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So why, if the Noc had been restored, could she not see him now? Had he already gone? Vanished back into the dreamworld, leaving Isobel on her own?
She switched from foot to foot, hesitating. Unsure of what to do next.
Reynolds had told her to leave, but . . . where did he expect her to go?
For an instant, she thought about trying to re-enter the veil. Knowing what waited for her on the other side, however, she dared not. Her spirit wouldn’t stand a chance against all those Nocs. And she’d already jeopardized so much. She’d endangered herself and Reynolds—the only source of knowledge she had on how to break the bond between Varen and Lilith.
But she hadn’t been able to help herself. She’d had to show Varen her true nature. Show him that, like before, what he believed was a lie. And now, now she knew for sure that he still cared for her. She’d seen it in his face the moment he’d wrapped his arms around her ghost double. Yet she hadn’t done enough. Not even draining the darkness from his dead world and replacing it with light and life had been able to convince him that she’d returned for him yet again.
There was more to Varen’s darkness, it was clear now, than could be sifted through from within. More than the empty suit and the doll and the lullaby and the pieces of him that she’d found in the dreamworld. More at play in all of this than just her involvement.
You’re going to need more in there than backflips and cute tricks, Pinfeathers had said to her moments before she’d come face-to-face with Lilith for the very first time. Isobel had no doubt that the Noc had been right, like he had been about so much else, and that she would soon find herself confronting the demon once more.
When that happened, she would need Varen by her side. On her side.
Isobel knew that she had never been part of Lilith’s original design. Even before Isobel and Varen had grown close, Lilith had preyed on Varen for a reason. Not just for his ability to create, the demon had once said, but also for his capacity to destroy.
According to Lilith, Isobel had entered Varen’s life as a distraction. But when Varen’s feelings for Isobel had grown stronger, protecting her from the Nocs, Lilith had been forced to switch tactics. So she used Isobel as a catalyst to ignite a dangerous fuse within Varen, and in so doing had awakened his powers, transforming him into a new link.
His darkness didn’t end in the dreamworld, though. Nor did it begin there. There were pieces here, too. In the very reality Varen had so desperately sought to escape.
Varen had been drawn to the woodlands because of the peace they promised. Because unlike his life, the dreamworld was something he could control. And because Lilith had represented all that was missing for him in this existence.
For the heart whose woes are legion
’Tis a peaceful, soothing region—
The bell dismissing lunch rang, interrupting the lines of Poe’s poetry her memory had somehow retained.
Beyond the blue doors, she knew the halls were filling with students.
Isobel took a step backward, and then another, glancing toward the passing traffic on the road nearby.
There was a city bus stop two blocks away. She and her mom passed by the covered bench every day on the way to school.
Dipping a hand into her pocket, she retrieved the lunch money her mother had laid on the counter for her that morning.
It would be more than enough, she thought, to get her to the city’s preservation district.
15
Images
The house loomed over her, blank-faced, ordinary.
This was not how she remembered Varen’s Victorian home.
Instead the image of the reversed, cracked, slanted mansion from the dreamworld, its windows blacked out, forced its way through her memory, making this house seem like the strange one.
Behind her, rows of parked cars lined either side of the serene, sun-filled court. Among them, Isobel saw the champagne Lexus Varen’s stepmom drove, its sparkle-flecked finish gleaming bright. Knowing this meant that Darcy had to be home, Isobel climbed the steps to the porch and lifted a fist to knock. She hesitated, though, and a full minute elapsed before she could admit to herself that she was stalling, waiting for piano music to drift from the parlor, for the amber stained-glass window of the door to bleed violet, for the knob to melt or the concrete beneath her to transform into a pit.
But the house remained silent, the doorknob as solid as the cement under her feet.
Sucking in a breath, Isobel rapped twice.
More seconds ticked by, and the urge to bolt grew strong, as if, by knocking, she had somehow triggered the countdown of a bomb.
Her fear stemmed less from the prospect of facing Darcy than it did from being this near to the house itself. Monsters, in one form or another, had shown up each time she’d entered its walls.
