“I’m pretty sure Gwen is Instagramming this as we speak.”
Isobel glanced over to Gwen and her father again. True to Varen’s report, Gwen had moved away from the sedan and was now holding up her cell. To Isobel’s surprise, she saw her father looming over her friend’s shoulder, squinting at the smartphone screen—probably because it magnified her and Varen. What they were doing . . .
Blushing and wondering what the hashtag on that one would be, Isobel peered up at Varen again.
“Want to give them something to talk about?” he asked, pressing a warm palm to her cheek.
“Always,” she said.
With that, Varen leaned down, and in that way of his that always caused everything else to blur away, he kissed her.
48
Dreams No Mortal Ever Dared to Dream
Tick tick tick tick tick tick—
Isobel bolted upright, her body flinging itself into motion before her brain could so much as register the source of its fear, or command her eyes to open.
Gasping, scrambling to free herself from her heavy comforter, she skittered back and slammed spine-first into her cubbyhole headboard, causing its contents to rattle. Frantic, she swiped at her arms and legs, brushing and slapping.
Her thrashing subsided as, slowly, she realized she was at home. In bed. Alone.
Isobel froze. Holding her breath, she listened hard, eyes darting across the tranquil blue darkness of her room.
Her open curtains hung stationary. Beyond her window, bits of snow gathered on the sill. And in the distance, she could just see the topmost limbs of Mrs. Finley’s oak.
There were no deathwatches clambering up her body, no ink-faced monsters or fragmented ghouls gathered in shadowy corners or lurking in her open closet. No grim palace halls visible through the frame of her uncovered dresser mirror . . .
The ticking sound continued, though, the soft noise audible even over the hammering of her heart, the rushing of her blood.
Tick tick tick tick tick tick . . .
Resonating louder in one ear than the other, the sound drew Isobel’s attention to her left, down to the open brass pocket watch that sat on the splayed, gold-rimmed pages of a familiar book.
Isobel didn’t need to read the tome’s cover to know its title. And she didn’t need to see the name AUGUSTUS inscribed on the inside of the watch’s little hinged door to know who the timepiece belonged to either.
But . . . if Reynolds was gone, how had the watch gotten here?
Tick tick tick tick tick tick tick . . .
Scooting to sit on the edge of her bed, Isobel plucked up the watch by its long chain. She brought it close and, catching it with her other hand, held it steady, following the movement of its spindly black second hand as it ticked along one space at a time, past the stationary hour and minute hands that pointed to midnight.
Frowning, Isobel leaned over and switched on her bedside lamp. She scanned her room again, searching for any evidence that might point to someone’s having been there.
There was nothing, though, and eventually her gaze wandered back to the book, which had been left open at page 119—a title page of mostly white space.
When Isobel caught sight of the name stamped in the middle, though, her frown deepened. Palming the watch, she took the book and drew it into her lap.
THE NARRATIVE
OF
ARTHUR GORDON PYM
OF NANTUCKET
COMPRISING THE DETAILS OF A MUTINY AND ATROCIOUS BUTCHERY
ON BOARD THE AMERICAN BRIG GRAMPUS, ON HER WAY TO THE SOUTH SEAS,
IN THE MONTH OF JUNE, 1827.
“Gordon,” Isobel whispered, tracing the middle name of the story’s protagonist with her fingers.
Next, her fingertips trailed to the ship’s name, which she’d also seen before. Grampus. Hadn’t that been the name written across the storm-tossed ship in the animated painting that had hung in Varen’s dreamworld house?
Hurriedly, Isobel flipped to the next page, to the place where the story began. She skimmed the first few lines.
My name is Arthur Gordon Pym. My father was a respectable trader in sea-stores at Nantucket, where I was born. My maternal grandfather was an attorney in good practice. He was fortunate in everything, and had speculated very successfully in stocks of the Edgarton New-Bank, as it was formerly called. By these and other means he had managed to lay by a tolerable sum of money. He was more attached to myself, I believe, than to any other person in the world, and I expected to inherit the most of his property at his death.
Baffled, Isobel narrowed her eyes on the tightly packed blocks of text while her mind went on autopilot, deep-sea diving for something Reynolds had once said to her. About his having had a family . . .