Oblivion

Did that mean, then, that there was no way to find him?

Isobel sank to sit on the step. Draping her arms on her propped knees, she let her head thud against the stone behind her, unable to accept that all her efforts had brought her here, to a point where her actions could only lead her in endless circles.

Combing through her memories, she considered the different ways she’d found Varen in the past.

During the masquerade party, she’d just kept searching. Pinfeathers had tried to stall her, transporting her into that fake reality. Reynolds had attempted to detour her too, but in the end, neither had succeeded in keeping her from him.

And Baltimore. After Isobel had entered the dreamworld through the tomb door in that churchyard, after she’d crossed into the rose garden, she’d been able to use the butterfly watch Danny had given her as a compass. The hands of the clock had pointed the way through the garden’s maze to where she’d found Pinfeathers waiting for her in Varen’s stead.

Isobel didn’t have the watch now, though. She didn’t have Pinfeathers, either.

Those last thoughts crashed hard over her, until with a sudden spark, Isobel realized that there was one thing she did have. Knowledge of the watch’s whereabouts. And even if its possessor was barely a part of reality, the watch itself remained as real as ever.

Pushing herself to her feet, Isobel shifted the image in her head from Varen to the key-chain timepiece her little brother had given her last Christmas. Closing her eyes, she took care to conjure every detail exactly as she remembered it, right down to its pink flip-open wings, its silver accents, and its yellow, needle-thin second hand.

A heavy clunk from far below echoed through the stairwell. Isobel opened her eyes.

Edging forward, maintaining contact with the wall through her fingertips, she peered down into the corkscrew spiral where, in the center of the blackness, a distant pinprick of light glinted like a coin.

As she watched it, the glowing point began to expand, growing wider into a shaft of light that shot up past her like a flashlight beam into the nothing overhead.

She began moving again, faster now. As she twined round and round, she glanced between the sloping path in front of her and the thickening beam that pierced the center of the stairwell.

When the shaft of light widened to bathe the outer rim of the steps, there came a low boom that Isobel felt through the soles of her shoes and the palm she held pressed to the wall.

A door must have opened below. Or the floor itself . . .

Whatever shift had just occurred, Isobel hoped that it meant she’d found the way out. Or that it had found her.

Before she could venture another glance over the edge, though, she saw the light beam waver, flickering in and out as if something had passed in front of it—a large something.

Quickly she moved back a step, battling a sick sense that down was no longer the direction she wanted to go. That it never had been. She waited, though, keeping a hand cemented to the wall, senses dialing to full alert as a soft clicking noise, like stone nicking stone, rebounded up to her.

Click. Tick. Clack.

Peeking over the edge again, Isobel’s stomach lurched with new terror.

Through an open porthole lay the expanse of a starless night sky.

The beam flickered again as wispy streams of clouds coasted swiftly between the unraveling hem of the tower and the source of the light—a pale-faced half-moon.

Steps loosened from the crumbling wall below, tumbling free like loose teeth from a broken jaw.

For whole seconds, Isobel could only gape in horror while the opening raced higher, climbing toward her, the spiral stairs fanning off like dominoes. Then, just before her own step could fly out from underneath her, Isobel jolted out of her shock.

Turning, she ran.

Legs burning, she fought to keep herself vertical as she darted up and up, around and around.

She stumbled, though, and, slamming onto the slabs as they loosened, scrambled forward on hands and knees. Pushing off from the steps as they flipped out from underneath her and into the sky, Isobel tilted her head back. When she caught sight of the upside-down stairs looping the walls, impulse took over. With no time to pray her plan would work, she jumped, aiming her shoulder at the wall.

Isobel connected with smooth stone, and instead of bouncing off, she rolled.

Tucking her arms in like she would for a stunt fall, Isobel flipped—until her sneakers met the set of steps that moments before had been overhead.

Gravity accompanied her on her switch, causing the world to invert with her, down becoming up and up down.

Descending once again, Isobel quickened her pace to a pell-mell run, while all around her, pieces of the upended stairwell continued to evacuate their structure, bricks and steps lifting to sail skyward, defying the gravity she’d so stupidly assumed had really been there.