seen the arm, ending up not in the corridor she’d passed through moments before, but in altered surroundings. New, but utterly familiar.
Trenton’s reversed north hall lay before her, its lockers and linoleum flooring still covered in the ash of last night’s dream.
Facing Isobel, her double stood in the center of the debris. Its smile was gone now, though.
With its eyes closed, the dream held a single finger to its lips, offering the same warning as the doll in the attic.
The clone then turned and went to the stairwell, where Varen’s boot prints trailed off. Isobel hurried to catch up as the specter shoved through the blue, push-bar doors that, in reality, led to the same room where she’d left Reynolds—and her body. Sliding through after the double, though, Isobel found herself in an enormous, mist-filled courtyard.
Ash rained from above, filtering over an assembly of statues.
Like ascending spirits, the winged angels jutted up through the stagnant white fog. Posted atop short pedestals and tall columns, under the domes of carved marble gazebos, standing alone on the ground or in pairs flanking mist-shrouded steps, some tilted their faces heavenward; others bowed their heads, as if in reverie or prayer.
