Isobel thought suddenly of Brad. After Varen’s Nocs had attacked him on the football field, they’d dragged his spirit into the dreamworld. There the creatures had tormented him in the same way Poe had been tortured by his own Nocs.
After Isobel had tried and failed to rescue Brad, Reynolds told her that Brad’s spirit was being held hostage by the Nocs. A “torturous link,” he’d called it, one severable only by death.
Poe hadn’t been calling for Reynolds to save him. He’d been begging for just the opposite.
“He wanted you to kill him,” Isobel murmured.
Reynolds made no reply, but the solemn expression on his sunken features provided confirmation enough.
“Interact with no one,” he said. “If you encounter the boy, do not engage. Do you understand?”
“But—”
“He won’t believe you’re real. No one will as long as you assume the role of a dream. You cannot bring him back yet. That we must do together, when we are better prepared. For now, you need only sift through his darkness. Find the light in him that has been extinguished. Go now. More Nocs will come looking for the others, and they will find the rift. I can only fight off so many, and only for so long.”
“What happens if I get stuck? What if the same thing that happened to Edgar happens to me?”
“Your world cannot afford your death,” Reynolds replied. His eyes flitted to the silver cord, and back to her. “So see that it doesn’t happen.”
Isobel swallowed, deciding not to ask if that meant what she thought it did. This was Reynolds, after all. King of do-what-you-gotta-do. He was telling her, in his usual charming way, that if push came to shove, he’d do her the same kind of favor as he had his ol’ pal Poe.
And who said chivalry was dead?
“Got it,” Isobel said, and, resolving not to get caught on the other side, she turned toward the black gap.
As she stepped forward, moving through the static membrane of darkness that separated the gym from the dreamworld, Isobel thought that—for now—she could suspend her distrust of Reynolds. She could believe that he needed her enough not to lie about this.
About Varen.
Of course, one way or another, she knew she would soon find out.
10
Cobwebs of the Mind
The Woodlands of Weir stretched before her, the purple backdrop beyond glowing with a new and fiercer intensity, as if the horizon had been set ablaze with violet fire.
Glancing behind, Isobel found the black chasm open at her back, a flat screen of nothingness.
Dreaming, she told herself as she looked ahead again. Real or not, this was still officially a dream.
With that thought, Isobel fixed her mind on Varen and, spurring herself onward, made her way farther into the forest.
Prison-bar trees slid by on either side of her while ahead, their ranks seemed to march on into infinity. But as Isobel continued to hold Varen in the forefront of her mind, the scenery slowly began to shift, black trees peeling away from her path to form two lines.
Though Isobel no longer had her butterfly watch to act as a guiding compass, she hoped that this time, all she would need was the strength of her intent.
And her thoughts, it would seem, had triggered the woodlands to yield to her. To unveil the path that would lead her to what she sought. Who.
At least, she hoped that was the case as charred trunks paled to gray, becoming pillars, the soft, ash-covered ground beneath her feet going solid.
Deeper shadows encroached on her from above as, overhead, skeletal branches bowed inward. Limbs locking like twining tentacles, they formed a dense canopy that then melded into the crisscrossing arches of a vaulted ceiling—like that of a Gothic cathedral. Or, Isobel thought, remembering Varen’s mirrored hall, a palace . . .
Tall walls filtered into view, their contours trickling down to erase the woodlands and the rift before fading from sight behind shadows thick as ink. Low purple light poured through the netted panes of sparsely stationed stained-glass windows—the only sources of illumination within the corridor where Isobel now stood.
The scent of incense, familiar and luring, drew her attention to the far end of the hall, where tendrils of white smoke swirled up from the center of a carved dais. On either side of the marble altar, a pair of identical stone angels stood guard, hands wrapping the hilts of massive, downward-aimed swords.
Curious, Isobel started toward them.
Tap, tap, tap. The echo of her steps ricocheted from wall to wall, giving her the eerie sense of being followed.
She stopped, turning sharply, but there was no one there. Nothing.
Silence resettled, and swallowing the fear that at any second something would discover her, Isobel recalled Reynolds’s words of reassurance. Even in the open like this, he’d said she would still be hidden. Just one dream—one ghost—among many.
