Suddenly the blazing fluorescents burst on; someone must have tried the main lights. One after the other, each fixture burst with a loud pop. Showers of sparks and glass rained down into the renewed darkness.
“—got a gun!” Isobel heard someone shout as people hit the floor all around her, covering their heads. Covering one another.
No, she thought. No no no.
“Isobel?!”
Her head swung toward the panicked cry.
“Isobel!” boomed the voice a second time, and as the emergency lights kicked on, Isobel saw him. Her father.
His head bobbed above the others, his gaze darting through the confusion before homing in on her.
Then her dad started running, dodging through the groups and around the couples as they scrambled past him, all of them hurrying in the opposite direction. Trying to get away.
Close behind him, Isobel spotted Principal Finch’s bald head. Mr. Nott’s glinting glasses and salt-and-pepper hair, too.
Even from a distance and with so many people dashing back and forth between them, Isobel could still mark the change that overtook her father’s expression the moment he laid eyes on Varen.
Rage. Hate. Fury.
Terror.
“Isobel!” her dad shouted again, the sheer panic written across his face causing a landslide to take place inside of her. But even as she ached to stop, to run to her dad and throw herself into his protective arms, she kept her hold on Varen’s hand and allowed him to pull her to the doors.
As she moved, she kept eye contact with her dad, doing her best to project a silent apology. For this. For everything. And whatever happened next.
But then another man rushed between them into the center of the room, blocking Isobel’s view of her father. It was the police officer Isobel had seen that morning, the one who was assigned to Varen’s missing-person case. Detective Scott.
Gun drawn and held low to his side, he halted atop the emblem of Henry the Hawk.
“LMPD,” he shouted at them. “FREEZE!”
CLUNK came the sound of the door’s push bar, and, yanking hard, Varen pulled Isobel and Gwen past him, through to the other side.
Isobel staggered out into the open, but the soles of her shoes did not meet with hard pavement.
Ash, soft and silent, absorbed her steps.
Trees and darkness greeted her instead of cars and streetlamps.
Swinging back toward the school, Isobel saw no door, no gym, no cop. Only the familiar black chasm she’d encountered before when she’d crossed through the veil.
“What just happened?” Gwen panted beside her. “What’s going on? Where are w—?”
Hundreds of coils of violet smoke poured through the black opening, whisking in every direction.
Taking on their bird forms, the Nocs screeched. Caws filling the air, they began to circle around the three of them. Then they morphed yet again, from crows to smoke, before solidifying into ghouls.
“Run,” Varen commanded, as pair after pair of buckle-lined boots landed in the dust, sending up plumes of white.
38
Shrapnel
Clutching Gwen’s hand again, Isobel turned to go, but she found their way barred on every front as more and more Nocs landed in the dust.
Wafting high, the unsettled ash became smog, its haze thick enough to obscure the emerging figures and turn them to silhouettes.
Though Varen had told them to run, short of creating another door, there was nowhere to go. And what door could deliver them from these creatures, whose attachment to Varen enabled them to follow him anywhere?
At least here in the dreamworld, Isobel reasoned, she could see her assailants.
Hissing and whispering, the Nocs inched closer, their bodies clinking and clattering as they jostled one another. But as they bared their claws, drawing tighter, Isobel began to note a difference in their demeanor.
In her past encounters with the Nocs, they had always laughed and jeered among themselves, sharing in some mutual and heinous mirth.
Pinfeathers, in particular, had displayed a penchant for an especially dark brand of humor. His malevolent glee, Isobel recalled, had been interrupted only by intense emotions like fear or rage.
Or love . . .
Of course, Isobel didn’t have to guess which emotions had triggered the shift in these Nocs, not one of which smiled or snickered.
Instead they sneered and glowered, their sharp, broken faces fixed in glares of hatred.
We are hurt, Pinfeathers had said to her in the park. And only now, as the creatures stared past her, through her, to their source—Varen—was she able to fully comprehend what the leader of Varen’s Nocs had meant.
Isobel would not be able to fight these Nocs, let alone defeat them, like she had with Scrimshaw. There were too many to fend off with blows or dreamworld tricks, and despite her track record of landing lucky punches, Isobel knew she was unequipped for this battle.
