Breathing long and slow, she detected an almost imperceptible trace of Varen’s scent: dried orange peels, crushed leaves, and incense. Along with the aroma came the bitter taste of the dust of this world and, perhaps, of the Nocs, too.
She would have shuddered at that thought if she’d allowed it to linger. She might have even let herself cry.
But Isobel didn’t have the luxury of indulging in either form of release. There was still so much hanging in the balance, so much piled on her shoulders. Even more than before. Because now . . . now she really was alone.
Pinfeathers had believed in her, though. And along with his confession of love, the Noc had suggested that somewhere deep beneath the outer layers of his consciousness, Varen shared the conviction that Isobel would come for him. If that hadn’t been true, Pinfeathers would not have sought her out. Not if there wasn’t still a chance she could turn this all around. He wouldn’t have risked bringing Scrimshaw this close just to warn her about an inevitable and inescapable end. Or even to say good-bye . . .
He wouldn’t have played Lilith’s game that way.
And if Isobel hadn’t still been a threat herself, would Lilith have needed to form such an elaborate weapon against her by recombining the Nocs?
No, Isobel thought, opening her eyes. She wouldn’t.
Pulling herself to her feet, she looped the jacket around her shoulders. She threaded her arms through the sleeves, allowing its familiar weight to settle into place.
Even if its embrace could not warm her, the feel of its stiff yet well-worn fabric and the memories it carried still gave her comfort.
She scooped her hair, gritty from all the ash, out from beneath the collar, but paused when again that nagging sensation of being watched tingled along her spine.
Heeding its call, Isobel turned away from the wreckage of the Nocs’ commingled forms.
Her heart stammered a beat, confusion rattling her.
There, standing in the center of a single remaining black tile, one of Isobel’s cheerleader pawns watched her.
But . . . if the others had gone, if her concentration had fallen away from maintaining their presence, was it possible that one could linger?
As a test, Isobel sent a dismissing thought at the figure. When the doppelgänger remained, though, Isobel knew her own mind couldn’t be responsible for its existence. She doubted it was one of Varen’s imagined phantoms either, because, squinting at the copy, she saw that it bore a matching scar on its cheek.
That detail, more than anything, warned Isobel that something more insidious was at work.
She began walking toward the duplicate.
“You,” Isobel said, but stopped when the pawn spoke in perfect unison with her.
Nails of ice pricked her skin, and this time, Isobel took a long moment to formulate the words she would speak next. Because now she had no doubt to whom she was speaking.
“I know it’s you,” Isobel said, and again, the double matched her words, its inflection timed exactly with Isobel’s to create an eerie echo effect.
“You led me to the courtyard, to Varen, on purpose,” Isobel went on, doing her best to ignore the copy’s mimicking speech. “That was you in the hallway at Trenton, too, wasn’t it? In that dream you told Reynolds to take me to. You were the one holding the stack of papers. Am I right?”
Going quiet, Isobel waited for a response, but it never came. The double only stared, blinking when she did.
Isobel sneered, a flash of fury igniting inside of her.
“Haven’t you learned yet not to mess with me?” she asked, walking forward again, and this time the duplicate did not copy her.
Instead, as Isobel drew closer, it began to deteriorate.
Turning sallow, the entity’s skin shriveled, sucking inward, clinging to the underlying framework of bone like cellophane. Its eyes welled black, sinking farther into its head with each of Isobel’s approaching steps. But Isobel didn’t stop, because the distortion only helped to affirm what she already knew.
“What’s the matter, Bess?” Isobel hissed. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say I was making you sick.”
This had happened before when Isobel had neared Lilith while wearing the hamsa necklace. Nestled under Isobel’s shirt now, it bolstered her with the same strength Gwen’s presence had given her that morning at the cemetery. The charm’s small and steady pressure, coupled with the obvious effect it had on the demon, helped to remind Isobel that a power greater than this monster standing before her did exist. It had helped her once, and would again.
“I told you before,” Isobel went on, stopping three feet from the silent demon and its hollow, penetrating stare. “You won’t get what you want. No matter what you do, how hard you try to get rid of me or to twist Varen’s mind, you won’t win. I’ll find him because I always do. You should know by now that you can’t stop me. You haven’t yet. And when he wakes up from this nightmare and sees that I am real, we’re both going to put you back into that filthy stone box you crawled out of. And that’s where you’re going to stay. Forever.”
