Oblivion (25 page)

Her brother was gone, though.

In his place waited windowless stone walls, a winding spiral staircase, and far below, a bottomless well of pure darkness.

There was no banister. No railing. Only the looping ribbon of stairs and, at their center, the abyss.

With one guarded step, Isobel crossed out of the reality she knew into the realm she dreaded. Placing a hand to the cold stone wall to ground herself, she peered up—and found an exact replica of the descending view.

An upside-down flight of steps, like the coiling underbelly of a serpent, wound up and away forever.

Fighting a wave of vertigo along with the sense that she'd somehow been transported into an optical illusion, Isobel turned to face her room again. Her door had vanished, though, and as she stared into the grooves and cracks of the stone surface, nausea crept over her.

Swallowing, she concentrated on the solidness of the step beneath her, the sense of gravity pulling her down, holding her in place.

While she thought she could move if she didn't peer over the edge of the stairs again, she doubted she could bring herself to climb any higher than she already was. So, shifting, legs shaking, she angled herself toward the descending path. Not willing to risk losing her equilibrium a second time, she kept her focus on where the steps anchored into the wall.

Down and around, down and around. Down, down, and down.

The farther Isobel went, the deeper the black helix seemed to wind, making her wonder if she could be venturing underground.

She considered stopping to alter her surroundings, to open a wall or create another door. But would that only lead her away from what she sought?
Who
she sought?

Isobel thought of Varen's name over and over. She pictured his face. The stairwell didn't change, though. No doors appeared. And yet each time Isobel completed a revolution—or assumed she'd completed one—she kept expecting to encounter an archway or a window. Something.

But there was only rough stone, mortar, and more stairs.

Halting, she pressed her spine flush to the wall. She flicked her eyes to the inverted set of steps above and wondered why her thoughts weren't working.

Every time before, when the images in her mind had been clear, when she hadn't been battling distractions like the Nocs or Reynolds, the dreamworld had, in some form or another, always presented her with a pathway.

But even when she'd entered the dreamworld through the veil earlier that day, her thoughts, she reminded herself, had failed to take her directly to Varen. Instead they'd led her to the cluttered attic, which housed the remnants of the Varen she knew from before. The fragments of his subconscious. Pinfeathers.

True, she
had
found her way to the courtyard, to the real flesh-and-blood Varen. She knew now, though, that that had been Lilith's doing.

Like Reynolds, the demon had
wanted
Isobel to find Varen—to interact with him. Yet even though it seemed as if Reynolds and Lilith shared the goal of igniting the fuse to the bomb Varen had unwittingly become, Isobel still wasn't sure the two had the same endgame vision.

Of course, she thought, switching her gaze to the wall directly across from her, she highly doubted that
she
and Reynolds did either.

Nevertheless, at least
some
of the information Reynolds had imparted to her had to be accurate. When Reynolds had drawn her into the gym at Trenton, for instance, and attempted to explain to her that Varen could not have stayed in reality even if Isobel
had
been able to bring him home on Halloween, he'd said it was because of Varen's unbreakable ties to the dreamworld. In so many words, he'd said that Varen had become
ingrained
in this world, part and parcel of it. As lost to it as he was to the demon who had taken him.

Lilith, Reynolds had said, had a claim on Varen just as she'd had on Poe. And even if the dreamworld had yet to absorb Varen utterly, he had still become a cog in the machinery of this realm. A puzzle piece clicked into a slot fashioned to fit him perfectly.

Or, Isobel wondered, was it that Varen, being the way he was, just so happened to fit the mold? Like Poe would have.

Whatever the case, if Varen had become an element
of
this world rather than a trapped outsider, then maybe thinking of him as a way to locate him was like pressing enter on a blank Internet search. It could only lead nowhere.

Did that mean, then, that there was
no
way to find him?

