by Kelly Creagh
She wondered, too, why the conclusion to their war had been so strange and abrupt. Scowling, she tried to replay their last words in her mind. To make sense of them . . .
“You said . . . one of us was bound to die,” Isobel murmured. She pressed her ear to his ripped, stained shirt, listening to the frantic rhythm of a heart that was very much intact.
Then she peered over at the shell of a body sprawled in the dust. The Noc’s eyes—vacant, hollow holes—seemed to watch her. But though Isobel waited, the creature’s form still looked like Varen’s, refusing to return to its monstrous state.
“I think one of us just did,” Varen replied.
Isobel forced herself to look away from the Noc. Closing her eyes, she buried her face against Varen.
But even as she breathed in that nearly faded essence of old incense and dried orange peels, burned leaves and worn leather—an aroma now tainted by the coppery tang of blood and the mordant smell of ash—she feared she might awaken any moment to find that none of this had really happened.
Tricks and turns, twists and illusions—these were the elements that defined this world.
Here, time was a lie.
Faces perceived as false proved real and real faces false.
A dream could be as tangible as reality, and things that seemed real as ephemeral as a dream.
As she considered the sheer infiniteness of this realm and its limitless capacity for treachery, Isobel now had to wonder which category she fell into.
Was it possible that Varen and this whole horrible, confusing day were all the workings of her imagination? A toxic balm her mind had produced to soothe itself?
Or could it be that, unbeknownst to herself or Varen, she really was just another product of his imagination? A dream version of herself that, like the Nocs, had grown a cognizance of its own?
A dream within a dream within a dream within a dream . . .
Maybe she really was dead. Had she ever truly reawakened on that cold hospital table in Baltimore?
Insanity, she thought, as she opened her eyes to the relentless rain of ash.
This place, wherever it was—whatever it was—equated to insanity.
Fighting a strange dizziness, Isobel drew back from Varen. Delving into the pockets of his coat, she searched frantically until she found the trinket she sought: her pink butterfly watch.
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Fingers trembling, she flicked open its wings.
Nothing. The hands revealed nothing because they neither spun nor ticked but stood frozen, stalled by the bit of ocean water trapped behind the watch’s cracked glass face.
“Don’t,” Varen said and, closing his hand over hers, snapped the watch shut. “Don’t start doubting now. Or we’re all lost. ”
Isobel looked up at him, and a wave of gratitude washed over her.
Because, even as desolate and fleeting as this moment felt, it was still a blip in time in which they were together. Not only aware but awake. Alive.
This time, she had needed Varen to remind her.
His warm fingers tipped her chin up to him, and he leaned down.
Relaxing her hand, Isobel let go of the ruined watch, allowing it to fall into the bed of ash at their feet.
Varen kissed her then, and Isobel’s hand, now free, went to grip the nape of his neck, holding him there.
“Hey!”
Isobel’s eyelids fluttered at the sound of Gwen’s voice. She turned her head toward its source, breaking the kiss, abashed at how, lost in the aftermath of this madness, she’d almost forgotten Gwen was there.
Through the thinning murk, she saw her friend’s narrow frame hurrying toward them, her frightened face now as smeared and dirty as theirs.
“Glad you two have the wherewithal to swap spit at a time like this, but I’m going to need for one of you tell me if that is something we need to be worried about. ”
Though Gwen pointed, she didn’t need to.
Above, a throng of crows flooded the sky. As they grew in number, the mixture of flapping wings and hoarse caws rose in volume.
“Tell me there’s a way out of here,” Gwen said. “Because something tells me we need to go. Now. ”
Isobel felt Varen step away from her side, but she didn’t turn to follow him.
Instead, she kept her gaze on the heavens, watching the horde of black birds swirl beyond the scraggly branches of the woodland trees. But these crows did not congregate into a vortex as Isobel expected them to. As they had done before . . .
Shrieking, their cries of “Tekeli-li” filling the air, they fled.
Though Isobel didn’t know what it meant, she had heard the Nocs screech the same strange string of syllables before.
