Nevermore

“I cannot vanquish the Red Death. Not without killing the boy whose soul it imprisons. I can only hold it at bay, and only for so long. Then know that I will do what I must.”

“What? Brad? No! But—but I don’t even know how to get to the woodlands from here!”

“Make a door, Isobel,” he said. “When there is no way, you must make a way.” His hands disappeared beneath the folds of his cloak. There was a scrape of metal, and in the next moment, his gloved hands emerged. In each, he now brandished a short curved blade. A pair of silver cutlasses. They glinted in a pass of strobe lights. Without a further word, he turned from her. His gait measured and assured, he walked a straight line for the figure of the Red Death.

As though alerted through some extra sense, the glow in the phantasm’s eyes brightened like hell-fire, and Death turned to greet him.

Isobel watched on as, for a single moment, the two figures from the dreamworld stood opposite each other, like knights on a chessboard. One robed in black. One in red.

When the tension between them broke into movement, it was like watching a battle for light between moths. Cloaks whispered and curled. A blade flashed. Like jagged leaves stirred by a storm, they swept round each other, neither landing a blow, yet each of them whirling in a perpetual fury of motion.

One of Reynolds’s blades caught the cloak of the Red Death. The crimson-soaked fabric fell partially back, revealing a head and torso that might as well have belonged to a skeleton.

Ribs strained to break the tight yellow skin that clung to the creature’s body like wet cloth. Blood dripped from its sunken eyes, from its shriveled mouth, and from the tips of its outstretched fingers.

The space cleared for them by the crowd once more widened with a collective retreat. The goths lowered their masks to watch, their stark faces appalled, afraid, confused, and then, finally—excited.

Then someone actually cheered.

Typical, was the only thing Isobel could think. Even given the circumstances, she couldn’t help but roll her eyes. The goths—they thought it wasn’t real. They thought it was all a show.

And why not, when this sort of twisted crap was just their thing?

Above, along the gallery, an audience of Nocs crowed and rasped frenziedly in their bird forms. They hopped the length of the banister and followed the fight with their beady, bloodthirsty eyes, as though anxious to join in yet too afraid to swoop down and add their own blows.

A wboosh sound, a great rushing of air, came from the center of the open space. Like a house of cards, the Red Death collapsed in on itself, swallowed whole by the floor. It left in its wake a dark and ominous stain. In the next instant it emerged from behind Reynolds, rearing over him like an all-consuming shadow.

As though by magnetic force, Reynolds’s blades were swept out from his grip. In midair they turned on him, and Reynolds whirled just in time to accept the thrust of both into his chest.

A collective scream arose from the mass of onlookers, Isobel’s shrill cry among theirs.

She broke forward in a run as the Red Death drove Reynolds forcefully back. He plowed hard into the floorboards and slid, unconscious, to a halt at Isobel’s feet.

“Omigod!” she screeched, landing on her knees at his side.

What should she do? Her hands fluttered uselessly over him, like stupefied butterflies. She reached for the blades but then snatched her hands back. Her gaze fell to the white scarf covering his nose and mouth. Was CPR even an option at this point?

His eyes popped open, and she yelped. He glared up at her past the brim of his hat and, with each hand, grabbed both blades by the hilt. He yanked them from his chest in one clean motion. Gray ash poured out from the would-be wounds like sand. Then the openings closed over, and all traces of damage vanished into the blackness of his clothes.

Isobel gaped.

“Why are you still here?” he growled, then launched himself up from the floor. Blades crossed, he charged, then drove them into the Red Death’s back, stopping its approach toward a group of retreating girls dressed as fallen angels. The demon arched and howled—a sound like a hundred baying hounds. In a wrenching motion, Reynolds uncrossed the blades in a clean swipe. They sliced neatly through, and the bloodied figure dispersed with a shriek, transformed into a syrupy red-black liquid that slapped the floor and sent a slash of bright crimson to mar the clean white of Reynolds’s scarf.

There was no moment of reprieve.

The liquid on the floor pooled and writhed. It gathered itself, and like a phantom emerging from its grave, the robed form rose, whole once again. Its ruby eyes flashed rage.

Like everyone else, Isobel stood rooted to the spot, mesmerized by the otherworldly battle taking place before her. At least until one of Reynolds’s blades sailed in her direction. It pierced the floor right next to her foot. She jumped, staggering back.

“Go!” he boomed.

Thinking she shouldn’t wait to see if he’d send the other one after her, she turned and sped pell-mell through the throng of hapless spectators. She shoved and nudged her way past countless empty stares from innumerable masks.

But where was she going?

The answer came when something caught her foot, and she tripped. She met the floor palms-first with a smack.

“Whoops. Need a hand?”

That voice. Isobel twisted around to find him hovering over her, the hollow, jagged portion of his lost arm held out to her. “Oh, wait,” Pinfeathers said, withdrawing the lacking appendage. “Already gave you one of those today, didn’t I?”

Isobel pushed up from the floor, ready to run. He shoved her down again with one foot. She fell with a sharp gasp of pain, and he flipped her to sprawl flat onto her back. A squall of fluttering appeared behind him, and one by one, the other Nocs took their true forms until, like a flock of ravenous vultures, they encircled her.

With one black boot, Pinfeathers trapped her outstretched arm against the floor. With his remaining hand, and to the delight of the other Nocs, he lifted something curved, sharp, and gleaming to rest on his shoulder. Isobel’s eyes widened at the sight of Reynolds’s cutlass, the one he’d thrown at her. Only now did she realize that he must have meant for her to take it, only now did she see how stupid she’d been for leaving it there, open for grabs.

“Well.” Pinfeathers sighed, twisting the blade, letting it catch the light. “You know what they say—eye for an eye and all that.”

The Nocs barked with raucous laughter.

“No!” She twisted at the waist, sending a fierce kick into Pinfeathers’s side. To her surprise, her aim landed true, and under the snug fabric of his jacket, she felt part of his torso cave in with an audible crunch. He roared at her, though more out of fury, it seemed, than from pain.

The other Nocs, their laughter transforming into sympathetic hisses, writhed and withered away from her, cringing and clutching into themselves like snakes.

“Hold her!” Pinfeathers ordered with a stern point of the cutlass. As one, the other Nocs obeyed. Cold clay hands fastened to her free arm, claws dug into her legs as they pinned her.

Isobel wrenched and thrashed beneath their grip, her gaze darting. But there was nothing she could grab, nothing to use as a weapon, no one who could help her.

She held her breath and shut her eyes, braced for the pain. In her mind, she groped through her thoughts and formed the image of a door. She thought of one that would take her to the woodlands. Make a way, Reynolds had said. She pictured the door behind her, right at her back, pressed against her the way the floor was now. With the hand held closest at her side, she felt with her fingertips for the doorknob in her imagination . . . and touched something solid.

She gasped, her eyes springing open.

In a split second, the cutlass came down, whistling as it divided the air in its path. Isobel clenched every muscle, ready to feel the severing of her arm from her body. She gripped the doorknob that it was now too late to turn. The blade rained down, and with a clank, she felt it—break?

Low whispers erupted from the Nocs, the sound of suspicion and fear. They released her and shrank back at