Isobel sank to sit on the step. Draping her arms on her propped knees, she let her head thud against the stone behind her, unable to accept that all her efforts had brought her
here
, to a point where her actions could only lead her in endless circles.

Combing through her memories, she considered the different ways she'd found Varen in the past.

During the masquerade party, she'd just kept searching. Pinfeathers had tried to stall her, transporting her into that fake reality. Reynolds had attempted to detour her too, but in the end, neither had succeeded in keeping her from him.

And Baltimore. After Isobel had entered the dreamworld through the tomb door in that churchyard, after she'd crossed into the rose garden, she'd been able to use the butterfly watch Danny had given her as a compass. The hands of the clock had pointed the way through the garden's maze to where she'd found Pinfeathers waiting for her in Varen's stead.

Isobel didn't have the watch now, though. She didn't have Pinfeathers, either.

Those last thoughts crashed hard over her, until with a sudden spark, Isobel realized that there was one thing she
did
have. Knowledge of the watch's whereabouts. And even if its possessor was barely a part of reality, the watch itself remained as real as ever.

Pushing herself to her feet, Isobel shifted the image in her head from Varen to the key-chain timepiece her little brother had given her last Christmas. Closing her eyes, she took care to conjure every detail exactly as she remembered it, right down to its pink flip-open wings, its silver accents, and its yellow, needle-thin second hand.

A heavy
clunk
from far below echoed through the stairwell. Isobel opened her eyes.

Edging forward, maintaining contact with the wall through her fingertips, she peered down into the corkscrew spiral where, in the center of the blackness, a distant pinprick of light glinted like a coin.

As she watched it, the glowing point began to expand, growing wider into a shaft of light that shot up past her like a flashlight beam into the nothing overhead.

She began moving again, faster now. As she twined round and round, she glanced between the sloping path in front of her and the thickening beam that pierced the center of the stairwell.

When the shaft of light widened to bathe the outer rim of the steps, there came a low boom that Isobel felt through the soles of her shoes and the palm she held pressed to the wall.

A door must have opened below. Or the floor itself . . .

Whatever shift had just occurred, Isobel hoped that it meant she'd found the way out. Or that it had found her.

Before she could venture another glance over the edge, though, she saw the light beam waver, flickering in and out as if something had passed in front of it—a large something.

Quickly she moved back a step, battling a sick sense that down was no longer the direction she wanted to go. That it never had been. She waited, though, keeping a hand cemented to the wall, senses dialing to full alert as a soft clicking noise, like stone nicking stone, rebounded up to her.

Click. Tick. Clack.

Peeking over the edge again, Isobel's stomach lurched with new terror.

Through an open porthole lay the expanse of a starless night sky.

The beam flickered again as wispy streams of clouds coasted swiftly between the unraveling hem of the tower and the source of the light—a pale-faced half-moon.

Steps loosened from the crumbling wall below, tumbling free like loose teeth from a broken jaw.

For whole seconds, Isobel could only gape in horror while the opening raced higher, climbing toward her, the spiral stairs fanning off like dominoes. Then, just before her own step could fly out from underneath her, Isobel jolted out of her shock.

Turning, she ran.

Legs burning, she fought to keep herself vertical as she darted up and up, around and around.

She stumbled, though, and, slamming onto the slabs as they loosened, scrambled forward on hands and knees. Pushing off from the steps as they flipped out from underneath her and into the sky, Isobel tilted her head back. When she caught sight of the upside-down stairs looping the walls, impulse took over. With no time to pray her plan would work, she jumped, aiming her shoulder at the wall.

Isobel connected with smooth stone, and instead of bouncing off, she rolled.

Tucking her arms in like she would for a stunt fall, Isobel flipped—until her sneakers met the set of steps that moments before had been overhead.

Gravity accompanied her on her switch, causing the world to invert with her, down becoming up and up down.

Descending once again, Isobel quickened her pace to a pell-mell run, while all around her, pieces of the upended stairwell continued to evacuate their structure, bricks and steps lifting to sail skyward, defying the gravity she'd so stupidly assumed had really been there.

