“I . . . have to admit,” Gwen said, her words turning solemn, “it made me think for sure that you would come back. With him. That you had to.”
“Yeah,” Isobel murmured, watching the two boys stamp out their half-smoked cigarettes. “That was the plan.”
“Your dream last night. About Varen . . . all that stuff in the hall. Do you think . . . I mean . . . is there any way that he could be—”
“I think that you were right,” Isobel said, and felt the flush leave her cheeks.
“A favorite pastime of mine but . . . about what specifically?”
Isobel’s hand went to the hamsa charm at her neck, her fingers running it back forth on its chain as she recalled how, on the same morning Gwen had given her the amulet, she had also related to Isobel all the known lore surrounding Lilith. That demons operated by luring their victims with false promises, but that Lilith’s treachery and deceit could only accomplish so much on its own. In the end, Gwen had said, a demon’s victim—at least to some extent—had to be willing.
“I think,” Isobel murmured, “Varen is where—and what—he wants to be.”
An uncomfortable tenseness spiked the air. Quiet buzzed.
Isobel couldn’t meet Gwen’s gaze, so she glanced to the door again and saw the two boys slide inside, one of them giving her and Gwen a fleeting backward glance.
Seconds later the cry of the bell came, muffled through the school’s redbrick walls.
Isobel gathered her things into her lap and peeled her winter coat from her shoulders, planning to leave it in Gwen’s car, since, as she’d feared might be the case, they no longer had time to stop by their lockers.
“We should go,” Isobel said, and pulling up the lock tab, she climbed out.
Wordlessly Gwen shed her own coat, tucked a notebook under her arm, and exited her side. Huddling against the cold, they hurried to the doors.
Inside, the warm stairwell had already cleared of students. A faint odor of mildew hung in the air, commingling with the quiet to give the enclosed space, Isobel thought, a tomblike feel.
“So,” Gwen said, “what happens now?”
Isobel shrugged. “Maybe nothing.”
“Except you don’t really believe that.”
Isobel could hear Gwen’s keys clinking in her fidgeting hands. “No,” she admitted, “I don’t.”
Gwen started to speak again, but for both of their sakes, Isobel interjected.
“If we get caught cutting together—”
“—your dad will have me extradited to Canada,” Gwen finished for her. “I know.”
“And that’s if he’s in a good mood,” Isobel said, and she forced a small smile, figuring she owed Gwen that much at least.
“Lunch in an hour?” Gwen asked, tucking her keys in her purse, clearly trying to reestablish some sense of normalcy. Nodding slowly, Isobel took a retreating step, hoping now that she’d done what she could to stitch her wounds closed—to move on—normal was within their grasp.
Gwen mirrored her movement, backing in the direction of the hall.
Then they pivoted to go their separate ways, and Isobel started up the stairs. Alone now, she let her smile fall away as she swung herself up one flight to the next, feet slamming hard and fast, heading to the last place she wanted to go. Mr. Swanson’s class.
Despite her conviction to release Varen, to release herself, the pounding beat of her sneakers could not drown out the lines of the note she’d surrendered at the cemetery. Lines that, after an infinite number of readings, she would never be able to expunge from her memory.
In the shadows of the dreamland, he waits. He watches the gaping window to the world he had so longed to open. Now flown wide, bleak and empty, ravaged—like him—it grants his wish. He belongs.
It cannot compare to the memory of her eyes. Blue azure, warm as a summer sky.
If he could but fall into their world.
Would that he had.
Now he writes the end to the story that past its Midnight Dreary—that too late an hour—has its own without him. It was always, he knows now, meant to end this way.
Like that circle that “ever returneth into the selfsame spot.”
My beautiful, my Isobel, My Love. You Ask me to wait. And so I wait.
Isobel imagined Varen speaking the words to her in her head, his voice low and even. But as she rounded the final stretch of steps to the third floor, his tone grew icy in her inner ear, mocking, and then—with the final line—threatening.
For all of this, I know, is but a dream.
