Oblivion (40 page)

“Same thing I tell everybody else. That he shoulda seen the other guy.”

Isobel grinned in spite of herself, but her smile fell at the sound of a slamming car door. She whirled around.

Gwen's gaze followed hers to the tall and lean blond figure now striding toward them through the yard of stones, a small plastic-wrapped bouquet in one hand.

“I don't care what color he dyes it.” Scrounging through her purse again, Gwen drew out what—after a double take—Isobel saw was a sleeve of chocolate cookies. “I mean, you can take the blond out of the goth, but you can't take the goth out of the blond,” Gwen went on, biting down on one of the cookies. “Mark my words, these Dark Knight tendencies will prevail through the years. He'll probably sleep in the closet, too. Upside down, arms crossed. But the good news is that the two of you are going to have some damn beautiful golden-haired babies.”

“Appropriate,” Varen said as he drew to a stop beside Isobel.

“You know what they say,” Gwen said with a shrug, stuffing the rest of the cookie into her mouth. “Two uglies make a pretty.”

Isobel's smile returned. Her eyes lifted to Varen's, and after a beat, he offered her a subdued smile of his own.

He looked so very different this way. The same and yet . . . not. It would be a long while before Isobel got used to seeing him with his hair shortened to half its previous length, dyed its natural color—only a shade lighter than her own—and styled with a shorter swoop that didn't obscure his gaze. But she thought his eyes, green and bright, looked somehow warmer now than when his hair had been black.

“Should you really be driving this soon?” Gwen asked. She aimed a thumb at the Cougar, which Varen had left parked to one side of the winding road, beneath the drooping branches of a naked willow tree. “I mean, I get that there wasn't any bone or muscle damage, but I thought the doc told you the sling was supposed to stay on for at least two weeks. I just sustained a fracture, and I had to wear mine fo—”

Varen's eyes slid toward Gwen.

“Right,” she said, holding up a palm. “Outlaw don't need no sling. I smell what you're steppin' in.”

Turning back to Isobel, Varen brushed a thumb across her cheek, over her scar, his touch causing her eyelids to flutter.

“I still attest it's a good look,” he said.

Oh crap.
He meant the mascara.

Flushing, Isobel bowed her head and fiddled with the tissue wad, sending a rain of graham cracker crumbs onto the dirt mound.

Having known how hard this would be for Varen—his first visit to Bruce's grave and, consequently, the last time she and he would be together before the next school year—Isobel had wanted so badly to be strong. She'd been relying on the old cheerleader trick of fake-it-till-you-make-it, but tears or not, she should have known better than to think Varen wouldn't see through her facade. Weren't they done with masks, anyway?

Isobel heard the clink of his wallet chains as he shifted to stand in front of her, his ash-free combat boots sliding into view. Tucking his fingers under her chin, Varen lifted her face to his. With his other hand, he took the tissues from her and dabbed gently beneath her eyes.

“Good look,” he said, “but . . . not you.”

“No, no,” Gwen said after a beat, and stuffing the cookie sleeve under one arm, she snatched the tissues from Varen and inserted herself between them. “Not like that. Look. You gotta lick it first.”

“Gwen!” Isobel squealed, yanking her head to one side and batting away the now saliva-swathed tissues. “Gross!”

“Yet effective,” Gwen said. “Potent as paint thinner.”

“You were dropped as a child, weren't you?” Varen asked her.

“Maybe once or twice,” Gwen said, “but at least I wasn't raised by highly literate vampires who, every night just before bed, fed me a steady diet of dark sarcasm and gothic horror fiction.”

“Every
morning
before bed,” Varen corrected. Stepping forward, he moved toward the headstone. “We slept during the day.”

“Right,” Gwen joked, but even Isobel heard the hitch in her friend's voice.

Varen crouched in front of the stone, resting one hand on top of it as quiet settled among the three of them. Birds twittered in the trees, and somewhere far away, cars swooshed by.

Isobel watched Varen as she tried again to suppress the surge of sorrow that flooded her system. But waves of emotion washed through her at the sight of that upside-down crow spread over his back, safety-pinned to the hunter green mechanic's jacket that, for a time, had been hers.

