Nevermore

She twisted her head away, but he looped an arm around her and yanked her to him. His body felt rigid and hollow next to hers. Empty. His grip on her tightened until she could no longer breathe.

He pressed his lips to hers.

Isobel’s eyes flew wide. His mouth, smooth, cold, and hard, felt almost sharp against hers, like glass. He tasted of clay and ink, of blood and death.

Bile rose at the back of her throat, and along with it a scream.

He broke away from her, laughing, and released her with a shove before dispersing, unraveling into coils of smoke. Isobel fell, tumbling in a sprawl. Suddenly insubstantial, the floor shattered beneath her. She fell through, and the scream within her broke loose at last. She crossed her arms over her face, shielding her eyes from the jagged shards of emerald glass that winked around her in the blackness, threatening to shred her. She toppled until she jarred to a halt, caught by several sets of arms that dipped her into a low cradle. Glass rained like lethal confetti, a shard embedding itself in her shoulder, another slicing her ankle. She opened her eyes to find a circle of masked faces surrounding her. Above them a shattered stained-glass skylight opened to reveal the swirl of a storm-ridden sky. Ash floated through the opening left by her fall.

The group shouted jovially at catching her, and quickly they set her to her feet. Then the figures disbanded, laughing among themselves.

One look around told her that she was back at the masquerade and that she now stood within the center of a deep green chamber.

Enormous tapestries hung over the walls. A heavy black granite Egyptian sarcophagus stood at each corner of the wide, rectangular room as though on guard. Embroidered pillows and carpets lined the floor, while thick clouds of sweet smoke hazed the air. Lethargic courtiers sat, stooped, and stood around hookah pipes and bowls of smoking incense. A heavy perfume pervaded the space, making her dizzy.

Like a mirage, a dark figure emerged in her blurred vision. It surfaced through the crowd and moved toward her like death itself, face blurred and half hidden from view. She shuddered. It couldn’t be twelve yet—could it? Had she missed the last chiming of the clock?

She had no time to pull away or even move before the figure seized her. A gloved hand clamped over her mouth, stopping a shout before it could emerge. He dragged her to one side of the room despite her struggling, and reaching the wall, he pulled back one corner of a heavy tapestry, one that depicted a horse trampling its rider. Revealing a small secret doorway, he thrust her inside.

Isobel rolled across the cold and damp stone floor.

She looked up to find herself inside a hidden passageway, the kind in old murder mysteries where the killer hides to spy on his victims through the eyeholes of hanging portraits. Inside this narrow passageway, a tripod torch burned yellow-orange. Its flame threw jagged shapes across the masonry and against the emerald stained-glass windows, the courtiers on the other side moving across in a shadow play of silhouettes.

Her masked abductor ducked inside and emerged above her, all towering height and grimness. She scampered backward until she met with the damp wall.

“Do you have any idea how much danger you are in?” asked a muffled voice.

Husky and ever sharp with admonishments, it was a voice she recognized immediately.

Reynolds.

And it was about time.

41

Alone

“What is wrong with you?” she exclaimed, removing one of her flats. She threw it at him with enough force to jar her shoulder in its socket. The shoe hit the wall behind him with a sharp smack.

Even with the mask and hat, the surprise in his eyes could not have been missed.

“Where the hell have you been?” she raved. Wasting no time, she wrestled her other shoe free and hurled it at his chest. He blocked the slipper with a raised forearm, and it tapped harmlessly onto the floor. She was sorry she didn’t have anything else to throw.

Blood oozed from the embedded glass in her shoulder, and she reached up to yank the splintered shard out. She hardly felt the pain, only the blood as it trickled warm down her shoulder to stain the neckline of her dress. She was angry enough to throttle him. Yet at the same time, she could have just as easily rushed him, thrown her arms around him, and buried her face in his cloak. Somehow, though, she figured Reynolds probably wasn’t the touchy-feely type, and if you’d asked him beforehand to fill in an option bubble on the questionnaire, she thought he’d probably have opted for the shoes anyway.

“Don’t you look at me like that!” she snarled, her teeth chattering. The quaver in her voice betrayed her emotion.

He continued to stare as Isobel struggled unsteadily to her feet. Her knees wobbled.

“This is all your fault!” she shouted. “None of this started happening until you showed up! I don’t even know who you are! I don’t even know what you are!”

“Lower your voice.”