Oblivion (22 page)

Black-haired and pale in complexion, her small hands clasped in front of her, the round-faced young woman—so real, so completely lifelike—watched the Noc with large and soulful brown eyes.

Releasing the fabric of Isobel's shirt, Scrimshaw angled slowly toward the vision.

Freed, Isobel retreated from him fast, and though she expected the Noc's head to snap back in her direction and for the illusion to rupture as instantaneously as it had materialized, she was relieved when the Noc remained entranced.

“Do you remember the Valentine I've been writing for you?” Virginia asked, her voice soft and high, sweet like a songbird's. “Well, you and Mama will both be pleased to know that even though I haven't yet finished it, I
have
begun setting the lines to music. Just as you suggested.”

Transfixed, Scrimshaw took two slow steps in Virginia's direction.

Isobel watched, clasping her throat where he'd gripped her, still stunned that her bluff had worked and that, somehow, she'd managed to buy back her life again. For at least another moment.

But maybe, she thought as she trained her gaze on the upside-down crow in the center of the Noc's back, another moment was all she needed.

Spinning away, Virginia strode to the piano bench that appeared only just as she sat, the skirts of her simple, cream-colored dress swishing. With girlish flair, she lifted delicate hands and placed slender fingers on an invisible keyboard.

As Virginia pressed down, a squat, rectangular piano unfurled from the nothing and the middle chord she'd struck resounded softly, as gentle as a sigh. More notes followed, her hands wandering to and fro over the keys as if the song were one she had to find her way back to.

“Oh, and Eddie?” she went on to say. “I've hidden your name in the lyrics, so keep a sharp ear. Listen closely and tell me—either of you—if you can discover the trick.”

Isobel curled her fists at her sides. Her chance, hard won, had arrived.

So why hadn't she taken it?

If she moved now, if she ran fast enough, she could slam right into him. She could shove him straight to the floor. As fractured and fragile as he was already, such a fall would surely finish the Noc.

Of course, it would finish
both
Nocs. Was
that
why she was hesitating?

And why
hadn't
Pinfeathers returned? Couldn't he do so now that Scrimshaw was distracted? Now that his guard had been lowered?

“Lenore,” the Noc whispered, and as he spoke the word, the decorative molding and flaking gold paint of the once-decadent walls began to melt away, becoming plaster.

Worn wooden boards bled through the dingy ivory dance floor, seeping through like a spreading stain.

Against all inner urgings, Isobel continued to wait and watch as the room morphed around them. The walls smoothed and squeezed inward. The ceiling dropped low.

In mere seconds, the ballroom had transformed, its macabre scenery replaced by the cramped interior of a meager and sparsely furnished sitting room.

Oblivious to the shift, Virginia played on.

Individual notes, clunky at first, tinkled forth from the instrument, whose flat back met flush with one of the four unadorned walls. Against another, orange flames crackled in a tiny fireplace.

“Ever with thee I wish to roam—

Dearest, my life is thine.

Give me a cottage for my home

And a rich old cypress vine.”

As she sang, Virginia's melody evened out. The notes became more certain, as light and airy as Virginia herself.

“Removed from the world with its sin and care

And the tattling of many tongues.

Love alone shall guide us when we are there—”

The last note, higher in register than the others, caused her voice to crack. Startled, Virginia paused.

She lifted a hand to her lips. Bringing fingers away, she frowned at the smear of crimson that blazed against her pale skin.

Blood,
Isobel thought, suddenly realizing this moment was not a random dream or imagining as she'd first thought. Instead it was another memory. Like the one Pinfeathers had transported her into that morning she'd found him at the fountain.

Reynolds had testified that that memory, the one depicting Poe's death at Reynolds's own hands, had been “stolen.” But if that was true (and, at this point, considering the very little she knew for sure about Reynolds, there could be no telling), then had Scrimshaw been the owner of that stored memory—as well as this one? Had both memories originated from Poe himself?

At first glance, it would seem so.

On the night before their project was due, Varen had described this moment of Poe's life to Isobel: Virginia playing the piano, singing for her husband and her mother. Then the appearance of blood—the heralding sign of consumption. Tuberculosis. Death.

“Eddie?” Virginia said, and she swiveled in her seat to look toward Scrimshaw, her face childlike in its expression of confusion and alarm.

Freeze-framing, the replay stopped there.

Isobel, startled from her reverie, channeled her focus once more to the image of the upside-down crow and steeled herself to charge the Noc.

But her feet stayed grounded, because she knew she'd waited too long.

He'd surfaced from his trance. That had to be why the scene before them had halted. Any second now, he'd turn on her and it would be over.

“Years later, she finished it,” the Noc said, pointing one blue claw at Virginia. “By then, however, she'd already been devoured from the inside out. From this day forth she lived—if indeed you could call it living—as though Death himself had taken residence within her very heart. A death as red as the blood that never ceased.”

Isobel's clenched hands slackened. Maybe, she thought as she listened, she
could
still make her attack. Or rather, finish the assault she'd already unwittingly initiated.

If she aimed accurately, said just the right thing, was it possible her words could inflict more damage than her fists?

“You loved her,” Isobel said.

“Worshipped,”
Scrimshaw corrected. “But more ludicrous than that, let us not forget, she loved
me
.” He gave a short ironic laugh. “Not just him—the poet. But me as well. I, the epitome of our own penchant for self-destruction. Do you know how difficult . . . how
impossible
such a feat must have been?”

“Yes,” Isobel said, pressing a hand to her own heart, certain she could feel echoes of the same pain that resonated within him. “I do.”

For a long time, the Noc remained quiet. He lowered his arm to his side, and when he spoke again, his words came soft, almost too low for her to decipher.

