“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.
This place—this house—it was Bruce’s.
43
The Heart Whose Woes Are Legion
Dropping the pepper spray but keeping the ribbon, Isobel flew past Gwen. Then, swinging around the corner she’d seen Varen turn, she tore down the cramped hallway, a collage of hanging photos blurring by in her periphery.
That must be where Gwen had snagged the portrait, Isobel thought as she skidded to a halt at the end of the hall. Glancing right, she peered into the adjoining corridor.
A grim-faced grandfather clock seemed to watch her from the shadows. Behind its glass door, a tarnished silver pendulum swayed to and fro, its quiet ticking the only sound in an otherwise absolute silence.
The clock’s stationary hour hand pointed to the roman numeral nine, the filigreed minute hand hovering over the six. Below the clock’s face, someone had stuck a yellow sticky note that read AUCTION in bold black marker.
Aside from the clock, there were only doors. Two on either side, all of them open.
Isobel crept down the hall with slow steps, the ancient floorboards creaking underfoot. As she passed each doorway, she peered into the room beyond.
Her first right led to a study full of boxes and stacked furniture. More sticky notes labeled everything with one of three words: GOODWILL, AUCTION, and DUMPSTER.
Next, on the left, came an empty bathroom with dingy tile flooring, its walls peeling floral paper. The following right opened into a cleaned-out closet, its metal rack cleared of everything except for a black garment bag marked with yet another sticky note—this one bearing Varen’s name.
At the top of the partially unzipped bag, Isobel spied a gray suit jacket and a striped tie. She thought they might be the same clothes that Bruce’s son, Grey, had been wearing in the photograph.
Isobel pressed on, and finally, glancing into the last room on the left, she found Varen.
He stood with his back to her, staring down at the stripped and dismantled remains of a four-poster bed, its headboard propped against the wall.
The white raven still emblazoned between the shoulders of Varen’s coat reminded Isobel, painfully, of how far the nightmare was from being over. How Varen’s ties to Lilith still existed.
And though Reynolds had pointed the way, though he’d handed Isobel the ribbon and helped to bring them here, to this moment of all or nothing—how could she tell Varen that everything would be okay when his pain never ended? When the “nothing” part was all he knew?
When in coming home, back to reality, he had found no home to come to.
What good were her words and promises now?
“You knew?” he asked, his voice quiet, disconcertingly calm.