Oblivion

“You mean astral proj—?”

The doors flung wide with a deafening crack.

Midday sunlight flooded the gym.

Swinging one of his swords upward, Reynolds spun into an attack against an unseen assailant—and vanished midstrike.

9

Beyond the Veil

Isobel staggered forward. Then she ran.

Skidding to a halt at the spot where Reynolds had disappeared, she turned in place, but she didn’t see him or his attackers.

Listening hard, she heard only the chatter of birds, the distant swish and hush of nearby traffic.

He was gone. Into the veil.

The veil.

He’d asked her if she remembered being there, in that hazy space between worlds. She did, but that didn’t mean she knew how to get there. Not on her own.

She shut her eyes and scowled in concentration, willing her limbs to relax.

Varen had done this multiple times over, she reminded herself, separating himself in two with ease, leaving his body behind as he crossed over the threshold that stood between dimensions.

Now she needed to do the same.

Focusing on the rapid thudding of her own heart, Isobel waited for the disconnecting sensation she’d felt before, when Pinfeathers had drawn her out of herself and into a haunting vision of the past.

She recalled in a flood of images the events the Noc had shown her in that memory.

That old hospital. Poe on his deathbed—screaming repeatedly for Reynolds—writhing in agony as Lilith and the Nocs tortured his captured soul.

When Reynolds had finally appeared, however, instead of answering his friend’s cries for help, he’d done the unthinkable. Drawing one of his twin blades, Reynolds had severed the silver cord that tethered Poe’s astral form—his spirit—to his body, killing him instantly.

But the doctor at Poe’s bedside had seen nothing. Not Reynolds’s betrayal, not Lilith descending through the black chasm in the ceiling, not the Nocs as they spiraled through the walls in thick smoke tendrils.

The dreamworld demons had all been in the veil, Isobel realized. Reynolds, too. As they were right now.

And not only that—even in the veil, Reynolds had performed Poe’s murder cloaked and masked. Lilith hadn’t known him then; in fact, she had shrieked in protest.

Isobel had unmasked Reynolds herself after tackling him in Baltimore. Had she not seen his face then, she would never have known him in the dreamworld, when he’d stepped out to face her on Lilith’s orders. When Lilith had called him . . . Gordon.

And then today, even as he was being hunted—today he had appeared to Isobel without his usual disguise. But then, why hide if he no longer had a reason to? If he’d been found out . . .

Suddenly Isobel knew she could be sure of at least one thing: that even if she couldn’t bring herself to trust Reynolds completely, or to believe he’d told her all that he knew, he was still her enemy’s enemy.

So for now, if there was even one kernel of truth to what Reynolds had said—that a modicum of the boy she loved still existed behind those black eyes—then sharing a mutual opponent indeed counted for something. And seeing that Reynolds was her only way to the other side, that something would have to be enough.

Isobel drew in a deep breath, picturing herself in the veil. Tuning her senses inward, she released her breath in a slow exhale, and as she did, the noise of the birds and the passing cars and the brush of the wind outside faded.

Her skin tingled. Electricity crawled up her arms, wrapping her body in numbness until she felt only the faint, everywhere prickle of pins and needles.

When she opened her eyes, she found herself within that white and nebulous world of shapes and muted sound.

A muffled shout drew her attention to one side. Then something came crashing to her feet, where it splintered into pieces.

Isobel backpedaled, and in doing so, parted from her body.

Her vision went double for an instant, and she felt a surge of panic. Then, focusing on the blurred outline of the person in front of her—on the sleek sheet of her own hair—Isobel rejoined her body with a jolt. She peered around to find herself alone again, still facing those gaping doors to the school’s rear parking lot.

Hissing a curse, she straightened, determined. Again she shut her eyes, released her clenched hands, breathed, and tried letting go a second time.

Fading under, Isobel resisted the temptation to open her eyes as the sounds surrounding her dialed down to a low hum. Holding on to her calm, she allowed the buzzing numbness to overtake her. Then she stepped forward.

Blurred shapes and shadows seeped into view despite her closed eyelids.

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