Oblivion (23 page)

Even if its embrace could not warm her, the feel of its stiff yet well-worn fabric and the memories it carried still gave her comfort.

She scooped her hair, gritty from all the ash, out from beneath the collar, but paused when again that nagging sensation of being watched tingled along her spine.

Heeding its call, Isobel turned away from the wreckage of the Nocs' commingled forms.

Her heart stammered a beat, confusion rattling her.

There, standing in the center of a single remaining black tile, one of Isobel's cheerleader pawns watched her.

But . . . if the others had gone, if her concentration had fallen away from maintaining their presence, was it possible that one could linger?

As a test, Isobel sent a dismissing thought at the figure. When the doppelgänger remained, though, Isobel knew her own mind couldn't be responsible for its existence. She doubted it was one of Varen's imagined phantoms either, because, squinting at the copy, she saw that it bore a matching scar on its cheek.

That
detail, more than anything, warned Isobel that something more insidious was at work.

She began walking toward the duplicate.

“You,” Isobel said, but stopped when the pawn spoke in perfect unison with her.

Nails of ice pricked her skin, and this time, Isobel took a long moment to formulate the words she would speak next. Because now she had no doubt to whom she was speaking.

“I know it's you,” Isobel said, and again, the double matched her words, its inflection timed exactly with Isobel's to create an eerie echo effect.

“You led me to the courtyard, to Varen, on purpose,” Isobel went on, doing her best to ignore the copy's mimicking speech. “That was you in the hallway at Trenton, too, wasn't it? In that dream you told Reynolds to take me to. You were the one holding the stack of papers. Am I right?”

Going quiet, Isobel waited for a response, but it never came. The double only stared, blinking when she did.

Isobel sneered, a flash of fury igniting inside of her.

“Haven't you learned yet not to mess with me?” she asked, walking forward again, and this time the duplicate did not copy her.

Instead, as Isobel drew closer, it began to deteriorate.

Turning sallow, the entity's skin shriveled, sucking inward, clinging to the underlying framework of bone like cellophane. Its eyes welled black, sinking farther into its head with each of Isobel's approaching steps. But Isobel didn't stop, because the distortion only helped to affirm what she already knew.

“What's the matter,
Bess
?” Isobel hissed. “If I didn't know better, I'd say I was making you sick.”

This had happened before when Isobel had neared Lilith while wearing the hamsa necklace. Nestled under Isobel's shirt now, it bolstered her with the same strength Gwen's presence had given her that morning at the cemetery. The charm's small and steady pressure, coupled with the obvious effect it had on the demon, helped to remind Isobel that a power greater than this monster standing before her
did
exist. It had helped her once, and would again.

“I told you before,” Isobel went on, stopping three feet from the silent demon and its hollow, penetrating stare. “You won't get what you want. No matter
what
you do, how hard you try to get rid of me or to twist Varen's mind, you won't win. I'll find him because I always do. You should know by now that you can't stop me. You haven't yet. And when he wakes up from this nightmare and sees that I
am
real, we're both going to put you back into that filthy stone box you crawled out of. And that's where you're going to stay. Forever.”

Now a ragged corpse, its cheerleading uniform hanging limp from an emaciated frame covered in gray, weblike flesh, the demon smiled at her.

Revealing two rows of sharp and spindly needle-teeth, that grin seemed to dare Isobel to venture a single inch nearer.

But when she stayed put, the demon slowly lifted an arm, extending a skeletal fist toward her. Through those disintegrating fingers, Isobel glimpsed something small clutched in the wraith's grip.

“Death comes for us all eventually,” the double said at last, again using Isobel's own voice. “Sooner for some than others, though nearly always sooner than expected. Especially, as you just witnessed, in regards to those we hold most dear.”

The demon opened its hand, those awful fingers crumpling toward the palm where there rested a small wad of what appeared to be pink construction paper.

Isobel hitched a quick breath when she recognized the crushed origami butterfly as the very same she had made at her family's kitchen table the evening before.

“And to think,” Lilith said with a giggle, her voice going guttural and low, mutating to match her decomposing body, “they actually believed I was you.”

With that, the entity fell apart into ash—just like all the other pawns.

Oh God,
Isobel thought as she snatched for the crushed paper butterfly, rescuing it before it could float to the floor with the rest of the demon's discarded guise.

The paper felt too real in her grasp.

Her mom and dad.

Danny.

“Mom!” Isobel shouted, and as she burst through the front door of her family's home, all around, objects rose into the air.

“Dad!” she called into the solemn emptiness of her house.

Lifted from their hooks, the picture frames lining the wall floated in separate directions. To her right, the empty umbrella stand flipped end over end, drifting lazily by.

She looked behind her, through the open door she'd made in one wall of the white chamber.

The dilapidated ballroom still lay on the other side, making her uncertain whether she'd actually crossed back into reality. If there was a reality left to cross into . . .

Isobel slammed the door shut, blocking out the visual of ash and death. Almost in unison with the deafening
bang
, the floating objects hit the floor with a collective
clomp.

A corresponding
thump
sounded from the living room, and snapping her head in the direction of the archway, Isobel scanned the space for a sign of anyone.

Miscellaneous mundane artifacts littered the floor: the TV remote, her mother's paperbacks, a cardboard drink coaster, one of her little brother's video-game controllers.

But where was Danny? Her mother and father?

Isobel's gaze locked on the mantel clock, its hands spinning around each other in endless freewheeling circles.

Running fingers through her matted locks, Isobel tried to get a handle on herself, on her surroundings. Yes, the clock was spinning, but the layout of her house wasn't reversed. So this
couldn't
be the dreamworld. Not . . . not unless she really
was
too late. Not unless the veil had already eroded and the two worlds had merged.

Then again, how
else
did she think Lilith could have crossed to this side?