Unrestricted, the moonlight illuminated her surroundings, and she could now see where the separating tunnel terminated.

Another door—this one stamped into the center of the tower's marble floor.

The wooden, glass-paned entry was one Isobel knew well. As well as she knew the solitary boy seated in the classroom within, his head hung low over a familiar desk so that the locks of his raven-black hair brushed its surface.

Isobel reached the bottom just as the last step soared upward and the final stones disconnected from the ground, ripping free of their foundation.

She flung herself onto the door, and even as the jutting shapes of the Gothic palace entered her periphery, its limitless turrets and spires spiking into the sky all around her, she dared not look away from what lay beyond the glass pane beneath her.

Tuning out the distant roar of rushing waves and the howl of whipping winds, Isobel pounded a palm against the glass, eyes locked on the boy she swore to herself that, from this point forward, she would not allow to leave her sight again.

“Varen!”

He wouldn't look up. He only kept staring at the glinting object he held between his fingers. Isobel's watch.

She banged on the glass again, ignoring her hair as it whipped in her face.

Still, Varen would not lift his head.

Isobel gripped the knob with both hands. It slipped in her grasp—locked. She pushed hard with her mind, picturing the cylinder inside turning, the latch sliding back, but the knob only rattled.

As before in the courtyard of statues, her mind was clashing with Varen's, her thoughts pitted against his. And as long as Varen refused to believe she was real, she was destined to lose the fight.

So she would just have to
make
him believe.

Isobel pounded a third time, hard enough to send a lightning-bolt crack up the center of the pane, straight through her view of him.

“Varen!” she shouted.

His eyes flicked up from the watch. Instantly the howling winds, the distant thundering waves—all of it ceased.

Isobel's hair fell limp. Her breath grew loud in her ears as roaring quiet replaced the din.

When Varen finally spoke, she saw his lips move—but his voice, calm and monotone, came from behind her.

“Call it a hunch, but I don't think he can hear you.”

Isobel swung her head around.

Appearing just as he had through the glass, seated in his usual chair in a now-reversed version of Mr. Swanson's classroom, Varen stared right at her with hollow black eyes.

“At least, not over all that banging and yelling,” he said.

Confused, Isobel again checked the door, which, though now upright, somehow supported her full weight as if she were still horizontal, lying curled against it.

Beyond its splintered windowpane, rows of blue lockers lined the walls of a deserted Trenton hallway.

Another instantaneous switch had occurred, bringing her inside the classroom.

Heart pounding, Isobel swiveled her head back to Varen. As she did, one of the fluorescent fixtures directly over his head clinked, flickering out.

Isobel continued to hold tight to the doorknob, as if her clutching it was the only thing keeping her vertical. Then she carefully set her feet flat to the floor, one after the other, glad the industrial tiles proved as solid as they appeared. As she slipped free of the door, the folds of her tattered dress fell to hang loose around her legs once more, and, hands shaking, Isobel loosened her death grip on the knob.

Past the rows of empty chairs, through windows lining the back wall, the familiar landscape of the woodlands stretched as far as she could see. Now, though, a crimson sky radiated in place of the violet horizon.

“You're late,” Varen said. His red-rimmed, shadow-lined eyes fell from her to the watch as he thumbed open its wings, and Isobel knew what he saw through its small window. A mixture of lies and truth.

This was a dream.
She
was a dream.

“No later than usual,” Isobel murmured, striving to flash a bit of her old spunk, though her voice sounded small even to her.

She needed to keep him talking, though. To keep him calm. Contained.

But what could she say? The words—the right words—evaded her.

“Varen,” Isobel began, taking a step toward him when he did not reply.

“I wanted you,” he said, interrupting her before she could continue, his gaze never lifting from the watch. “From that very first day. I can tell you that now, I guess.”