AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He sat with his back pressed to the fountain’s base, just below one of the unfurling swans. To his right, one of the bronze cherubs seemed to lean toward him with cautious interest.
The buckles of the Noc’s tight straitjacket-style coat were open, exposing a portion of his alabaster chest. Right where his heart should have been, Isobel saw an open crater the size of a softball.
Next to him sat a pile of what at first glance looked like a collection of small rocks. That was when she realized they weren’t rocks at all but shards, broken bits of Noc.
Isobel did her best to keep her face free of expression as he lifted one of the shards between the crimson claws of his finger and thumb. He held the shard up to the floodlights and studied it like a jeweler would a diamond. Then he brought the shard to his chest, carefully fitting the sliver into the gaping black cavity. She heard the piece attach with a quiet tink.
“Our jacket,” Pinfeathers said, selecting yet another shard without glancing up from his task. “The one you found on your closet door. Have you guessed yet that wasn’t me?”
22
Secret Deeds
Though it was a gruesome thing to witness Pinfeathers piecing together the gaping black hole in his chest, Isobel couldn’t seem to bring herself to look away. She also couldn’t help but wonder how he’d acquired the damage, but she knew better than to ask.
“Why are you following me?” she demanded, doubting the Noc would give her a straight answer. “Is she sending you to spy on me?”
“On the contrary, cheerleader,” he said. “I’ve been here all along. Waiting for you.” He smiled his jagged grin. “Of course.”
“How—”
“—did I know you would come?” he asked, finishing the question for her. “Because.” He glanced up for the first time, his soot-black eyes locking with hers. “You said you would.”
She shook her head, a slight motion. “I never—”
“You did,” he corrected, interrupting her a second time. “Even if you haven’t been listening, cheerleader, we have. Speaking of . . .” He cocked his head to one side and blinked. “Didn’t you hear what I just said?”
Isobel’s jaw tightened. She pinched her lips together, not allowing herself to speak until she could trust herself not to say something that might provoke him. She liked him right where he was: at a distance, sitting and with hands occupied.
She had heard what he’d said about Varen’s jacket, though.
“If it wasn’t you,” she asked, deciding to humor him, “then who?”
“Us,” Pinfeathers replied, his gaze dropping as he fixed another chalk-white piece into the shrinking crater in his chest, his work nearly complete. “But not me.”
Isobel’s mouth twisted with unease and frustration. When it came to dealing with Pinfeathers, she’d learned that whenever possible, no reaction was the best reaction.
“You’re saying it was Varen then. How?” she demanded. “If he can come into this world like you, then why isn’t he here right now?”
Pinfeathers remained silent, rooting through the remaining shards with one claw.
Isobel stomped up to the fence. “Answer me!” she cried, and gripped the railing.
“The masked man,” Pinfeathers said, ignoring her questions. “The hidden one you’ll soon leave in search of. He took that jacket from us, you know. He has the power to take what he wants. And go where he pleases. Power he should not possess.”
Isobel felt her scalp prickle and the hairs on her arms and the back of her neck stand at attention. But it wasn’t the chill in the air that was making her skin crawl.
Her thoughts jumbled in her head like a scrambled signal as she tried to comprehend how Pinfeathers knew about her plan to go to Baltimore and find Reynolds. Then, all at once, it dawned on her.
“That night with Gwen,” she said. “The shadow I saw moving around in my room, that was you, wasn’t it? You were there, listening the whole time. You have been spying!”
“The other was wise to run,” was all he said.
“And then later outside the bathroom door. You were—”
“I told you, cheerleader,” he said, his tone infuriatingly calm as he fit one final fragment into position, wincing as it snapped into place. “The jacket wasn’t me.”
Grabbing one of the loose straps on his coat, he threaded it through the corresponding buckle with practiced ease and pulled, cinching the thin black material back over his chest. He did so again with the topmost buckle, once more concealing the spiderweb patch of hairline cracks. Then he stood, unfurling himself limb by spindly limb from the base of the fountain.
