Oblivion

To her utter shock, her impersonation actually got a smile out of him. Though she could not see his mouth for the scarf, the smirk was wide enough that it reached his eyes, causing them to crinkle at the corners.

And his eyes themselves—Isobel had to lean forward when she noticed their color. That they had a color. Wait. Were they . . . blue?

Unable to help herself, Isobel placed a hand on his arm. Finally, prompted by her touch, he turned his head her way.

Blue indeed, she saw. Blue, with rims of dark gray that encircled the bright starbursts of his irises.

“Yet your watch would advise you otherwise,” he replied, and, lifting a gloved hand, he pinched the scarf and drew it down from his face.

“My watch?” Isobel asked, her voice trailing off as she marveled at his complexion.

Though Reynolds wouldn’t have walked away from a “best tan” contest with any sort of honorable mention, let alone an award, she thought his pallor had been greatly reduced. Less dead mushroom and more basement recluse.

“I am of the mind you would have more use for it now than I.”

That last bit hit her brain as mumbo jumbo. She shook her head, clearing their conversation to begin a new one that, hopefully, she would be able to follow.

“Hold up. I’m a little lost,” she said, folding her arms against the cold she didn’t feel. She glanced behind her toward the Greene Street gates. “Are we in the dreamworld?”

“Tell me, what do your instincts suggest?”

Isobel glowered at him. “My instincts suggest that you, at least, are the real deal, given that only you would answer a straightforward question with a cryptic, open-ended one of your own.”

“Since I am, according to you, being predictable, you won’t then mind my repeating old lines about not being long on time.”

Isobel’s hands went to her hips. “Is that why you’re all dressed up? Got a Monster’s Ball to attend? Or a meeting for the Literal Literary Characters of America?”

“Something like that,” he said, another slight smile touching his lips—its appearance all but rattling Isobel’s entire world. Because Reynolds smiled only never.

“I thought,” he went on, ignoring Isobel’s dumbfounded stare, “that, given your undeniable knack for traversing untraversable barriers, not to mention your penchant for making your point clear through brute force, it would be wisest to arrange a meeting with you now. Save us both trouble in the long run, in the event you had any lingering queries or grievances you wished to voice. And, I suppose . . . because I thought it only proper that I tell you good-bye.”

Isobel refolded her arms, scrunching them in tighter than before as she shifted her weight to one foot.

“So I know you didn’t just call me a bully,” she said, rattling off words before she even knew what they would be. “I mean, you’re the one flipping around swords, stabbing people like you’ve got nothing better to do. And on that note, PS slash FYI, strolling out of tombs and getting nerds all excited and your dumb masked face printed up in national magazines is not the best way to make good on your whole ‘should you seek me again I will not be found’ wannabe badass spiel.”

She was rambling and she knew it. And she was stalling, too. Despite all the crap between the two of them, Isobel wasn’t ready yet to tell Reynolds good-bye.

“Do you suppose they will miss me this year?” Reynolds—Pym—Gordon—whoever asked after allowing a block of silence to pass.

Isobel trained her focus on her feet and the collecting blanket of snow beneath them.

“I’m going to pull a you, do the question-for-a-question thing and ask if that means you are, in fact, going somewhere other than the woodlands. Because I was kinda thinking I wasn’t going to see you ever again. And now you’re here, but you say that you’re going for good this time.”

“Thanks to you, Isobel, the woodlands, as far as I know, are no more.”

Isobel’s head jerked up. “She really is gone?”

“I can only assume that Lilith died when the boy did, and that her soul passed on from his body. Presumably, to wherever demons go.”

“The policeman’s bullet . . . it only went through his shoulder,” Isobel said. “Right through him. But the paramedics said they thought the shock caused his heart to stop. They had no other explanation for it. They thought he was dead. Well, he was dead. Until . . . until they brought him back.”

“Varen’s act was one of self-sacrifice. Of love,” Reynolds replied, and his words gave her pause. Not due so much to their meaning, but because she was certain she had never heard Reynolds refer to Varen directly by name. Never until now.