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“What? Stop what?”
“Then I met you,” he said, his lips hovering close to hers once again. “And the dreams changed.”
His breath washed warm against her, and it made her want to surrender to him again, to feel his touch, to hold his kiss, at once petal soft and incinerating. She’d never been kissed like that before—like the shell of her soul had evaporated.
He inched closer, but paused. Outside, the music, the screaming, the voices, the sounds of the frenzied crowd—it all stopped. Silence pulsed. He pulled back, turned to look toward the door.
The room grew cold. Isobel drew in a breath. She hugged herself, shivering as she recalled the night at the ice cream shop, the time they’d spent in the freezer. It felt so long ago.
Seconds passed.
Against the walls, the dull yellow light began to move and sway. The motion threw their twin shadows this way and that against the walls and floor, making the room seem suddenly more crowded. Varen looked up, and her own gaze followed. They watched the naked bulb swing on its frayed cord, as though caught by the gust of a nonexistent breeze. Back and forth it swung, like the pendulum of a clock.
The light blinked, flickered. Darkness teased, threatening to strike.
Hoarse whispers rose up from just outside the door, a sound like dry leaves crackling over a fire.
At first they started low. So low that Isobel couldn’t be certain of what the sound was or that she was even hearing it at all. But then the voices became clearer, hissing through the crack at the bottom of the door. Something laughed. A fast shadow moved, darting like an animal.
Isobel gripped his sleeve. “What is it?”
He moved cautiously forward, positioning himself in front of her. “They’ve found us.”
39
Much of Madness
The doorknob rattled.
Isobel watched as the chair holding the door shivered and shook. Something banged into it hard, jarring the door in its frame, and she jumped, letting out a yelp.
All at once the whispers died. The door settled.
A small light, white and crystalline, like the light she had seen in the woodlands, appeared in a wink at the bottom. It traveled along the crack slowly, back and forth, as though probing for a way in. There was a sound on the other side, like the slip of gauze fabric over the wooden exterior of the door, and Isobel found herself fighting the urge to scream. Then the white light blinked out.
Silence. Only the sound of their breathing. And then a new sound. Quiet and distant.
Music.
“Do you hear that?” she whispered, still clinging to him. The tune grew louder. One instrument, one note at a time, it pieced itself together until at last she could place what it was she heard. An orchestra?
“Don’t listen,” he said, his voice brittle. “Pretend it’s not real.”
The music grew steadier, firmer, and it was real—string instruments sighing out a swirling waltz. A crash of cymbals accented a change in melody. The waltz swelled even louder, so unlike the deafening, crunching goth music. It couldn’t be another band, could it? There was no way. She heard no guitars. No tortured vocals.
New voices filtered in from beyond the door, different from the whispers they’d heard a moment before. These voices were more substantial, more alive, the sound of real people laughing and talking and shouting. The voices rose steadily, accompanied now by the delicate clink and tinkle of glassware. More and more voices chimed in, one for every second that passed, until they blended into a unanimous, lively hum. Despite the light laughter, the trilling, swirling tune, Isobel clung tighter to the back of Varen’s jacket. It made no sense. All of it felt . . . wrong.
“Who’s out there?” she asked. “What’s going on?”
“Isobel, listen to me,” he said, turning to her. Her stare broke from the door and she looked into his eyes as he spoke. “Look for a way to the woodlands. When you’re there, find the door. You’ll know it when you see it. Go through it and don’t wait for me. Don’t trust anything you see.”
“What? But . . . I—I don’t understand.”
He shook her. “Promise me!”
“Varen, I—”
Her voice caught in her throat, seized into silence as she watched his eyes dilate, the pinprick of fear at their core expanding, consuming the green of his irises until nothing remained.
