’cause I said something I shouldn’t have. Somethin’ about you, Iz.”
Horrified, she recoiled, and Mr. Nott, coming to a jangling halt, stepped into the widening space between them, asking in his deep, authoritative voice the obligatory, “What’s going on here?”
“I spilled my Coke, sir,” Brad announced over the sudden quiet. A few titters ran through the table next to them. If the whole entire cafeteria hadn’t been watching before, they were now. “It was an accident, sir. Pregame jitters.”
Isobel returned her gaze to the table, where Pinfeathers watched her. His expression seemed darker now, his humor gone, and the fathomless black of his eyes now threatened to swallow her. “Don’t look so lost, cheerleader,” he said. “I’ve watched you watching him— us, I mean. I even tried to warn you. But you wouldn’t listen. You waited, and now it’s too late.
For you . . . for us.”
“Isobel, did you hear me?” Mr. Nott asked. “I said, go take your seat.”
Isobel didn’t move. She found her gaze unable to waver from Pinfeathers, from his face as it seemed to struggle and twist between several emotions, finally contorting into a grimace of malice and pain. Why did that make him suddenly so familiar?
“Miss Lanley, are you deaf today? I said, go take your seat.”
In one blinking movement, Pinfeathers lunged at her, jaw unhinging, the black hole in his face widening. Teeth bared, claws outstretched, he unleashed an ungodly sound, something between a woman’s death screech and a demon’s howl.
It happened too fast for her to form her own scream, too fast for her raised arms to do any good. His claws rained down.
Isobel fell back, knocking into the table behind her. A shrieking torrent of jet feathers engulfed the light. His form loosened into violet smoke, and like a demon sucked into hell, he vanished into the floor.
33
Just a Bird
Blood. Where was the blood? Why wasn’t she bleeding? Isobel searched her arms for signs of scarlet, expecting the pain to hit her at any moment. Those claws, they’d raked right through her. She should be shredded. Still halfway curled into herself, she stood trembling, as though waiting for the moment when she would start to fall apart at the seams. That moment never came, though. There was nothing. Maybe she was in shock.
“Miss Lanley, are you ill?”
It was Mr. Nott who asked this. The quiet tone of his voice made her feel suddenly grounded. It only took her a moment to realize that the cafeteria had grown quiet and looking up, she found the whole world staring at her.
Heat flooded her face.
She drew herself sharply upright, gazing into the faces of those who had been eating at the table behind her, the table she’d knocked into. Spilled cups, ruined lunches, and sopping napkins now littered the surface. All eyed her with expressions wavering between indignation and uncertainty. There was a last beat of silence, one final moment of suspended peace.
Then Alyssa’s voice, clear and curt, sliced through the stillness.
“Oh my God, Isobel, you’re such a spaz!”
Laughter. A loud burst of it shattered the eerie silence. Horrible, torturous, unforgiving laughter. How could she be living this nightmare again?
Isobel ran for the doors. Grinning faces blurred in her peripheral vision. She thought she could hear Brad shouting after her, but she ignored him. She hurried past her own table without even a sideways glance at Gwen, pushed through the double doors, and ran the length of the hall.
She pushed into the girls’ restroom, letting the door bang shut behind her. She drew herself up to the middle sink, placing her hands on either side of the basin. She stood there, trying to regulate her breathing, and fought against the urge to puke.
She was cracking up. She was losing her mind right in front of everyone. There was no other excuse for it. What was wrong with her?
She couldn’t be dreaming right now, could she?
Isobel brought her reluctant gaze up to the mirror. Staring into the deep ocean blue of her own eyes, she had never felt so alone.
“I need help,” she whispered. Pallid and haggard, she watched her nostrils flare as she took in a longer breath. She let it out through her mouth and shut her eyes. “I know you’re there, listening somewhere.” She wondered who she was even talking to. Reynolds? Herself? Varen?
“Look,” she said, “I’m sorry I wasn’t listening before, but I’m listening now. Please. I don’t know what’s happening to me. I don’t know what’s real anymore.”
The words were out, and Isobel found her eyes opening, shifting to watch, through the mirror, the space over her shoulder. She waited for something to happen, for him to appear in front of one of the stall doors, cloaked and shrouded as he had done before.