Had the attack from Scrimshaw merely been a distraction? A diversion thrown at her for no other reason than to keep her occupied and away from Varen while Lilith used him to finish her plans for destruction?

No. No.
It couldn't be. The butterfly had to have been a lie. Her parents and Danny, wherever they were, they had to be okay.

“Mooooom!” Isobel wailed into the house, her mind spiraling further into chaos as it flipped from one horrible conclusion to another. “Dad! Dan—!”

The sound of the front storm door opening made her whirl around in time to see the inner knob turn.

As the door swung wide, Isobel took a retreating step.

Sunlight flooded the foyer, and with it came Danny, his cheeks red from the cold, his nose rosebud pink. Taking one look at her, he dropped the cell phone he held and rushed her. The phone thudded to the floor, joining the rest of the bric-a-brac, and slamming into her, Danny wrapped his arms tight around her middle.

Automatically, Isobel's own arms wrapped him back.

“Danny, omigod,” she breathed, squeezing him hard, fingers gripping the nylon fabric of his puffy winter jacket.

Relief poured through her like a drug, numbing her from head to foot as a cold breeze wafted in to cool her heated face. “You're okay. I'm so glad you're okay.”

“I hate you,” Danny sobbed into her shirt, and through the thin layer of fabric, Isobel could feel the sudden cascade of warm tears.

This was real, then. Wasn't it? Of course. It had to be. It
had
to be.

Glancing through the open door again, Isobel no longer saw the gruesome interior of the corpse-lined ballroom. Only her quiet street.

She'd been fooled by appearances before, though.

Keeping a tight hold on her little brother—on the boy who she hoped was, in fact, her little brother—Isobel scanned her surroundings, searching for any inconsistencies.

Across the way, squirrels darted in the branches of Mrs. Finley's oak. Familiar cars sat in equally familiar driveways. Empty trash cans waited next to mailboxes. Normality pervaded the street, the neighborhood.

And there, sitting on the front stoop, next to her backpack and winter coat, Isobel spotted the pink paper butterfly she'd made for Danny less than twenty-four hours ago, its wings as crisp as they had been the moment she'd completed the final fold.

So the demon
had
lied. But why?

Because, Isobel thought,
this
was the distraction.

The veil still existed. Lilith
hadn'
t been able to traverse the barrier. Not yet. Isobel still had time. And
that
was what Lilith wanted to eliminate.

She had to go back. Right away. But first—she had to get away.

“I
knew
you were going to leave again,” Danny said, his words muffled against her. “I knew you would. I should have said something. I should have told Mom and Dad.”

“Danny.” Placing her hands on his shoulders, she tried to push him from her, but his arms only constricted. “Where are Mom and Dad?”

“Where do you
think
?” he snapped. “They're looking for you.
Everybody's
looking for you. Including the police. They found that letter you wrote.”

Letter? Oh no,
Isobel thought, realizing Danny meant the Valentine confession that had all but flown out of her pen the day before in Mr. Swanson's class.

After discovering the ash in the hall that morning, she'd forgotten about the loose paper stuffed in her notebook. And she'd dropped her binder and papers in the stairwell when Reynolds showed up. Someone must have discovered her things soon after, intensifying the search for her. Surely Varen's parents had spoken up about her visit to their house by now, too.

Isobel brushed a hand against Danny's overheated face.

“You're here by yourself?” she asked. Once more, her eyes trailed out the door, her gaze falling on the backpack she knew she'd left at school in her locker. How had it gotten here?

“I was supposed to go home with Trevor after school,” Danny said, his words rushing out in one long string, “but I knew no one would be here, so I took the bus home instead. Just in case you came back. Like you did the first time. When you went to that party. But the power's out and I don't know why, and I can only get reception outside. I tried calling you and calling you, but then that stupid friend of yours came by with your stuff.”

“Gwen?” Isobel asked, trying to keep up with the rapid-fire stream of information.

“You left your cell in your coat,” Danny snapped, and pulling away, he shoved her. “Why would you
do
that?”

“Danny, calm down.” She reached toward him again.

“Where did you go?” he demanded, ripping himself from her hands as a fresh wave of tears streamed down his reddened cheeks. “Why are you covered in that white dirt again? What's happening?”

Isobel didn't answer. She couldn't. Never before had she seen her brother this upset. Not even in that hospital waiting room in Baltimore on the day she'd flatlined, when he didn't know she was there, watching in astral form.

Maybe, Isobel thought,
reliving
someone's death was far worse than experiencing the initial death itself. Certainly that had proven true for Varen. For Poe.

“That Gwen girl told me you were in trouble.” Danny shook his head, his bangs falling into tear-filled eyes. “She said not to let you go anywhere if I saw you, but how am I supposed to stop you when I know you won't listen?”

After not hearing from her again, Gwen must have gone into Isobel's locker, snagging Isobel's bag so she'd have an excuse to stop by the house without seeming suspicious. She must have found Danny sitting outside—and her worst fears confirmed. That Isobel had never come home as she'd instructed.

Why
had
Gwen been so insistent about Isobel going home, anyway, if her note to Varen hadn't been found yet?

Isobel also wondered if Gwen had seen or heard about the damage wrought on Eastern Parkway and the strip mall. Had her parents? Probably. But only Gwen would know for sure that the incident was tied directly to her.

Like Danny, her mom and dad and best friend—wherever they were—had to be going insane with worry. And now that Isobel's letter to Varen had surfaced, her parents would know that their suspicions had been right—that she had remembered everything all along.

“That's his jacket, isn't it?” Danny asked, calming at once, his voice going flat. “That guy.”

“Danny, listen—”

“No!” he yelled, jerking away from her. “
You
listen! He's gonna kill you, Izzy! I saw him do it!”

Isobel's jaw dropped.