In place of another of Lilith’s stone idols, a skeleton leered down at her from within the shadows of a heavy hood.
Behind a sculpted pall of its own, the skull grinned at Isobel and, looping an arm around her waist, jerked her snugly against its robed body. Then, as though they’d been caught in a fervid dance, the statue threw her low into a dip and, holding her there, refroze.
Isobel whimpered in the skeleton’s solidified grip, recognizing all too well where she had seen it before.
This was the Red Death. The same nightmare figure that had collapsed the grave over Isobel when she’d fallen there, trying to rescue Brad.
“I seem to recall you mentioning something earlier about . . . putting me in my place?” Lilith said, her glowing figure sliding into Isobel’s periphery, her serene and lovely face half-obscured by the tails of the ribbon still hanging from Isobel’s clenched fist.
At the rumbling sound of stone grating on stone, Isobel twisted in the skeleton’s hold to peer down over her shoulder.
Beneath her, the long slab bearing her epitaph had slid free, unveiling a pit that reached far into the earth.
Tightly packed walls of red dirt formed a deep grave that terminated in an open pine box.
Isobel ceased her struggle in the skeleton statue’s crushing grip, aware that if it were to let go of her now, she would fall into the tomb’s waiting mouth—straight into that coffin.
But as she forced herself to look into the face of the skull, a new thought hit her, ignited by the changing inscription on the tomb. Lilith had once admitted to having many names.
“Bess,” Isobel hissed between haggard breaths, remembering the name the demon had hidden behind when seeking Varen—when dipping into his dreams and luring him deeper and deeper into this world. Her world. “That’s short for Elizabeth, isn’t it?”
Lilith appeared on Isobel’s other side, where she offered a grin—and a glimpse of razor teeth.
“‘I don’t know what to write,’ scribbled the boy, his thoughts winding around and around, always circling back to the cheerleader who had stolen his heart and replaced the lure of his darkest dreams.” As Lilith spoke, her voice dropped, phasing from a woman’s to that of a beast’s. “‘I can’t think. I can’t think. Isobel. Isobel. Isobel. . . .’”
Isobel winced at hearing the final desperate lines Varen had scrawled into his sketchbook.
He had written those words in place of an ending to the story he’d been crafting at Lilith’s bidding—the story meant to bridge the worlds, to allow Lilith into their reality.
Except now it was Varen himself who had taken on that role. And by choice, no less—even if he didn’t see it that way. Even if he didn’t fully realize what it was he was doing.
What—Isobel was beginning to dread—might have been done already . . .
In targeting Varen, Isobel realized with a gut-wrenching pang of failure, Lilith had indeed found the perfect tool to work through. A gifted yet bent spirit. A cracked soul ready to break and spill forth the poison it had absorbed, the darkness it had learned to survive on for so long.
But, in following Reynolds’s orders to enter the veil, in taking the bait that had led her to incite Varen to destruction, hadn’t she allowed the demon to use her own pain and longing against her, too?
So, Isobel supposed, both she and Varen had been guilty of walking into the demon’s well-laid snares. But maybe, she thought, just maybe, the two of them had inadvertently laid one of their own. . . .
“That story,” Isobel said, turning her head to stare into Lilith’s hungry eyes. “It isn’t over. Elizabeth never got her ending, did she? Her fate was never decided.”
“And you think you would like to finish it?” Lilith asked with a laugh, stepping in close. “Brave. Smart, too. But you can’t.” The demon’s smile grew into a wide grin, one of triumph and bloodlust. “You burned that book, silly. Or don’t you remember?”
“Burned or not,” came a voice from behind the demon, “I’m still here.”
Sliding out from between a pair of statues, Varen stepped into view.
“That means the story still exists,” he said, his black glare driving into Lilith. “And this isn’t how it ends.”
46
In a Mad Rushing Descent as of the Soul into Hades
“There you are,” Lilith said, her attention shifting from Isobel to Varen. “I was curious how far you would allow things to progress. How long it would take you to scrape together the remnants of a piteous courage that, until now, had yet to show itself.”
