Oblivion (21 page)

Debris rained over her, powdering her in yet another layer of grime.

“A bit like playing a game of chess, isn't it?” Scrimshaw asked, materializing on the opposite side of the altar. Leaning his elbow against the marble top, he propped his split chin in one palm. Red claws drummed the right side of his face, the Pinfeathers side. With a blue claw of his free hand, Scrimshaw drew circles in the dust of his demolished demons. “That would make it your turn.”

Chess? Pawn. The words brought a sudden idea to her mind.

Swiveling on her heel, Isobel dashed to a tapestry covering the rear wall. Imagining another door behind it, picturing the first place that came to mind—the only space big enough to host her plan without overlapping the real world—she ripped the drapery free.

She visualized herself in her cheer uniform, the one with
HAWKS
embroidered on the top and the matching blue skirt with yellow pleats. As she shoved through the ornate double doors, her clothing morphed in compliance, her performance sneakers squeaking on the floor as she hurried into the white ballroom of Poe's Red Death masquerade story.

Quickly, though, she skidded to a halt, too arrested by what she saw to engage the next phase of her plan.

Bodies—more skeleton than flesh—lay everywhere. Mounds of them.

Still clothed in their rotting costumes, their decaying faces half-hidden beneath their garish, gore-stained guises, the courtiers and revelers lay strewn across the floor, draped over one another, a corps of corpses.

Limp forms draped the banisters and balconies, arms hanging free.

Shrunken and shriveled, the musicians sat slumped in their chairs. Their mouths hung agape, the ragtag wings of their dragonfly costumes bent and broken. Several of them still held on to their instruments with mummified grips.

The walls and flaking gold-leafed domed ceiling of the formerly grand ballroom matched the state of its inhabitants: decrepit and crumbling.

Isobel's hand rushed to cover her mouth. Fighting the urge to retch, she spun back to see Scrimshaw leaning a shoulder against the frame of the open doorway, his arms folded.

“Don't care much for the redecorating, I see,” he said. “That's too bad, since you're about to join the decor.” Pushing off from the jamb, he started toward her. “So thoughtful of you to have changed into a costume.”

“It's not a costume,” Isobel snapped, scuttling backward. “And if we are playing chess, then it's still my turn.”

Smirking, the Noc paused. “By all means,” he said, with an inviting wave of his hand.

Continuing to put distance between them, Isobel imagined the floor taking on a checkered pattern, like in the lunchroom at Trenton. Like on a chessboard.

The bodies from Poe's story vanished from the ground at her whim as on every square, she pictured herself exactly as she was now.

Everywhere, doubles—
pawns
—began to flicker into being. Ten squads' worth of Cheerleader Isobels.

The Noc's black eye narrowed at her. “What are you doing?” he asked, the confidence in his smile wavering.

Isobel didn't answer. Instead she slid into the crowd of doppelgängers.

“Stop!” the Noc snarled, darting after her, but she'd already commanded each of her selves to switch places.

Taking a square of her own, Isobel now became one of them.

A single face among many.

“Clever, clever,” the Noc called through the hall.

Isobel held steady amid the other versions of herself and, careful to keep her focus forward, she followed Scrimshaw's movements in her periphery.

His boots tapped on the black-and-white tiles as he entered the ranks of her conjured army, his echoing footfalls the only sound in the ballroom-turned-game board.

“Well played,” the Noc said, giving an appreciative nod, though he spoke through clenched teeth. “Well played, indeed. You're smarter than you look. Though still not quite smart enough, I'm afraid. For it's my turn now, and I'm sure I needn't remind you how your cunning has bought you only time.”

He slid out of her sight line then, and Isobel had to fight the impulse to turn her head. Stiffening, she willed her doubles to blink and breathe in tandem with her while she scrambled to come up with her next move. She couldn't deny that Scrimshaw was right. Though the idea to multiply herself and hide among a legion of look-alikes might be enough to preserve her life now, it would not keep the Noc at bay for long. Playing defense would only delay death. Not prevent it. But what attack could she make that he wouldn't simply turn against her, like he had the angels?

