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Isobel narrowed her puffy eyes, glaring at her distorted reflection in the tub faucet. Her face looked curved and muddled, like the image in a funhouse mirror.
“Izzy?”
“I just . . . wanted to see the snow.”
“In your socks, honey?”
Isobel scowled. Couldn’t Danny keep his mouth shut about anything? At the very least, she hoped her ten bucks had actually bought his silence about Gwen having been there. She doubted he’d said anything, though. It would have been difficult for him to mention without incriminating himself in some way. Besides that, Isobel knew that her mother wouldn’t have hesitated to bring up an unannounced visitor first thing. Especially if that visitor happened to be the nefarious Gwen Daniels, bad influence extraordinaire.
Deserter extraordinaire, Isobel thought.
Until that moment, she hadn’t allowed herself to get angry at Gwen. She’d been too confused, too lost in the aftershock. Her brain couldn’t seem to sort through, let alone comprehend, the sequence of that evening’s events.
Worst of all, Isobel kept telling herself that Gwen hadn’t really meant it, that she’d be back. As soon as she got out of the bathtub, Isobel would go to her room and find ten texts and at least three voice mails waiting for her on her cell phone.
Deep down, though, she knew better than to hope for that.
Gwen’s fear had been too real, her words of warning too final. She had known the name Lilith. It had meant something to her. Something terrible. Bad enough to send her literally fleeing.
Isobel bit her bottom lip, an endless stream of questions ping-ponging back and forth in her head. How could Gwen have known that name? Why had it terrified her so much?
“He’s worried about you, you know.”
Isobel’s eyes shot toward the bathroom door again. She’d almost forgotten that her mother was still there.
She knew that by “he,” her mom must have been referring to Danny, though she hardly thought such a statement could be true. The only reason he pretended to care about her right now probably had more to do with the great opportunity it provided to keep their parents distracted and his pathway to the TV unobstructed.
“We’re all worried about you,” her mother went on. “You’ve been so distant. It’s like living with a stranger. It’s scaring us, Izzy.”
At these words, Isobel felt a gentle shift take place inside her, like a set of scales tipping. Her brow softened as she recalled the anxious expression on her little brother’s face when he’d stepped back to let her in from the cold. Her dad’s numerous attempts to extract some kind of meaningful conversation out of her also came to mind. And now her mother was standing just outside the door, doing her best to lure Isobel back from the ledge everyone thought she must be teetering on.
Her mom’s voice came again, less muffled than before, as though she was standing as close to the jamb as possible. “It’s been this way ever since . . .”
Her mother’s hesitation made Isobel tense.
“As much as you’ve been trying to hide it, Izzy,” she went on, “I know what this is about. This all has something to do with that boy, doesn’t it?”
At the barest mention of Varen, the nodule of fear within Isobel exploded. “No,” she snapped before she could stop herself. “It doesn’t have anything to do with him.”
Even to her own ears her words sounded pale, unconvincing.
“Isobel. I know—”
“You don’t know.” Fresh tears filled her eyes, causing the room to swim. Isobel blinked and the tears fell, searing the skin of her already raw cheeks.
After all her effort to hide the truth, her mother had still seen right through her. Her whole family had.
And now, with Gwen gone and her mother and father tuned to her every move, how would she ever get to Baltimore?
Isobel drew in a shaky breath. The prospect that she would miss her one and only chance to find him, to bring him back home—it was too much to even conceive. Shutting her eyes tight, she willed the tide of despair welling up within her to subside. It filled her anyway, leaving her to wonder if the battle for Varen’s return, for his soul, was one she could never win because it was one she had already lost.
“Izzy.” She heard the doorknob rattle. Her mother’s voice, louder and more insistent now, sliced through her thoughts. “Why don’t you get dressed? Come downstairs to dinner. Then I’ll make us some tea and we’ll talk. Just you and me.”
Isobel shook her head, trying to get a grip. “This isn’t what you think.”
“Isobel, you can’t tell me . . . From the moment you and he—”
“You’re wrong!” Isobel shouted, her voice rising over her mother’s. “This isn’t about him. I don’t care about him, okay? I wish I’d never even met him. So just drop it!”