They had done so when Isobel stood at the threshold of the reversed BEWARE OF BESS door, with Lilith on the other side. And they had dispersed in a similar flurry as soon as Isobel laid her hand on the tarnished knob.
Isobel had also heard the cry from Scrimshaw, during the memory of Poe’s death. The blue-haired Noc had hissed it before dissolving to smoke. Seconds later the white veils and equally white face had drifted through the open vat of black in the ceiling above Poe’s bed.
“Gwen’s right,” Isobel said, looking from the escaping flocks to Varen. “We need to—”
She stopped when she saw that he’d already made a door.
In his hand, Varen held the knob to an entrance Isobel had never seen before.
Tall, wooden, and nondescript, the portal gave Isobel little clue as to where it led. But when Varen opened the door, revealing a narrow set of descending stairs encased by peeling walls, she told herself it didn’t matter.
For the moment, the only thing that did was getting out. Away.
Varen glanced back at her, waiting, and Isobel snatched Gwen’s hand.
“Tekeli-li!” the birds continued to scream as Isobel pulled her friend toward the opening.
“What is that?” asked Gwen, her hand strangling Isobel’s. “What are they saying?”
“It means ‘Beware the White One,’” answered a voice from behind, its unmistakable tone causing Isobel to halt a foot from Varen and the open portal.
Through the haze, she focused on the familiar figure now striding toward them from the line of trees.
Isobel almost smiled to see Reynolds clad once more in his wide-brimmed hat and black cloak, his two swords drawn point-down at either side. He lacked only his concealing white scarf.
But slung low around his waist like the sash of a military sergeant, Reynolds wore a new garment in its stead.
Isobel’s ribbon.
Despite its muted pink, the tattered and bloodstained satin lent him an added air of authority. But most important, her ribbon’s presence on his person squelched the last of Isobel’s lingering doubts about his allegiance.
For Reynolds must have saved the sash from the ragged waves and kept it safe all this time. Just as he’d saved her. Then, and now again. She knew he wouldn’t have bothered with the sash if she’d been expendable to him—if he’d only saved her to use her later. If he hadn’t cared.
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The ribbon might not answer all of Isobel’s questions regarding Reynolds, but it did answer the most important one of all.
He was on their side.
Her side.
As he had been the entire time.
42
Unbinding
“Izzy, get back!” Dropping Isobel’s hand, Gwen leaped in front of her.
Isobel blinked in shock as Gwen delved into her purse and retrieved a small metal canister.
“One step,” Gwen growled at Reynolds, leveling the container right at him, “gets you an instant face improvement. I got a ten-foot stream on this thing and two million Scoville heat units that will make you wish you were dead . . . er. ”
Isobel squinted at the canister. Was that . . . ?
&nb
sp; “It’s called covering,” Gwen snapped at Isobel from over her shoulder. “Now would you go? Both of you. I’m right behind you. ”
So Gwen hadn’t been joking about the pepper spray.
Isobel smirked, unable to help herself.
Unperturbed, Reynolds carefully sheathed his cutlasses one after the other.
“That’s right, Barbossa, pack ’em up,” barked Gwen as she shifted skittishly from foot to foot. “Now . . . just turn and walk away. Back to whatever sad, subterranean, pipe-organ-playing underworld existence you decided to take a vacation from. ”
“Gwen . . . ” Stepping forward, Isobel placed a hand on her friend’s trembling wrist. “It’s okay. He’s okay. ”
Gwen frowned, eyes flitting from Reynolds to Isobel and back again.
“What do you mean ‘okay’?” she asked. “This is the guy you tackled linebacker style. The same freak who fractured my arm. ”
“He’s a friend,” Isobel said, and though Gwen remained tense, she allowed Isobel to push her pepper-wielding arm down. “I promise. ”
Slipping past Gwen, Isobel approached Reynolds.
His arms folded, his expression as impassive as ever—though perhaps a bit more acerbic than usual—he seemed to be waiting for her to stop and dutifully listen to whatever foreboding message he had come to impart.
