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Looking down as the arm that held her loosened, Isobel caught sight of claws.
“Wait,” she gasped, but the Noc—Pinfeathers—had already released her.
She felt a familiar tug at her midsection and flew forward. Everything blurred into one colorless smear, and with a whoosh and a snap, she rejoined her body. She opened her eyes to find herself lying on the floor in the gym, but still in the gray-white between-space of the veil.
Reynolds stood over her, his image the only clear form against the fuzzy backdrop.
Those dark eyes glared down the curved length of his rusted blade, aimed straight at her.
Through the open rift behind him, a flood of screeching black shapes—crows—rushed out to fill the ceiling.
Like blots of ink dropped into water, they began to unfurl into smoke tendrils.
Then the wisps and coils took on new shapes, pouring into an army of tall silhouettes that drew in close, encircling them both.
Staticky whispers joined into one unintelligible hiss.
“I thought I told you,” Reynolds growled through gritted teeth, “not to engage.”
14
Emergence
Isobel focused on the sharpened blade tip that hovered less than an inch from her nose.
In her periphery, she saw the dark ring of collecting figures close in tighter, their whispers growing louder. She heard one of them hiss her name.
“Leave,” Reynolds snapped, “now.”
She started to speak, but silver sparked as he slashed at her with the blade.
Isobel flinched away. When she opened her eyes again, she saw that the gym had returned to normal: empty, dark, and soundless.
Reynolds was gone. The Nocs, too.
She’d emerged from the veil. Now fully awake, she’d rejoined with both her physical body and with reality.
Her limbs tingled, alive with the electric sensation of pins and needles. Though her arms stung where the crows had clawed and pecked at her, her flesh bore no wounds.
The doors leading outside still hung wide before her. White sunlight streamed through. Winter’s chilling breath blew over her, wafting across the parking lot, stirring a layer of tiny pink petals.
Isobel wrestled to her feet to survey the scene before her.
It had happened again. The dreamworld had met with reality—blended.
Hurrying through the doors, Isobel saw that the small blots of pink she had imagined into being covered the windshields of parked cars, the cracked asphalt, and the sidewalk, too.
She glanced toward the gym again.
She knew Reynolds was still there, fighting in the veil. Or had he fled, leading the Nocs away?
The Nocs.
Pinfeathers . . .
Could he truly be back from the dead? But, then, had he ever really been alive?
Isobel wrapped her arms around herself, over her midsection where that clawed arm had held her. She recalled how, after Varen had written her name in his sketchbook, drawing her into his story and binding her to the link he’d created, she’d been able to see the Nocs in the real world.
