Nevermore

“Do you think I would leave him here?”

He stepped toward her, and she had to resist the urge to shrink back. “Isobel, there are countless realities at stake. There are entire existences. You have no idea of the scope. And believe me when I say that whatever in your world does not die from such a merge will surely wish it had. You would sacrifice everything for the sake of one who is already lost? Think of your home. Your family.”

As she weighed his words, doubt crept over her resolve. Was he telling the truth? What reason did he have to lie? Then again, what reason did he have not to? When it came down to it, what did she know about him or any of his reasons except that, as far as she had seen, those reasons had always been his own?

Well, two could play at that game. “Tell me how to find him first. Help me and I’ll do what you want.”

He spoke fast, his words heated. “Do you not see what has become of him? He is no longer part of your world.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“It is true enough,” he said. His coldness cut her like a blade of jagged ice. “And if you do not follow me now, it will be too late for you, and all for whom you care.”

“Are you Poe?” She surprised herself with the question.

“Edgar is dead. He is the fortunate one.”

“Then you knew him,” Isobel said with authority, sure of the truth behind that statement as soon as she spoke it aloud. There had already been too much evidence. Too much proof.

“That’s why you’re here now, isn’t it? This all happened before, didn’t it? To him? To Edgar.”

“The past, too, is dead.”

Isobel stared at him in disbelief. They continued to stand opposite each other, neither of them moving while an invisible force seemed to pulse between them—an intangible sensation like the push of opposing magnets.

“Fine,” she said at last.

He whirled and strode into the passageway on the right again. Clearly he expected her to follow. Isobel did not move.

“I don’t need you,” she called after him. He stopped again. She spun away from him and stooped to gather her shoes. “I don’t need your secrets.” She slipped on the once pink flats, now caked in grit. “I’ll find him myself.” She rose, smoothing back a straggling strand of hair from her eyes, and turned toward the passageway on her left.

“Stop,” he commanded.

She ignored him and kept walking, certain that before her lay new chambers. New nightmares.

“He wouldn’t leave me behind,” she called.

“You are so certain?”

“Yes. Because just like you, he’s not everything he pretends to be,” she said. “And even though you’re saying this now . . . you still didn’t leave Edgar, did you? You helped him get back, didn’t you? So don’t tell me there’s no way!”

“Isobel.” His voice, a whisper, came sharp now. Wounded.

Her stab in the dark had done more than just graze the truth. It had found the very marrow . . . good enough at least to strike a deeper chord in the monotonous dirge that was Reynolds.

She would leave him with that.

She kept her steps steady into the darkness and the dampness. Ahead, through the webwork of shadows, she saw that the passageway turned sharply. Around that corner, she knew she would find herself utterly alone.

“Isobel,” he hissed after her. “If you turn your back on me, you leave me with no choice but to turn my own on you. Continue and we are as good as adversaries.”

“Then at least now I know.”

Determined, she took the turn sharply without so much as a backward glance. Another damp stone corridor stretched before her.

Darkness there, and nothing more.

Her footsteps were her only company now. Even the voices behind the walls had ceased. She did not expect Reynolds to follow. She knew enough about him now to understand that he meant what he said. He had his own agenda. His own ghosts to chase.

Just as there was no way to know what lay ahead, there was no way to know how much time she had left. It was safe to say that midnight was close, though.

But maybe—just maybe, she thought as she rounded the next corner, where ahead she could make out a dim aura of deep purple light—she was closer.

42 A Vow

Isobel came to the place where the next torch stood. Here the dank passageway smelled of kerosene and must. Orange flames cast their glow over a deep purple stained-glass window set into the stone wall, and she knew that beyond it lay the purple chamber of Poe’s story.

There was no hidden door or secret nook leading in as with the green chamber, however. At least none that she could find in the wall or on the floor.

Stepping around the torch, Isobel sidled up to the narrow window and pressed her hands flat against the stone wall beside it. She passed her fingers over the grooves and mortar, feeling for some clue to a way in. She leaned her shoulder to the wall and strained to hear either voice or movement. The heat from the fire, warming her face and arms, threw her shadow onto the wall beside her. She heard nothing at first, but soon she sensed a fluttering from within.

She pulled back, lowering her gaze, and focused hard on the purple glass, as though that would cause the rustle from within to amplify. In one corner of the window, she saw a pinprick of yellow light shining through. It was a hole, a tiny dime-size notch missing from the stained glass.

Isobel crouched, careful not to let her shadow catch in the torchlight or fall across the colored pane. At an angle, she peeked through the opening.

She saw the source of the fluttering at once. At the opposite end of the room, a wide casement window stood open. Large purple curtains snapped and stirred in the breeze. Outside this window, a tangled outline of naked black tree limbs scratched at a churning backdrop of ominous gray-purple clouds. Inside the room itself, centered in a pool of yellow light, she could just make out the corner of a plush purple velvet chair.

And the edge of one black boot.

She shifted, repositioning herself. No matter what angle she tried, though, all she could make out were the curtains, the purple carpet, the yellow light, and the boot.

She thought about calling out, but what if it was just another trick? Another illusion? And if it wasn’t Varen in that chair, then it had to be one of the Nocs . . . or something worse.

Isobel raised a cautious hand. She wiggled a finger into the hole and waited. With the curtains’ next heavy round of flapping, she tugged at the glass. An entire fist-size, diamond-shaped chink broke free from its black-web template, leaving a much larger hole than she’d intended.

She cringed silently and slid back an inch, hoping no one inside had witnessed the chink’s removal. Even at a distance, though, she could now see the room in much greater detail.

Bookshelves stuffed with dust-caked tomes lined the walls, and she was reminded at once of Nobit’s Nook. On a nearby table sat an old-fashioned oil lamp. Dimly lit, it was a partial source of the overlay of yellow light. The other contributor was the bed of fading embers glowing low within the enormous fireplace in front of the purple chair.

Isobel’s gaze returned at once to that chair, to the hand that rested on the velvet-covered armrest. A familiar silver ring glinted on a finger belonging to the even more familiar hand. Her eyes traveled up the green jacket sleeve. His head down, Varen sat staring at the purple carpet in front of him, his black hair drawn around his face. Startled at the sight of him, Isobel dropped the slice of purple glass. It tink ed against the