Hadn’t he learned anything about her?
Isobel charged forward and plowed into him, flinging her arms around his middle.
Reynolds went rigid in her embrace. Lifting his own arms, he held them up and out of the way, as if she were some sort of parasite that had latched on to him.
But Isobel only squeezed him tighter, not caring if he didn’t like being liked. She breathed in deeply that decaying, cloying essence of dead roses and, despite its pungency, found the sharp scent oddly comforting.
Like Reynolds himself.
“Thank you,” she said.
Reynolds remained silent as a moment of either tolerance or indecision elapsed. Then, grasping Isobel by the shoulders, his sturdy gloved hands pushed her back.
“You may yet curse me when you learn how very much now depends entirely upon you,” he said. “On the both of you. ”
With that, Reynolds released Isobel and stalked to the entryway, where he took the door from Varen.
“Right,” Isobel muttered to herself as she swept a lock of matted hair from her eyes. “What was I thinking? Hugs are so last year. ”
“Go,” Reynolds said, nodding them toward the door frame before glancing behind at the silent forest, now void of all movement and figures. “All of you. ” Thunder rolled in the distance, and Reynolds tilted his head back, glaring into the emptied sky. “She is coming. ”
Varen passed through the doorway first, but he paused two steps down to peer at Isobel.
Ushering Gwen ahead of her, Isobel entered the dark space, the wooden steps creaking and moaning beneath them.
Gwen craned her neck to glare back at Reynolds, who, after taking one last scan of the horizon, ducked in after them and shut the door.
Ahead, Varen reached the bottom of the narrow stairs, trailing white boot prints as he swiftly disappeared around a corner.
Isobel moved to follow him, but Reynolds caught her arm.
“Let him go,” he said. “We must talk. ”
Isobel looked to Gwen, issuing a silent plea. Gwen frowned, eyes oozing suspicion as they flicked to Reynolds.
“Gwen, please,” Isobel said.
Gwen stared unflinchingly at Reynolds for another long beat. Then Isobel felt Gwen’s hand bump her own, passing over the tube of pepper spray. Isobel accepted the cool cylinder as she fought another smile.
Breaking her sharp glare at last, Gwen turned and rattled down the steps after Varen.
As Isobel watched her friend go, she had only a second to wonder what this place was—where Varen had vanished to in such a rush and why. Because when Reynolds spoke again, his words drew her focus entirely back to him.
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“I have lied to you but once, Isobel,” he said.
Isobel waited a beat before speaking.
“You’re talking about today,” she said, her voice a monotone. “In the gym. When you told me Lilith thought I was dead. ”
“Her discovery of my identity, that I was the one Lost Soul who could freely enter your world, made it necessary, in the beginning, for me to agree to her demands. To follow her plan. I could not, after all, have aided you from a tomb. ”
“Hold that thought,” Isobel said, flashing a palm. “More on that in a second. But before we pass Go and collect two hundred here, let’s just back up one space. ” He tilted his head at her, but Isobel hurried on. “So, putting aside the fact that I’m kind of over it now, because I have to be, I am curious how the whole ‘Varen is safe at home’ thing doesn’t qualify in your book as a lie. ”
“That night I carried you through the park,” Reynolds said, referring to Halloween, “I told you the boy was home. I said nothing of his safety. ”
“Oh,” Isobel said, pointing at him. “I see what you did there. Neat trick omitting the truth. That’s not lying at all. ”
“Would you truly rather berate me again than learn how your freedom may be won?”
Isobel’s cool skepticism faltered. Suddenly she understood what Reynolds was trying to convey in his archaic, roundabout manner. This was his way of telling her that there was a way. That the bait he’d used to lure her through the veil, to entice her into trusting him again, hadn’t just been lip service. Poe really must have attempted to break his connection to the dreamworld. To Lilith.