After placing the bouquet at the base of the marker—three red roses for the three buried family members—Varen stayed low, staring down at the place where polished granite met dirt.

“It's beautiful, you know,” Isobel said at last, when he didn't rise. “The epitaph. Bruce, he . . . he would have liked it.”

Varen nodded, though he still did not rise or look back. Just hung his head.

More quiet. More birds.
Swoooosh. Swooooosh.

“O Captain, my Captain,” Gwen said, brightening suddenly and snapping her fingers. “I know that from somewhere. Wait—don't tell me. I got this. Eeehhh—Walt Disney.”

Slowly, very slowly, Varen rose. He turned his head with equal deliberateness to send a penetrating stare over his shoulder at Gwen. Minus the shreds of inky locks that had caged his face before, the look was the same one Varen had given Isobel on many occasions. Most notably when they'd met in the library that first time to study for their project. And again in the attic of Bruce's bookshop.

“Whitman,” Varen said. “Walt
Whitman
.”

“Oh yeah,” Gwen said, plastic rustling as she dug for another cookie. “The guy from
Breaking Bad
. I knew that. Anybody want a Thin Mint?”

Varen shut his eyes.

He remained that way for what must have been an entire minute.

Then, without warning, tears escaped his lowered lids, rushing fast down his cheeks and over his own scar—that still-healing patch of torn skin dealt to him by the Nocs.

“Aaaand . . . looks like my work here is done,” Gwen said. “Think I'll go try to chat up the Warden while you two . . . catch up. See if I can get m'self off the naughty list, since he's in a pardoning mood.”

Gwen didn't wait for permission but quickly walked away, hurrying toward where Isobel's father stood beside the sedan.

Without looking, Isobel knew her dad had to be pacing, arms folded, scowl firmly in place. Blood pressure high, forehead vein well pronounced.

She didn't care. The deal was this. And this . . . this was important.

“I'm sorry,” Varen said, at last reopening his eyes.

“Me too.” Sidling next to him, she took the hand of his good arm and squeezed. “Does your shoulder still hurt bad?”

“Everything hurts bad.”

Angling toward him, Isobel slid her arms under his jacket and around his middle. Laying her head against his chest, she listened to the steady thud of his heart.

“Your hair,” she said. “I've decided that . . . I really like it.”

“Your shrink friend's suggestion.”

“Dr. Robinson?” Isobel asked.

“When I told her how Bruce and I first met, she thought it would be a good way to pay homage since . . . since I didn't get to say good-bye. To mark his passing. And to . . . distance myself from . . . me.”

Curious, Isobel leaned back and peered up at him.

“How
did
you and Bruce first meet?”

A thinner version of Varen's smile returned. “Before freshman year, I used to sneak into Nobit's Nook all the time. Sometimes I could hide between the shelves, but whenever he caught me reading, he'd always kick me out. I used to think it was because of the way I dressed, but . . .”

“But . . . ?” Isobel prompted.

Varen shook his head. “He never said why, until one day I challenged him on it. He got mad and started yelling. Something about having enough ghosts to deal with already.”

Understanding dawned on Isobel, giving her already well-wrung heart another small twist. “He kicked you out because you reminded him too much of Grey.”

When Varen didn't reply, Isobel knew to take his silence as confirmation.

“What . . . happened to Grey?” she asked after a beat.

“He never told me and I never asked,” Varen said, his expression darkening. “I didn't go looking for information, either, because . . . well, he wasn't asking
me
questions. I guess we both just sort of preferred it that way. It was like we had our own unspoken agreement. But at the start of last year, before I found out about his diagnosis, he asked me to start organizing the bookshop, and weeding through some stuff, I found pictures.”

“You do look a little like him,” Isobel said, shifting her eyes to the tombstone planted at the left of Bruce's—Grey's grave. “Now especially.”

“Intentional,” he said. “Given that the things he left me were . . . all Grey's.”

“The car,” Isobel said.

