She peered down into a rectangular pit in the center of the altar from which the white wisps of smoke arose. Several feet below, at the bottom of a narrow brick channel, a collection of glass bottles sat around a dish of burning incense cones. A slant of dim, smoke-diluted light shone into the recess through a squat archway at the very bottom.
A fireplace, Isobel thought with a scowl, realizing she was looking down the flue of a truncated chimney. And the assortment of the dried flowers in those familiar colored bottles told her whose.
Climbing onto the altar, Isobel lowered herself feetfirst into the tight space. Her sneakers knocked into the incense dish as she landed, spilling its embers and sending several bottles toppling.
Isobel slumped to squeeze out of the casket-size space and, dropping onto her hands and knees, she crawled after the largest bottle as it barreled out onto the wooden floor with a thunderlike roll.
The bottle clinked as it collided with a pair of polished men’s dress shoes, dumping its sprig of flowers. With a jolt of sudden terror, Isobel looked up.
Dark-gray and neatly creased slacks accompanied the matching jacket of an empty, immobile business suit. Where there should have been a man’s head, there was only the hollow circle of a starched white collar. A red tie laced an invisible throat, while silver links gleamed from stiff, white, hand-free cuffs.
Moving only when she was certain the suit would not, Isobel pushed to her feet.
As she’d suspected, she was in a reversed version of Varen’s bedroom. But the jam-packed interior no longer resembled the open and orderly space as she knew it.
Varen’s posters, books, DVDs, and bed were all gone.
Dusty boxes and cloth-draped furniture cluttered the room instead, while drab and milky light struggled to filter through the shuttered windows. Piled high, stacks of books wrapped in cobwebs obscured the legs of a plush velvet violet armchair that Isobel was sure she’d seen somewhere before. Not here in Varen’s attic bedroom, but . . . where? She couldn’t recall.
On a table nearby was an empty birdcage, its white wires eaten by rust, its door held closed by a red, heart-shaped padlock. Lining the circular bed of the cage, yellowing scraps of sheet music peeked through a mixture of mismatched skeleton keys.
An old-fashioned oil lamp, its glass casing cracked and sooty, sat next to the birdcage.
Isobel went to the table and, touching the base of the lamp, imagined it lit. In response, a tall flame sprang forth from the dried wick, sending a flush of warm amber light dancing up the peeling walls. Along with several flittering moths, the shadows fled to the four corners of the room, the farthest of which held another sheeted form—this one human in shape—its white covering untouched by the dust, as if the secret concealed beneath was the attic’s most recent.
Forgetting the ghostly suit, Isobel hurried to the form, winding her way between towers of boxes, past a covered desk and a toppled chandelier.
She fell to her knees beside the figure, which lay slumped against the wall, its covered head lolled to one side, the sole of a single black boot poking out from beneath the sheet.
Isobel took one edge of the pristine fabric, but before she could tear the cover free, she caught sight of line-crackled fingers tipped by blue claws, long and curved.
The figure beneath the cloth. It wasn’t Varen, as she’d feared, but Scrimshaw.
Poe’s last remaining Noc.
Releasing the cloth, she fumbled to stand, hands leaping to cover her mouth, feet forcing her into a retreat. She stumbled, her heel knocking into something solid—a bowl. Ashes filled the shallow dish, which, for an instant, tottered and rattled before settling again.
Embedded in the soot, like bits of broken shell in sand, jutted a collection of mismatched porcelain shards. On the largest, Isobel saw an etching of a woman, her lash-fringed eyes open, but only just.
Silence pulsed once more, and Isobel held her breath, her attention locked not on the immobile form beneath the sheet, but on that portrait she recognized as Virginia. Poe’s wife.
The shard had once occupied the place just over the heart Scrimshaw did not possess. And the last time Isobel had seen it, it had still been intact, though much of the rest of the Noc had been reduced to fragments.
Pinfeathers had battled and destroyed Scrimshaw in the rose garden while trying to protect Isobel, sustaining enough damage to splinter himself apart as well. But now someone had painstakingly pieced the blue Noc back together.
Isobel’s gaze returned to Scrimshaw’s clawed hand and she wondered why.
For what purpose? And was it possible the shard etched with Virginia’s image was being held in reserve, the final puzzle piece that would restore the reconstructed monster to life?
