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She rolled back and forth on her mattress, flipping from one side to the other, unable to make up her mind whether it was better to face her window or to have her back to it.
Neither felt comfortable. Or safe.
Nothing did anymore.
Finally she settled on lying flat on her back and staring up at her ceiling. But then her doorway, which stood open and empty across from the foot of her bed, took on a menacing presence, as though it might fill at any moment with some horrible new nightmare, or the scenery beyond would transform from white walls into woodlands back-lit by violet light.
She already knew it would do no good to shut the door. So she shut her eyes instead.
As she lay there, exhausted and yet firmly wired into wakefulness, Isobel thought she was beginning to understand something Pinfeathers had once told her in the moments before she’d first come face-to-face with Lilith.
Open this door, and no matter what, you’ll never close it.
By degrees, Isobel had grown to fear the night, to fear what the veil of sleep would allow to worm through her slumbering mind, what holes its images could burrow through her heart. And the seeds of doubts it could plant in her soul.
She rolled onto her side again, facing her closet. Huddling into herself, she clutched her blankets tightly. What she’d seen in the dreamworld, with Varen in the attic of the reversed bookshop, couldn’t have been real. It had been a fabrication meant to confuse and detour her. Something Lilith had concocted to distract her and cause her to lose hope so she would give up.
Because if it had been real, Isobel would have found the ribbon that afternoon. It would have been in the bookstore, just like the gramophone and the crooked sign and the black burn mark on the floor and everything else that had been the same. But the ribbon, the only thing that had mattered, hadn’t been there at all. And that alone should have proved to her that what she’d seen had been an illusion. That Varen still had to have the ribbon in his possession. He would never let it go. He would never let her go. She had to believe that. They’d been through so much.
Sitting up, Isobel wrapped her arms around her knees, hugging herself into a tight ball, and lifted her eyes to the smooth surface of her mirror.
If Varen existed within the world beyond the mirror, trapped there without the ability to return, then what or who had his father seen last night?
Had Varen truly stepped out of nowhere, causing his dad to swerve and almost careen into the fountain that sat in the center of their old Victorian neighborhood?
The fountain.
Isobel’s thoughts bounced back to the dream in the rose garden, when Varen had taken her to the very same fountain. She thought about the bookstore, too, realizing that she had now dreamed him in two places that paralleled reality. And like Varen’s father, she’d even seen him once in reality itself.
On Halloween. The day their project on Poe had been due.
Varen had shown up in class, yet supposedly he’d been at Nobit’s Nook at the exact same time.
Isobel frowned, recalling how Varen had refused to shake Isobel’s father’s hand during their presentation. In fact, he hadn’t touched anyone. And when he’d picked up her boom box, the speakers had spiked with static, even though it had no batteries in it. Then, right after class, he’d vanished into thin air.
Just like a ghost.
I don’t believe in ghosts, Varen’s father had said.
And yet, he’d seen one.
Just as she had that day in Mr. Swanson’s class.
With that thought, Isobel tossed back her covers and climbed out of bed.
Her digital clock read 4:40 A.M.
That left her with just under two hours before she was supposed to be up for school.
Isobel scrambled to get dressed in the dark, thinking that it might be just enough time to get there—to the fountain—and back before anyone noticed she was missing.
PEDALING FAST ON DANNY’S MOUNTAIN bike, it took Isobel just over twenty minutes before she arrived at the entrance to the stately and quiet neighborhood.
She had dressed in layers, but the stinging predawn air still managed to singe her lungs each time she drew a breath. The ski cap that she wore, pulled low over her ears, protected her head from the cold, though her cheeks burned from the sharp wind that had pressed against her the whole way, almost like an invisible force trying to hold her back.
Isobel’s heart thrummed as she steered the bike around the last corner and onto St. Francis Court, the street where Varen lived.
Used to live . . .
