Nevermore

48 Invisible Woe

It was Gwen who had called Isobel’s house. When neither she nor Mikey had been able to find her, they’d used Isobel’s cell, which Gwen had found in her gym bag.

At the mention of the fight that had broken out, her dad had phoned the police. Then he and her mom had gotten into the car and started for Henry County. They’d left Danny behind to wait in case Isobel showed up at home. When she did, Danny recounted the drama, and Isobel reluctantly forced herself to dial her father’s cell.

There had been lots of yelling, and in the background, Isobel could hear her mother sobbing with relief.

When she hung up, Isobel felt exhausted to the point of passing out. Still, she managed to fumble through a shower and change her clothes before her parents got back. She put on jeans and long sleeves to hide the bruises and cuts, and stuffed what was left of the pink dress into the bottom drawer of her dresser. Then she folded Varen’s jacket and hid it away within the deepest recesses of her closet, where it would wait until she could return it to him.

The lecture she’d received that night had been long despite how late it was and filled with scathing questions of the rhetorical kind as well as threats both empty and loaded. That she would not be allowed to go to Nationals was among the emptiest. That there would be no car for her birthday, however, would most likely turn out to be true. That she was grounded until further notice was a given. Number one on her father’s list of restrictive punishments, though, was that she was not allowed to speak or communicate in any way ever again with Varen outside of school, or in school if it could be helped.

She was given no room to argue, and this time her mother did not intercede.

Finally she was exiled to her room, and she had only reached the stairs when she was stopped again by her mother’s voice. She told Isobel how Brad had undergone emergency surgery on his knee that night. That he’d had an allergic reaction to the anesthesia, that he’d suffered delirium and had almost gone into a coma.

Isobel thought back to the coffin, the graveyard. The screaming.

“Is—is he okay?” she asked. She turned back, taking in the sight of her mother’s wan face and drawn features.

“Okay considering,” she answered. “He’ll be out of school for a while.”

Isobel nodded once. She started up the stairs again.

“Izzy.”

She stopped.

“His mom called to tell me tonight because . . . because while he . . . she said he called out for you.”

Her hand tightened on the banister. She felt her shoulders go rigid.

“I think you should go see him when he’s up for visitors,” her mom said. “I’ll take you if you want.”

Again, Isobel only nodded. She couldn’t tell her mother that she doubted that Brad would ever want to see her again, and she had to wonder how much he remembered. Would he recall being in the dreamworld at all? Or becoming the Red Death? At the very least, Isobel thought he would not forget what had happened on the football field.

Eager to escape, she hurried up the stairs. In her room at last, she collapsed under the overwhelming weight of her exhaustion. Her body gave her no choice. She slept.

Isobel awoke late the next morning to the sound of knocking. The noise echoed in her head, starting her from sleep, causing her to rocket upward. She felt her chest tighten as her heart leaped into triple speed.

She gasped and scrambled out of bed, gripping her comforter beneath her with clawed hands, surprised when she did not feel the coarse dryness of dirt or the brittle bite of grit. She grew still and listened, her gaze darting.

There were no tombstones. No dead trees or black birds. No phantom figures or looming shadows. Only cold, white daylight. Lurid but still midmorning hazy, the light streamed through her window, bathing her powder pink walls in a translucent glow, giving each object in the room its own thin halo.

Isobel squeezed her eyes shut before letting them flutter open again.

To her relief, her surroundings remained. Her breathing slowed, and she allowed herself to believe that she was really home. Safe.

As she relaxed, the painful aches in her frame seeped into the forefront of her consciousness, bringing with them the memory of last night. It all rushed back to her in a series of flashes.

The game. Brad. The Grim Facade. The dreamworld. Reynolds. Lilith. Varen . . .

The knocking came again, louder this time, more insistent. Her body tensed once more, an automatic response.

The sound was coming from downstairs. That’s when she realized that there must be someone at the door.

Varen.

Isobel was still clothed in the long-sleeved shirt and jeans she had thrown on the night before. She tore out of her room and onto the landing, swinging around the banister, her bare feet thudding on the carpeted stairs.

Midway down, she stopped.

Her dad stood at the base of the stairway, his back to her. He held the front door open, allowing in a gust of cold morning air. Before him, on the porch, right in the space where she had fully expected to find Varen Nethers, there stood two men Isobel had never seen before. Each of them wore a starched white shirt and a dark tie. Both were clad in long, brown overcoats, their faces set with blank, unreadable expressions.

Confused, she watched as the taller, dark-haired man flipped his wallet open for her father to see. There, in the center of the bill fold, she caught the gleam of a silver badge.

Police? What were the police doing here?

She edged farther down the stairway, staying close to the wall, but halted again when the tall man’s gaze shifted suddenly from her father to focus on her instead.

“Detectives Scott and March,” the man said, and flicked his wallet closed. He eyed her as he stuffed the bill fold into an inside pocket of his coat. “Are you Isobel Lanley?”

Her dad swung around, seeming surprised to see her standing there, frozen on the stairs. He glanced between her and the two detectives, his own expression darkening with uncertainty and suspicion. “Can I ask what this is about?”