“You said Edgar tried to get away,” she murmured, speaking fast. “You said he tried to break the bond but that he got caught before he cou—”
“And that is why you must now listen very carefully. ” Reynolds unknotted Isobel’s ribbon from his waist. “For far more depends upon what happens next than just your soul or the boy’s. ”
Reynolds extended the graying pink satin to her and she took it gingerly, surprised to find it had somehow retained its original silkiness. Her eyes searched Reynolds’s, and in the shadow cast by the wide brim of his fedora, the lines on his face seemed deeper than before.
“Should you fail to do what Edgar could not,” Reynolds went on, “those who inhabit this world, as well as those from my own realm, will suffer the wrath of the demon whose rage we have, in your name, dared to provoke. ”
Isobel’s eyes widened. “M-my name?”
“That is why I stayed behind,” he said. “To rally them. I knew they would join me only after witnessing for themselves the magnitude of your power. What you are capable of. ”
“Me?” Isobel blurted. “I—you were the one who—”
“You lived, Isobel,” said Reynolds, cutting her off again. “You survived the fire you created when you destroyed the link. Then you died at that hospital and, through sheer self-will, returned to life. Not only that, but you live on. And until you dared to confront me in that churchyard, until I saw you brazenly face death and damnation upon that cliff—all for the sake of another—I had forgotten that a power greater than darkness did, indeed, exist. I had forgotten, as well, what it meant to possess a soul. ”
“Okay,” Isobel said, clenching the ribbon tighter in her fist, “I don’t know what’s freaking me out more. You admitting you might have one emotion more than none at all, or the news flash that I’m supposed to save the world plus your parallel dimension buddies. ”
“You’re afraid,” Reynolds said with a nod. “And that is good. For the worst of her fury, I vow to you, she holds in reserve for you. ”
“See? Right there,” Isobel said. “Just . . . stop saying stuff like that. ”
“When Edgar was captured,” Reynolds said, “when he was pulled back into the woodlands, he’d been in transit on this side, in reality. Traveling between cities. He was trying to
complete the ultimate objective of a quest that he believed would save him. ”
Isobel looked down to the ribbon in her hand, thinking back to what Varen had said about Poe’s final days during their project presentation.
Poe, Isobel remembered, had disappeared after leaving Richmond. He’d been on his way to New York, where he was to meet with Muddy, Virginia’s mother—his aunt. Poe’s plan had been to collect Muddy and bring her to live with him at his new home in Richmond. But he never made it that far. Richmond was the last place that anyone who knew him personally had seen him.
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“The objective of his quest?” Isobel murmured, shaking her head. “I don’t understand. ”
“His ultimate goal was to return to his place of departure,” said Reynolds. “To the city of Richmond. Where he was to wed. ”
Isobel’s head snapped up.
“Oh my God,” she said, remembering at once Poe’s bizarre string of courtships and engagements during the last year of his life. His pursuits, she recalled, had begun with a widow who, though she had initially agreed to marry him, had ultimately called off the engagement.
Poe’s final engagement had been to a woman named Elmira—a childhood sweetheart who lived in Richmond.
“He was trying to turn back midtrip,” Isobel murmured, “to get to Elmira. But why?”
“His plan was to override the bond with another,” Reynolds said. “To create a new soul tie. One strong enough to supersede the dark union he had already made. One of love. It was a gamble. But given the lengths to which Lilith went to retrieve him before the union could occur—”
“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” Isobel asked.
“In essence, I am saying that you have something Edgar did not. ”
“Spit it out. ”
He nodded to the ribbon in her hand. “You possess a bond already. Perhaps you need only declare it. Name it. Or . . . perhaps only he does. ”
“Isobel!”
Her brain spinning and numb, swimming as much with information as with shock, Isobel turned her head to find Gwen standing at the base of the stairs.
“We have a problem,” Gwen said, lifting a framed photograph.
With a stab of panic, Isobel took in the three figures posing in the portrait. She and Gwen had seen the same photo earlier that day. Propped next to an open grave and a flag-draped coffin.
Of course Varen would come here, Isobel thought as she fumbled down the steps, a sick sensation twisting her gut.