“The car.”

“And . . . the suit?”

“You saw that?” Varen asked, but he didn't wait for her to answer. “Graduation. In his will, he stated it was his wish for me to wear it under my robes when I walked. Because . . . Grey never got to.”

“Theeeen,” Isobel said, drawing out the syllable, “that just means you'll have to walk.”

He actually laughed, one short half chuckle that he tried to hide by brushing at his face with the back of his sleeve. “Yeah, if your dad doesn't call out a hit on me in the meantime.”

Isobel glanced reluctantly in the direction of the sedan, where Gwen stood next to her dad, both of them leaning against the car. Arms folded and frame tense, Isobel's dad watched her and Varen with his circulating-buzzard face on, ignoring Gwen's repeated elbow nudges and cookie offerings.

“Don't worry about him,” Isobel said, raising a hand to touch Varen's hair, which still felt silken between her fingers. “I have a feeling that as long as I play by his rules this time around, he might mellow out sooner rather than later.”

“On that note,” Varen said as he caught her hand and lowered it between them, turning it palm up, “since those rules happen to include that you're suspended from seeing me until I go back to school, and since Robinson wants me to wait until the fall to return, I figured I'd better ask you now.”

“Ask me?”

“To prom,” he said, and he placed something small and hard in the center of her hand. His silver class ring.

Isobel's eyes widened, but her fingers closed around the token, and she fluttered her gaze up to his. “Junior prom . . . or senior?”

“I'll go with you to both,” he replied, “if your dad will make an exception. But you certainly picked a strange place to ask me.”

He'd said it so seriously that she had to smile. “So . . . I guess this means we're official.”

“I'm pretty sure Gwen is Instagramming this as we speak.”

Isobel glanced over to Gwen and her father again. True to Varen's report, Gwen had moved away from the sedan and was now holding up her cell. To Isobel's surprise, she saw her father looming over her friend's shoulder, squinting at the smartphone screen—probably because it magnified her and Varen. What they were doing . . .

Blushing and wondering what the hashtag on
that
one would be, Isobel peered up at Varen again.

“Want to give them something to talk about?” he asked, pressing a warm palm to her cheek.

“Always,” she said.

With that, Varen leaned down, and in that way of his that always caused everything else to blur away, he kissed her.

Tick tick tick tick tick tick—

Isobel bolted upright, her body flinging itself into motion before her brain could so much as register the source of its fear, or command her eyes to open.

Gasping, scrambling to free herself from her heavy comforter, she skittered back and slammed spine-first into her cubbyhole headboard, causing its contents to rattle. Frantic, she swiped at her arms and legs, brushing and slapping.

Her thrashing subsided as, slowly, she realized she was at home. In bed. Alone.

Isobel froze. Holding her breath, she listened hard, eyes darting across the tranquil blue darkness of her room.

Her open curtains hung stationary. Beyond her window, bits of snow gathered on the sill. And in the distance, she could just see the topmost limbs of Mrs. Finley's oak.

There were no deathwatches clambering up her body, no ink-faced monsters or fragmented ghouls gathered in shadowy corners or lurking in her open closet. No grim palace halls visible through the frame of her uncovered dresser mirror . . .

The ticking sound continued, though, the soft noise audible even over the hammering of her heart, the rushing of her blood.

Tick tick tick tick tick tick . . .

Resonating louder in one ear than the other, the sound drew Isobel's attention to her left, down to the open brass pocket watch that sat on the splayed, gold-rimmed pages of a familiar book.

Isobel didn't need to read the tome's cover to know its title. And she didn't need to see the name
AUGUSTUS
inscribed on the inside of the watch's little hinged door to know who the timepiece belonged to either.

But . . . if Reynolds was gone, how had the watch gotten here?

Tick tick tick tick tick tick tick . . .

Scooting to sit on the edge of her bed, Isobel plucked up the watch by its long chain. She brought it close and, catching it with her other hand, held it steady, following the movement of its spindly black second hand as it ticked along one space at a time, past the stationary hour and minute hands that pointed to midnight.