“There are chords in the hearts of the most reckless which cannot be touched without emotion. Even with the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be made.”

Isobel thought she might have heard those phrases somewhere before—or read them. Maybe in one of Poe's works, though she couldn't recall which.

“You have conquered, and I yield,” the Noc went on to say, his words doubling midsentence when a second caustic voice rose to join the first. “But I'll advise you not to allow my return. Because your final play, girl, effective as it was, stands with us as too grievous an onslaught not to seek vengeance for. I grant you a reprieve, but not forgiveness. One cannot give what he does not possess for himself.”

With these words, another vision shimmered into view before him, superimposing itself over the first. Similar in composition, though a hundred times more familiar, an alternate memory unfurled, causing the room to transmute yet again.

In Virginia's stead, Madeline, clad in her violet evening gown, her hair pinned with that rhinestone comb, now occupied the bench of a grand piano, the same one that sat in the parlor of Varen's house.

The built-in shelves of blacked-out picture frames materialized on the wall at the phantom's back. Decorative curtains spilled down to flank the window.

Everything looked just as it had the first time Isobel had seen the memory through the TV, on that night she'd found Pinfeathers waiting for her in her family's living room. And again, after she'd entered the reversed dreamworld version of Varen's house.

The memory. Could it have switched because . . . ?

Slowly the Noc turned in place, and Isobel had her answer.

His left eye—Scrimshaw's—had gone empty. On his right side, a black eye blinked at her once more.

“Low blow,” Pinfeathers said. “But then, we told you to aim for the heart, didn't we?”

“Pinfeathers,” she breathed, her shoulders sagging in relief.

“For now, yes. But while we're all here and accounted for—mostly—allow us, if you will, to tell you one other thing before we go. Before
I
go. Well, make that
two
things.”

“Please,” Isobel said, her eyes flickering to the memory of Madeline as she played the notes of Varen's lullaby, humming softly along. A glitch froze the scene, and then the notes and their player restarted. Distantly, Isobel wondered what it all meant, why the memories of Varen and Poe were linked to their Nocs. She knew she didn't have time to ask for an answer to that mystery, though. Not when Pinfeathers was talking about leaving. She knew him better now than to assume his plan was merely to dissipate and depart.

She sensed that they were
both
done with running.

“You can't go,” she said. “Not yet. I still need your help.”

“I
have
helped you,” the Noc replied. “And will yet. You'll see. We were sleep-flying before you woke us up. Practicing what we've learned, crossing thresholds while trying our best not to wake you before you were ready to see us as we really are—holes and all. And what the crow has seen, the pigeon knows. Besides, you heard Fossil Face. I think you know as well as I do that it's better for the both of us—for all of us, really—if we . . . if I don't stick around. Though first I must attest that old scribble-necked codger is a great fat liar. That drawn-out bit about begging?” The Noc folded his arms. “Never happened.”

Isobel shook her head. “You're making even less sense than usual.”

“Item number one,” the Noc said, ignoring her. He withdrew several steps, striding directly through the repeating memory of Madeline. As if the memory had been composed of smoke, the entire image disappeared, swirling away to once more reveal the interior of the white chamber. “Good-bye, cheerleader.”

She started after him, alarm spurring her forward. “Wait—”

“Item number two,” he said as he lifted his arms out to either side, “you should know that, as far as we can—the boy and I, that is—as much as we allow ourselves—”

“Don't.” Isobel broke into a run.

“We really do—”

“Pinfeathers, stop!” she yelled.

“—love you.” This he said while tilting backward, tipping toward the floor.

“No!” Isobel screamed, her cry echoing through the hall the moment before the crash sounded.

Bursting along all the refitted lines and reconstructed fissures, the Noc's doubled body exploded, several shards pinging her shoes.

Isobel collapsed to her knees, her hands leaping to grasp at the skating shards as she watched the blackness in his solitary eye snap out.

The back of his skull had caved inward. The sleeves of his jacket, Varen's jacket—
their
jacket—had flattened out along with the Noc's black clothing.

In less than a second, Pinfeathers had executed his own demise, and as far as Isobel could tell, the only part of him that had survived total annihilation was his face.

Faces.

Split down the middle, the two halves lay like masks atop the debris.

Isobel took hold of the jacket.

She pulled the garment from the rubble, causing splintered bits of Virginia's fractured portrait to tumble and scatter free, broken now for good.

“I love you, too,” she whispered into the collar, hugging the jacket close. “Both of you.”

For a long time, Isobel continued to hold the jacket close, eyes closed.

Breathing long and slow, she detected an almost imperceptible trace of Varen's scent: dried orange peels, crushed leaves, and incense. Along with the aroma came the bitter taste of the dust of this world and, perhaps, of the Nocs, too.

She would have shuddered at that thought if she'd allowed it to linger. She might have even let herself cry.

But Isobel didn't have the luxury of indulging in either form of release. There was still so much hanging in the balance, so much piled on her shoulders. Even more than before. Because now . . . now she really
was
alone.

Pinfeathers had believed in her, though. And along with his confession of love, the Noc had suggested that somewhere deep beneath the outer layers of his consciousness, Varen shared the conviction that Isobel
would
come for him. If that hadn't been true, Pinfeathers would not have sought her out. Not if there wasn't still a chance she could turn this all around. He wouldn't have risked bringing Scrimshaw this close just to warn her about an inevitable and inescapable end. Or even to say good-bye . . .

He wouldn't have played Lilith's game that way.

And if Isobel hadn't still been a threat herself, would Lilith have needed to form such an elaborate weapon against her by recombining the Nocs?

No,
Isobel thought, opening her eyes.
She wouldn't.

Pulling herself to her feet, she looped the jacket around her shoulders. She threaded her arms through the sleeves, allowing its familiar weight to settle into place.