Nevermore

found him in the tavern.”

Isobel listened, loosely twisting her pen between her fingertips.

“He was on his way home from Richmond, heading to New York, when he went missing for five days. Completely gone,” he said. “He never made it, and some people say that for whatever reason, he tried to turn back. Then, when they found him in Baltimore, he couldn’t say what had happened because he kept going in and out of consciousness. But he wasn’t making any sense anyway.”

“Why?” Isobel asked, her voice going quiet. “What did he say?”

Varen lifted his brows and cast his gaze toward one of the nearby windows, his eyes narrowing in the light. “Nothing that made sense. When they took him to the hospital, he talked to things that weren’t there. Then, the day before he died, he started calling out for somebody. But nobody knew who it was.”

“And then he just died?”

“After a few days in the hospital, yeah, he died.”

“And nobody knows where he’d been or what happened to him? Like, at all?”

“There are a lot of theories,” he said. “That’s why we’re covering it in the project.”

“Like, what are some of the theories?” she asked.

“Well.” Varen’s chair creaked as he leaned back. His eyes went distant again, and for the first time, that iron gate guard of his seemed to lower an inch. “A lot of people stick to the theory that he drank himself to death.”

Isobel’s gaze trailed down to his hands. She’d never seen a boy with hands like that, with long, delicate fingers, beautiful but still masculine. His fingernails were long too, almost crystalline, tapered to points. They were the kind of hands you’d expect to see under lace cuffs, like Mozart or something.

“And it was election day,” he said, “so a lot of people think he was drugged and used as a repeat voter. That’s one of the most popular theories.” He shrugged. “Some people even say it was rabies, just because he liked cats.”

“Yeah, but wouldn’t they have been able to tell if he’d been drinking?”

“The accounts got mixed up,” he said. “And he had enemies. A lot of gossip got spread around.”

“So what do you think happened to him?”

To Isobel’s surprise, he made a face like that question bothered him. His eyebrows furrowed, his gaze darkened, and he frowned. “I don’t know,” he said. “I think a lot of those theories are too convenient. But at the same time, I don’t have any of my own.”

Moments passed. A balding man in a gray suit got up from a nearby table. Gathering his books, he passed them, taking a path through the stacks, leaving them even more alone than they had been before. A palpable silence took his place and seemed to condense the air between them.

Isobel flipped open another one of the books on the table, this one small and as thin as a magazine. She opened her mouth, ready to say something, though she didn’t know what.

Anything to break the silence.

He beat her to it, though, when without warning, he got up from the table, looming tall.

“Go through that one,” he said, indicating with a stiff nod the book she held, “and see if you can find the poem ‘Annabel Lee.’ I’ve got to go check the shelf again.”

Unable to help a small smirk, Isobel raised one hand in a salute. “Aye, aye, O Captain! My Captain!”

He turned. “Right era,” he muttered, “wrong poet,” then vanished between the shelves.

When he was out of sight, Isobel snapped closed the little book of poetry and leaned forward. She shifted away the yellow steno notepad and lifted the corner of his black hardback book. She peeked into the opening and peeled apart the pages, keeping the book open just a crack. She took a quick glance up to the row of shelves he’d slipped between. At no sign of him, she returned her eyes to the book, halfway standing to get a better look.

Its spine made a soft creaking noise as she pulled it open all the way. It went easily, as though the pages spent more time being pinned apart than clamped together.

Purple writing covered every inch of white paper. What was the deal with the purple ink, anyway? But it was the most beautiful handwriting Isobel had ever seen. Each loop and every curl connected cleanly to make the writing itself appear as perfect and uniform as a printed font. It baffled her how someone could sit and take the time to form letters so meticulously.

She checked around her one more time before flipping the page over and there, her suspicions confirmed, she found still more writing. The guy was a regular Shakespeare.

In some places, there were big spaces where he had written around drawings. They were more like loose sketches, actually, the lines never certain but nevertheless making pictures.

They were strange sketches too. People with crazy hair and with whole pieces of their faces missing like they were made of glass. She leafed past another page, this time daring to read a little of what was there.

She stood in the mist, waiting for him again,

always in the same place.

Isobel glanced up, stooping slightly to try and see through the shelves and towers of books for any hint of moving black or silver. No sign of him. He must have gone all the way to the stacks at the far end of the library. Her eyes darted back down to the page, searching for the place where she’d left off. She’d read just a little bit more. It wasn’t like it was a personal journal or anything, right?

He always asked the same question.

“What do you want me to do?”

She never answered. She couldn’t. All she could do was stare, reaching toward him with her gaze alone, pulling him to drown in the sorrow of those depthless black pools.

The black book thwacked shut. Isobel first stared at the silver-ringed fingers that pressed the cover down, then gradually her eyes traveled up the black-clad arm and then farther still until they met reluctantly with a pair of outlined eyes. They narrowed on her in disdain, and the way he looked at her made her feel like any second he was going to use the Force to choke her lifeless.

“I was just—”

“Snooping.” He dropped the book he’d returned with on the table and snatched the black sketchbook journal, shoving it into his satchel.

“I didn’t see anything,” she lied, glancing at the title of the newly unshelved book. The Secrets of Lucid Dreaming, it read. But that, too, was quickly ripped out from under her eyes.

“I gotta go,” he said, shouldering his satchel.

“Wait. What about the project?”

He pointed at her list of titles. “Start reading,” he said. “You have a library card, right?”

Without waiting for an answer, he turned, once again disappearing between the shelves.

5 A Note of Warning

“Hey, Dad, what time is it?”

Isobel wondered if the crew might still be at Double Trouble’s.

“Little after three,” her dad said as the sedan rolled to a stop at an intersection. “Why?”

“Just wondering.” She shrugged.

“You didn’t say anything about my haircut,” he said, lifting a hand from the steering wheel to primp imaginary curls at the back of his head.

Isobel tried to keep from grinning while she surveyed the cut. It was really more like a trim, though, a grooming of his usual style, which Isobel often referred to as shaggy a la hobo.

Isobel had not inherited her dad’s dark brown, nearly black hair, like Danny had, though hers did have the same thin, almost straight texture.

“Oh, yes. Ravishing,” she told him.

He watched her with a goofy grin until she said, “Light’s green.” Then he looked ahead again, both hands on the wheel.

“You’re awfully glum today,” he observed, making a turn west, toward their neighborhood. “Something going