She needed Pinfeathers. Had he not yet returned because he couldn't?

“Eeny, meeny, miney, moe . . .”

Isobel flinched at the sound of the Noc's voice. He was close—and getting closer. No more than a single row behind.

“My mistress told me to pick the very
worst
one, and it is—”

She swallowed, and in her ears, the gulp sounded like an explosion. Had the other Isobels made the same noise? She didn't think so. She hadn't commanded them to, she'd been so focused on
him.
On where he might be. And where
was
he? Why had he stopped talking?

Isobel didn't hear footsteps anymore. She didn't hear the creaking of his frame. Or anything at all.

Don't move,
she told herself.
Hold very still, breath normally, and whatever you do, don't—

“You!”

Isobel screamed, jumping as indigo claws burst through the chest of a double standing two spaces down from her.

“Aha!” Scrimshaw shouted, and withdrawing the clawed hand that had impaled the fake Isobel, he rounded to face the real her.

Collapsing in a heap, Isobel's slain pawn became ash at the Noc's feet. Scrimshaw strode through the pile, boots dragging dust as he closed in on her.

Isobel scuttled backward again, ordering the duplicates to switch—to shuffle.

Her imagined army obeyed, moving once, then twice, some shifting places on the diagonal, some from side to side, others forward and back. They bumped the Noc, jostling him as they brushed past him like robots, taking no note of his presence among them.

Sneering, Scrimshaw shoved through the crowd, and though she would not look at him dead-on, Isobel could tell he was straining to keep his vision fixed firmly on her. She could also tell by the way his head twitched from side to side that he'd again lost her, that she'd once more become anonymous in the midst of the copies.

Roaring in anger, Scrimshaw stalked through the assembly and began slashing indiscriminately at the doubles. One after another, they became heaps of ash that showered the floor, spattering the other duplicates and, as Scrimshaw raged nearer, her, too.

Isobel racked her brain, knowing she needed to act.
Now.
As in, ten seconds ago. But how was she supposed to fight something she couldn't catch?

“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” Scrimshaw lilted.

He swiped at another duplicate and then another, claws hacking through Isobel's summoned pawns, reaping them like dry wheat.

Her jaw tightened, and for a brief instant, she feared the manic thumping of her own heart would give her away.

Think.
There had to be
something
she could do to end this. To end him. For good this time.

Briefly, she considered ordering her replicas to attack him all at once, but that wouldn't stop him from dissipating into smoke again. So she thought about sending a decoy running in one direction to create a distraction, but that would only lead him away. If it even worked. She needed him close, like Pinfeathers had said. Luring him to point-blank range would be her only hope of landing a hit.

And she
was
tired of running. So tired of all those things Scrimshaw had mentioned.

Threading himself through a line of doubles, the Noc drifted to within mere feet of her. She stared forward, refusing to look at him, not even as his smile returned and he homed in on her. The real her.

He crept to stand directly in front of her, and Isobel forbade her hands from twitching into fists. She kept her body rigid and her face slate, as unflinching as any statue's.

He was close enough now that she could strike at him outright. But would she have time to rear back, to prepare a punch strong enough to prevent him from shredding her as he had the others? She doubted it. As Scrimshaw tilted his head at her, eyeing her with increasing suspicion, she realized that their battle of wits was about to come to an end. And if she couldn't win a contest of the mind, she knew she had no hope of surviving one of blows.

“Forget something?” he asked her.

Isobel blinked.

He had to be bluffing, trying to get her to give herself away. It had to be a coincidence he'd found his way to her. Any second now, he'd pass her by and go on to interrogate the next figure.
Then
she'd have her chance. She'd spring on him when his back was turned. As soon as his back was turned.

“I asked you,” the Noc repeated, “if you forgot something.”

He lifted a red claw, pointing to the hole in his cheek. In Pinfeather's cheek.

Oh no,
she thought, terror dissolving her insides as his meaning dawned on her.

