Well, she thought wryly, taking in the ensemble, at least I match.

Tearing her gaze from the mirror, she started for the door. She reached for the knob, one of her sneakers causing the floor to creak.

“He said you’d be wearing that jacket when I saw you again.”

Isobel halted at the sound of her brother’s voice, which came muffled through the door. Startled both by his words and by the fact that he was still there, that he must have been there the whole time, she lowered her hand.

“He said that when you had it on, that’s when I would need to tell you . . .”

She frowned, somehow doubting that by “he” her brother could be referring to their father.

Moving right up to the door, Isobel pressed her hands flat to its surface and waited, but for a long while, Danny didn’t say anything else. Then, just when Isobel was tempted to ask who he’d meant, he spoke again.

“Last night was the first night he ever talked.”

“Who?” Isobel heard herself ask, even though she already had an inkling.

“The black bird,” Danny replied.

Isobel’s eyes widened, her suspicions confirmed. Her breath caught in her throat as, suddenly, it made sense how Danny had been seeing things in the dreamworld—how he’d been seen in the dreamworld.

What the crow has seen, the pigeon knows, Pinfeathers had told her in the moments before destroying himself.

Danny, she thought, remembering how Scrimshaw had referred to her little brother as a pigeon.

Could Pinfeathers have been taking Danny into the dreamworld, showing him Varen’s nightmares about her on purpose? But . . . why?

“He’s really real, isn’t he?” Now her little brother didn’t sound like himself at all. His voice had gone small and afraid. “The dreams. They weren’t just dreams, were they?”

“Whatever he told you to tell me,” Isobel said, “it’s . . . important, okay?”

“He said that you should know it was never about you,” Danny replied. “He also said that you have to ‘remind us of who we are.’ He said you would know what that meant. . . . Do you?”

Isobel didn’t answer. Instead she waited, her eyes searching the blank white surface in front of her as if it could provide the aid Pinfeathers’s cryptic message failed to offer.

She rested her forehead against the door.

No. She didn’t know what, specifically, that meant. And she still didn’t know why the Noc had sought out Danny instead of her. Maybe he’d had to in order to protect her from Scrimshaw.

And if Pinfeathers had taken her to the dreamworld instead, wouldn’t her brain have interpreted things the same way Danny’s had? Varen destroying her over and over?

Then she might have truly gone insane.

Maybe Pin had known Lilith’s plan to use Isobel against Varen. As a means of luring him into this destructive state of mind. Into becoming this destructive force . . .

Could Pinfeathers have overheard the demon and Reynolds talking—plotting?

Isobel didn’t know the answer. But the Noc never seemed to take the direct route where logic was concerned. Any logic other than his own, that is.

“Is . . . that it?” she asked. “Is that everything?”

“He said memories make better weapons than words.”

Again Isobel waited. And just when she thought her brother had finished, his muffled voice spoke again.

“And . . . there was one other thing.”

“What?” Isobel asked.

“He made me promise to tell you ‘I told you so.’”

Isobel looked down at her feet. She tried hard not to smile, but it was either that or cry. She allowed the smile, and it came sad and small.

There was no need to wonder what Pinfeathers meant by that statement. She already knew this was his way of ensuring he got the last word. Of leaving Isobel with a final proclamation that would underscore everything he had ever tried to warn her about.

Of course, like nearly everything he ever said, that phrase could hold a double and opposite meaning. “I told you so” might have been meant to underline his promise that he would still help her. Or to provide proof of the confession that he loved her.

Maybe he’d meant the phrase in every way possible.

She would never know. Not for sure.

Isobel took hold of the doorknob.

“Izzy?” she heard her brother say, and his voice sounded farther away now, fading out, as if he were floating off.

As Isobel drew a clear image of Varen in her mind, though, she knew that, in truth, she was the one who was phasing out, departing into another realm.