Oblivion

“Oh, yes, thanks,” Isobel quipped. “Good to know I’m the predictable one here.”

“I only predicted what I hoped would be true,” he replied. “My wager, as the demon called it—believing the best of you. Believing in you.”

“Oh, you are so lucky this is a dream,” Isobel mumbled into him. “Because if I really was here, I’d totally barf on you right now.”

“I am . . . touched,” he said.

But really, she was touched. Wrapping her arms around him, she squeezed him hard.

As un-Reynolds as his words had been, she thought that he must have meant them. And if he was getting mushy, if there really were no more ominous tidings for him to bring, no more secret suicide missions to send her on, then . . . then this really must be good-bye.

She still wasn’t ready for him to go, though. Not yet. But without the threat of worlds colliding or demons seeking to consume reality, all she had left to keep him there were questions.

“Your ability,” Isobel murmured. “Crossing between worlds. You can do that because of Poe?” Hitching a breath, she realized Reynolds’s scent, that essence of decaying roses, was gone now. Further evidence that he was slipping away. That he would depart forever, when the time came. And it was coming.

“Yes,” Reynolds replied, and Isobel shut her eyes when she felt his palm against her back. “I could cross between worlds because of the power granted to me by Edgar’s writing.”

“Through that story,” Isobel sniffled, her voice muffled against him as she kept her face stupidly smashed to his chest, now if only to see how long he would tolerate it.

“My book, the only novel Edgar ever wrote, was meant as an experiment,” Reynolds explained. “Edgar’s idea was to take my story, which I told to him over the course of many dreams, and adapt it to fit a real location in your world. He would then publish the piece in increments, touting it as a nonfictional account. In so doing, he hoped to create a link that would allow me to cross physically into your reality and become a part of it. His plan worked, and might have saved me from my imprisonment in the dreamworld had he not been working on another piece at the same time. A story called ‘Ligeia,’ inspired by another dreamworld entity. The Nocs were unleashed from his soul, and I perished by the hand of Scrimshaw. Edgar, who wed shortly after, never knew of my demise; unbeknownst to him, his union with Virginia had severed his ties to the dreamworld. It was only after she died that Lilith again pursued him.”

“She went after him again,” Isobel said, “and pulled him into the dreamworld.”

“I found him there. When he discovered what had become of me, that I was now bound to the woodlands forever as a Lost Soul, his remorse was deep. We reconciled, and after exchanging clothing, I agreed to both play the part of his decoy, and to use the ability he’d granted me to help him return to his reality—your reality.”

Isobel pulled back from Reynolds, and taking up the edge of his heavy cloak, she ran her fingers along the material. “That’s why they found him wearing someone else’s clothes,” Isobel said. “This . . . this is his cloak, isn’t it?”

Reynolds didn’t answer, but he didn’t have to.

“You knew what Varen would do, didn’t you?” Isobel asked. “You knew what he’d decided. That he needed to die in order for the worlds to separate again?”

Silence again.

“Typical,” Isobel said. “I should have known, but, whatever. As long as you’re not answering my questions like you said you would, can you at least tell me what happens now? Where you’ll go?”

“Presumably,” he replied, “wherever Lost Souls go when they are found. But you needn’t worry. I will not be alone. See for yourself.”

He extended an arm toward Greene Street.

“Who said I was w—” Isobel’s words halted, evaporating out of her mouth at the sight of who stood beyond the gates.

No. Flipping. Way.

Stern-faced but not unkind, there stood a man in a top hat and a black comb moustache.

Touching the brim of the hat, Edgar Allan Poe bowed his head at her very slightly.

Isobel, unsure of what else to do, gave a small, shell-shocked wave.

She jumped when Reynolds brushed past her, making his way toward the gate.

Though she wanted to call after him, to dash forward and catch his hand, she let him go.

Reynolds opened the gate, and with a low groan, it swung in toward him. As he stepped through, he unclasped his cloak and unfurled it from around his shoulders, extending it to Poe, who, without pause, drew it around his own.