The scar.
She hadn't thought to give the duplicates the marking.

Isobel wrenched away, but he proved too quick. “Checkmate!” Scrimshaw growled, his arm lashing out, fast as a whip. He caught her by the throat and she choked as he drew her forward, dragging her out from the lineup of doubles.

“Shhhhhh,” the Noc hushed, pressing a red claw to his lips.

Her troops began to erode and flake away, her shining checkered tiles fading to cloudy white again while her imagined cheer uniform transformed back into her ashen street clothes.

Her cover blown, Isobel tried to jerk free, fingernails scraping at the Noc's porcelain hand.

“Oh, he's really fighting me now,” Scrimshaw said. “I can feel him, fluttering about inside as if on fire. Tell me, should I let you two lovebirds bid each other a final farewell?”

Pinfeathers.
He was talking about Pinfeathers.

“No, I think not,” said the Noc through a gritted grin. “Never been a fan of good-byes myself. Especially the kind that have been said once already.”

Isobel opened her mouth, wanting to call out to the other Noc, to beg him to push through. But Scrimshaw clenched her neck tighter, slowly crushing her windpipe.

“You should
hear
him implore me,” the Noc continued. “Pleading like a child. It's
almost
painful to listen to. You really ruined him, you know. And now I have to wonder what it is—pardon, what it
was
about you that did it.” The Noc tilted his head at her while he continued to strangle her, as if he really wanted to know. “What type of poison
are
you, girl?”

Poison?

Because Pinfeathers cared for her, Scrimshaw saw her as poison? As Pinfeathers's downfall? His ruin? But if she had become the biggest weakness of the leader of Varen's Nocs—then, in regard to Scrimshaw, couldn't the same be said for . . . ?

Light-headedness closed in on Isobel, stealing her ability to think. The room began to blur, and the bodies of the courtiers, still draping the balconies above, became fuzzy blobs. Scrimshaw's dual face melted into a jagged smear, and sparks flashed in the corner of her vision. But one fading glance at the creature's open collar, at the delicate, hazy image carved into his chest, and she was reminded of who the girl was. Who she had been to Poe.

Isobel tried to speak. A gasping sound escaped her, but the Noc must have read what she'd tried to say on her lips, because for an instant, his squeezing grip faltered.

“What was that?” he demanded.

She again attempted the one-word utterance—a single name. One she knew he knew. At least as well as Pinfeathers knew
her
name.

Scrimshaw let go of Isobel's neck. He switched hands, snatching her by the shirt collar instead.

Isobel inhaled, gulping for air. Her dizziness lifted, and Scrimshaw's split face snapped into clarity.

“Speak plainly,” he snapped, shaking her. “Tell me what you just said. Say it again, girl.”

“Virginia,” Isobel rasped, pressing fingers to his cold chest, to the engraving of Poe's young cousin and bride.

Scrimshaw's expression collapsed. Pain blended with sorrow, replacing his rage.

“Why?” he snarled, thrusting his halved face in hers. “
Why
would you dare speak that name to me? Why make hers the last you'll ever utter?”

“Because,” Isobel said, her voice hoarse, ragged—almost gone. “She's standing right behind you.”

There hadn't really been anyone there. No one at all.

But Isobel's lie that there
had
been someone—a very specific someone—proved a far better distraction than she had initially dared to hope.

Because when Scrimshaw turned his head to look, suddenly there
was
someone.

Isobel had not imagined the young woman into being. She hadn't been able to think that far ahead. Or that fast. Not with the Noc gripping her throat, squeezing the life from her.

So the phantom standing before them had to have arisen from the depths of the
Noc's
consciousness, triggered by Isobel's suggestion and, perhaps, by the underlying current of Scrimshaw's own repressed longing.

Though Isobel could recall only a few specifics regarding the appearance of Poe's wife—a handful of vague characteristics picked up during her study with Varen, retained from the one or two glimpses she'd had of her portraits—Scrimshaw, it seemed, had forgotten nothing.