She brushed her fingers over her lips where the sensation of his breath lingered.
Slowly, Isobel twisted to survey her room, her focus trailing upward to the light she knew she hadn’t left on.
She got to school early that morning.
Once inside, Isobel didn’t bother waiting to watch her mother drive off.
They hadn’t spoken during the ride, and Isobel hadn’t been able to bring herself to ask about the light—to see if one of her parents had come into her room during the night to check on her, turned it on, and then forgot to switch it off again. She decided she preferred to think that it had been her mother’s or father’s doing. Or even Danny making sure she was still there, still breathing, after another nightmare of his own.
Hurrying through the empty central foyer, she passed the velvet ropes sectioning off the school crest and then the trophy cases. She veered left, moving past the main office’s wide windows, wanting to get to the next hall over—to the scene of last night’s dream.
She didn’t know what she hoped that would accomplish, or how being there could clarify or change anything. Varen hadn’t left something in the dream for her to find in reality, as he’d done with the pink ribbon in the bookshop.
Even if he had, did she really need proof the vision had been true?
Dreams aren’t real, she’d told her brother the previous night, delivering the worst of lies moments after she’d resolved not to tell him any more.
Isobel stopped when something in the main office caught her attention: There was a man standing at the front desk. A man she knew.
He leaned against the counter, one hand propped at his hip, curtaining back his duster-style coat to reveal a holster and gun. He drummed the fingers of his other hand on the countertop, waiting, it seemed, for Mrs. Tanager, the secretary, to finish her phone call.
Too late, Isobel realized she shouldn’t have stopped. Catching sight of her, the man did a double take; she could tell he recognized her, too.
Detective Scott, she thought, plucking his name from the recesses of her brain, remembering him as one of the two officers who had knocked on her door the night after the Grim Facade. The night after Varen disappeared.
Isobel’s cheeks flamed as he continued to stare, and snapping her head forward, she started power walking to where the hall split in two directions. She hooked a right at the corner and stayed close to the lockers, her heart galloping in her chest. Her ears perked for the sound of pursuing footsteps while her own feet sped faster, the cogs in her head beginning to whir.
After yesterday’s session, Dr. Robinson must have called the police. There was no other explanation. After what Isobel had said, all that she’d alluded to knowing, she should have expected as much to happen.
There was probably some mandate somewhere that obligated doctors to contact the authorities in certain circumstances—like when a patient divulges information pertaining to a missing person.
Isobel gritted her teeth and wondered if this was what her father’s cell phone call had been about last night. She thought back to the shoulder squeeze he’d given her and wished he was there with her now.
Ducking into the alcove of a darkened classroom doorway, she pulled her phone from her coat pocket. She flipped it open and dialed her father’s cell, then hesitated, her thumb hovering over the send button.
A gnawing dread scraped at her spine. That same sickening sense of being followed.
Lowering the phone, she leaned out, peered down the hall . . . and felt her stomach bottom out.
She didn’t see any adults. Detective Scott had not come after her.
Worse.
Strips of yellow caution tape roped off the opposite end of the hall, halting the group of freshmen who trickled in from the side entrance, their chatter ceasing the moment they took in the ominous scene.
Beyond the tape barrier, ash dusted the floor and lockers.
Isobel folded her fingers around her phone and clamped it shut again.
Because the darkened light fixtures and the trail of boot prints cutting a path through the grime told her that calling for help couldn’t stop what was coming for her now.
And neither could the police.
5
Loss of Breath
“So I guess you heard about Lesley Groveston,” Gwen said, breaking the long silence that had stretched between them since leaving school.
Isobel offered no answer. She continued, instead, to stare out her window at the passing storefronts, their displays filled with kitschy hipster dresses, used guitars, and artfully arranged antiques.
Peace and calmness reigned in the cold and cloudless morning sky. Like there was nothing the matter. Like this world was the only one there was.
