Nevermore

seven thirty and in time for dinner or else you’ll turn back into an alien and be deported to your home planet.” Danny recited all this with his chubby face cupped in his hands, his elbows propped against the window ledge. He flashed a smile at the end.

Isobel rolled her eyes and turned to shuffle along the roof, careful to keep her footing square and sure against the sloped terrain.

“This may be none of my business,” she heard Danny say from behind, “but can I ask why you’re risking life, liberty, and limb to sneak out?”

“Normally,” Isobel began as she reached the far edge, where she knew her mother’s white wood lattice met with the roof, “that sort of information would be classified.” She drew off her backpack and dropped it to the grass below. Then she turned and lowered herself, extending a leg over the ledge, feeling around for purchase. The tip of her shoe slid into a slot on the lattice. “But since you asked . . .” Gaining a foothold, she began to descend. “I’ve got to go do my homework.”

* * *

The door creaked, and a belt of rusty bells clanged as she entered the old bookstore.

From the outside, Isobel could tell that the building had once been someone’s house, the painted bricks chipping green paint, a crumbling chimney visible on one side of the roof. Inside, the musty air held an antique thickness, and the scent of dust and aging books combined to make breathing a chore.

The front room stretched before her long and narrow, lined with rows of tall, sturdy bookshelves that reached almost to the ceiling. Overhead, the tired light fixtures burned a dull gold, adding little relief to the accumulated shadows.

Isobel inched in. She didn’t see Varen anywhere, but then again she couldn’t see much of anything yet. Carefully she stepped around a mound of ancient-looking tomes gathered near the door. She thought that this place must be in violation of at least ten different fire codes. She moved between two shelves and thought about calling out but for some reason, couldn’t bring herself to break the dead silence.

Isobel’s gaze passed up and over the marked spines of countless books, every item categorized by its own number and date, and it made her feel almost as though she were walking through catacombs.

When she reached the end, she peered around the shelf to see a counter. Well, really, she saw a lot of books piled on top of something that at one time must have been a counter.

Behind it sat an old man with crazy, flyaway white hair sticking out every which way around his head, like he’d caught his breakfast fork in a wall socket that morning.

He scowled at her with one large, piercing gray eye, the other eye pinched shut. In his lap was an enormous leather-bound book, open to a page somewhere in the middle.

“Oh, ah . . . ,” she said, and jabbed her thumb over her shoulder, as though he’d need to know she’d come in through the front door. “I’m just looking for someone.”

He kept staring at her with that one eye, and it made her think of how a bird eyes a worm.

“Uh. You don’t . . . happen to know . . .” She trailed off, transfixed by that eye.

Creepy much? He didn’t even blink.

Isobel took a step back and pointed over her shoulder again. “I’ll just let myself—”

He snorted, loud and abrupt. She jumped, ready to turn tail and scuttle outside to wait for Varen on the street. They could just go to Starbucks and study, because this was too freaky for her. Before she could take so much as a single backward step, though, the man’s pinched eye flew open. He stirred in his seat, blinking rapidly, sniffing.

“Oh, oh,” he grunted. He straightened in his armchair and squinted at her with both eyes, one of which she saw was a dark muddy brown, though it looked almost black in the dim lighting. “Where did you come from, young lady?”

Isobel stared at him, having to break her gaze away to glance back at the front door—to the sunlight and the sidewalk and the sane people walking their dogs.

“Oh, don’t let this get to you,” he said, aiming the tip of one finger at the large gray eye. “It’s glass.” He wheezed out a haggard laugh. “Glad you came along.” His laugh dissolved into a loose cough. “Or I’d have slept the day away,” he added.

“I’m—I’m supposed to meet someone here,” Isobel murmured, and then was sorry she’d opened her mouth. All she really wanted to do was go back outside and stand on the sidewalk.

She’d passed a nice cafe on the way that would maybe work as a compromise, and they could work there instead. She didn’t even see anywhere to sit down in this place.

“Oh, yeah?” He coughed again, though he might have been laughing. She couldn’t be sure. She watched him coil one wrinkled fist against his mouth. His shoulders shook as he wheezed into his hand, his cheeks puffing like a blowfish.

When he stopped coughing, he let out a relieved sigh. “He’s upstairs,” the man grunted, and pointed one knotted finger toward an archway, which led into a back room that Isobel could see was (surprise, surprise) filled with still more books. “All the way to the back and up the stairs. Ignore the sign on the door.”

“Uh, thanks,” she said, but he’d already bent his head and gone back to reading. Or sleeping. It was hard to tell.

Turning, Isobel passed through the archway and into the back part of the store. She found the door he’d told her about against the back wall. Tall and narrow, it looked like the lid of a coffin. Her first thought was that it must be a broom closet, but she didn’t see any other doors around, and this one did have a sign on it. Actually, it had two.

DO NOT ENTER

That was the first one. The second sign, written by hand on a yellowing slip of coarse paper, bore another warning.

BEWARE OF BESS

Who, or what, was Bess? she wondered. More important, which sign was the one she was supposed to ignore? Isobel glanced over her shoulder toward the front room. She didn’t really feel like going back to ask grandpa-coughs-a-lot, and he did say to go upstairs.

Isobel grasped the tarnished brass knob and turned. The door squeaked open, revealing a long, narrow staircase that stretched steeply upward. Square shafts of white sunlight shone down from a window at the top, a million dust motes dancing in and out of the beams.

All right, she thought. If these were the stairs she was supposed to go up, then where was this Bess?

“Hello?”

Her voice sounded quiet and small in her own ears. She didn’t receive an answer, but she thought she could hear the shuffling of papers, so she mounted the stairs, leaving the door open behind her.

There was no banister leading up, so she held her arms out at either side and braced her hands along the dark wood-paneled walls. The stairs groaned and creaked underfoot, as though murmuring secrets about her.

She took one step after another, and as she drew closer to the top, an odd feeling began to creep over her. She felt it in her stomach first, a queasy sensation coupled with the slightest hint of vertigo. It made her skin prickle and the tiny hairs on her arms stand at attention. She drew to a halt on the steps and listened.

Crack!

Isobel yelped. Her knees buckled, and she dropped down to clutch the stairs.

Whipping her head around, she saw that someone had slammed the door shut.

10 Spirits of the Dead

“What are you doing?”

She knew that voice, languid and calm, with that faint hint of irritation. Isobel slowly turned her head until she found herself focusing on a pair of dusty black boots positioned at the top of the stairs, less than a foot from her nose. Tilting her head back, her eyes met with the cool greens of one Varen Nethers, the great-and-jaded.

He stared down at her, a Discman in one hand, spinning a CD, his other hand poised on the buzzing,