Isobel felt her knees giving, her legs losing the strength to support her. Dread welled in her chest. She shook her head, willing the scene to stop. She wanted to wake up again and for everything to start over before it could go wrong. But it was too late for that. Something was wrong. Horribly wrong. She sensed it, like an invisible presence in the room.

It was the shorter, red-haired detective who spoke next. “We’re investigating a missing persons report that we believe your daughter may have some information about.”

“Who?” asked her dad, but Isobel already knew who. Like the missing piece of a puzzle, the horrible truth clicked into place.

She suddenly felt dizzy, nauseated. The room seemed to go fuzzy in the corners of her vision.

“You are Isobel, I take it?” asked the red-haired detective. His eyebrows arched as he regarded her, his chin tilted downward, as though he were trying to prompt her, to remind her of her own name.

Stunned, she stared straight through the space between the two men. Like an illusion, the detectives, the foyer, the harsh morning light, and her father all melted away until each of them became no more than a distant pinprick in her awareness. Her mind freewheeled backward through the chaos and hell that had been the night before.

Reynolds. In the graveyard. He had lied to her.

He’d lied.

In that moment, the truth of it seemed so simple to her, so simple and so glaringly obvious. But then how could it be true? How, when he had brought her Varen’s jacket? Varen had given it to him, hadn’t he?

Her jaw fell slack. Of course. If he’d lied to her, then there would have been nothing to stop him from lying to Varen, too. He could have told him anything, and even now, Varen could be trapped there, still waiting.

For her.

Reynolds’s words rushed back to her. He is . . . home now, as well.

She covered her mouth with her hand. She heard those damning words again and again, his voice ringing clear in her mind, like the reverberating drone of a funeral bell.

She sank down onto one step, feeling herself disconnect from reality.

He had called her a friend. He’d saved her, and because of that, she had wanted to believe that he had saved Varen too. And so she had drunk down every word as truth. She had swallowed his poison so easily. How could she have been so stupid? She should have known that he would have said whatever he had to, whatever it would take to get her to destroy the link. To part the worlds.

He had meant it when he’d called her his enemy.

Isobel felt her body hitch as she drew in an involuntary gasp of air. She hadn’t even realized that she’d stopped breathing.

Lilith had been right, she thought with a sudden pang of bitterness. Reynolds had kept the truth to himself the whole time. He had tricked her and sent her in on her own, with false hope, fully expecting her to die.

A barrage of emotions coursed through her all at once. Hurt, anger, betrayal.

Loss.

So this was what his speech on the porch had meant. His last soliloquy before his grand vanishing act. I won’t be found, he’d said.

“Miss Lanley,” the tall detective pressed, “do you know anything about the whereabouts of Varen Nethers?”

Distantly, she registered this question.

Yes, she thought. Yes, I do. He’s in a horrible place where no one can reach him. He’s in a world of ash and black trees and broken people, held hostage to a demoness who will possess him for eternity.

She shook her head slowly. No. No. No. This couldn’t be happening.

“Isobel.” It was her father who tried this time. “I thought Varen brought you home.”

Isobel shook her head. No more words. No more words, please.

“Are you saying he didn’t give you a ride home? Isobel?”

“No,” she whispered.

She wanted everything to stop. She wanted the police to go away. The walls and the foyer, the too-bright morning light and the realization—everything—to just go away.

“His father reported him missing early this morning. He didn’t come home from school yesterday, and apparently he went to a party last night and was seen there with your daughter.

You’re aware, I assume, that there was a bust?”

“I made the call,” said her father.

“Ah, well, that makes sense. Anyway, after everything cleared up, they found the boy’s car, still in the parking lot, but there’s been no sign of him.”

“Isobel?” her dad asked. “Do you know anything about this?”

She said nothing. She didn’t want to talk, she couldn’t. It would do no good. Slowly, methodically, she shook her head no.

“I’m sorry,” she heard her dad say. “We . . . Well, we had a long night. All of us.”

“I understand,” the taller detective said. “In that case, I’ll leave you with my card, and maybe we can try you again another time. If you think of anything in the meantime, though, please don’t hesitate to give us a call. But, you know,” he continued, his tone changing, as though he were aiming these next words at Isobel. “I wouldn’t worry too much. We’re always on cases like these, and ninety percent of the time, the kid shows up. Besides, we get the impression this isn’t the first time. Like your daughter, he probably got spooked by the sirens and just hitched a ride with someone else.”

Isobel heard her father say good-bye to the detectives. Then he shut the door, blocking out the cold air and the stinging light, casting them both into shadow. For a long moment, he stood with his back to her, his hand still on the doorknob, as though he were trying to think of what to say. Or to decide how he felt.

Isobel rose to her feet. She wavered, waiting until her father, at last, turned to face her. Then she did what she thought would be easiest for the both of them. She took one look at him, and turned away.

“Isobel,” he called.

She paused, but only for a moment. Drifting up the stairs like a ghost, she vanished into her room.