She crossed the threshold and, looking up, saw that where the ceiling should have been lay only open skies. The low-flying clouds skimmed past at a frightening speed, the cavernous spaces in between their folds illuminating with brilliant flashes of violet lightning.
Fighting vertigo, Isobel groped for the stairs. She mounted them, watching her feet climb until she reached the top landing.
When she raised her head again, she saw that just as there had been no ceiling, no walls existed either. Only their blackened and charred remains fringed the parameters of the open room.
Black trees crowded the freestanding platform, their arms outstretched to the passing clouds.
In the middle of the room, wearing a long black coat she had never seen before, stood Varen, his back to her.
Between his shoulder blades, the image of the same upside-down crow from his green mechanics’ jacket blazed in pure white against the ebony fabric. Only, just like everything else, the bird was reversed, now upright with its wings outspread as though in the midst of taking flight.
Clenched in one fist, she saw that he held her pink ribbon, the sash belonging to the dress she had worn to the Grim Facade. When she’d been there with him, on the other side of the purple chamber, unable to free him, Isobel had untied the ribbon from around her waist and given it to him as a token. A symbol of her promise to return for him.
He turned to face her slowly, the wind teasing at his hair, tugging at the hem of his long coat.
Isobel took a step toward him but stopped the moment their eyes met.
His stare, black and soulless, so far from the penetrating emerald gaze she remembered, rendered her immobile.
Lifting his arm out to the side, he let the slip of pink satin dangle from his hand. Then he unclenched his fist, letting go of the ribbon.
It fell, pooling right in the center of a blackened scorch mark that marred the floor.
“Wait!” she called as he began to turn away again.
But it was too late. Her eyes were open and she was back in her bed, awake and alone in her darkened room.
18
Burned
“You want me to go in with you?” Gwen asked.
It was the one and only question she had posed to Isobel between picking her up from practice and arriving at Nobit’s Nook.
Isobel had not told Gwen about the previous night’s dream, but she hadn’t had to invent a reason to go to the bookshop, either. Gwen’s response to Isobel’s request for a ride had been uncharacteristically though blessedly simple. “Okay,” she’d said, “let’s go.”
Now, staring out the passengers’-side window of the Cadillac, Isobel blinked at what she saw and then blinked again, as though doing so would make it disappear.
But the Cougar remained, parked exactly the same way it had been in the dream.
Its ebony finish gleamed in the late-afternoon sunlight, which had begun to break through the thinning screen of clouds. From where they sat parked on the opposite side of the street, Isobel could clearly read the hateful words YOU’RE DEAD FREAK, which Brad had once carved across the driver’s-side door.
She forced herself to look away.
“Isobel?”
“Stay here, please,” she murmured, and grabbed the door handle.
“What about that old guy?” Gwen asked as Isobel climbed out. “What if he tries to yell at you or tells you to get out? At least let me play decoy.”
“He’ll remember you from last time,” Isobel said, glancing back. “Besides, he won’t see me.”
“Yeah, nobody does incognito like a cheerleader,” Gwen scoffed.
Isobel tried for a smile, but it didn’t want to come. “It’ll only take a second,” she said, and shut the door. Rounding the Cadillac, she checked for traffic and was about to cross the street when Gwen rolled down her window and leaned out.
“You have your phone on you, right?”
Isobel nodded. She waited for a car to pass, its tires swishing over the rain-slicked pavement as it rushed by. Then she zipped her parka all the way to her chin, tugged the hood over her head, and hurried across the street.
She paused in front of the store and glanced up.
The sign for Nobit’s Nook hung crooked, dangling from its rusted bracket by a single metal loop. This time, though, the letters were not in reverse.
The tightness in her chest squeezed harder and she struggled to draw her next breath.
For the entire day, she had carried a knot of dread within her. Through each agonizing hour at school, her pulse had beat with an uneven rhythm, her gut churning with sick anticipation of this moment.
Could Varen really have heard her say those things to Mr. Swanson? Was that why she had seen his reflection in her phone during lunch? Could he have been there with her somehow, following and listening in?