Oblivion

Varen hurried forward to a descending set of steps flanked by two gilt candelabra, their pronged torches held aloft by the arms of two angels bearing Isobel’s features, their sightless eyes wide open.

Rushing past the statues, Varen took the stairs fast, rattling down them with Isobel in tow.

Glancing back at the angels, Isobel saw them turn their heads to watch them go as bleeding slits opened in unison on their cheeks.

Varen swung around the curve of the staircase, then halted, causing Isobel to collide with him.

Below, she saw what had made him stop.

A plain flight of steps descended to a cramped and familiar landing, one encased by tightly set walls.

Dead ahead, dark-paned windows showed Isobel and Varen’s reflections, their images pale and filthy, only just recognizable.

They were at school, at Trenton, in the exact stairwell where Reynolds had first appeared to Isobel that morning. In fact, they stood in the precise spot where he had stood, their forms now as disheveled and ash-dusted as his had been.

Isobel checked over her shoulder and saw only the door leading into the deserted third-floor hallway.

And yet, though the darkened windows reflected her and Varen, the stairway they showed was the grand and Gothic one they’d just left.

Then, through the dim glass, Isobel saw Lilith’s streaked form turn the corner to loom at their backs.

But she knew Lilith couldn’t have a reflection. And suddenly the truth hit her.

The windows, like the mirrors in the hall, were showing what lay on the other side, on the plane parallel to whichever world they currently occupied.

That meant that they really were in school, just as they’d really been in Isobel’s room moments ago. Somehow she and Varen had re-entered reality.

The worlds were blending. The merging that had nearly taken place on Halloween night, the collision Reynolds had warned her about from the beginning—it was happening now.

Or had it already?

No, Isobel thought. It couldn’t have. Otherwise, Lilith wouldn’t still need Varen. She wouldn’t have commanded him to remove the hamsa. The demon’s work wasn’t finished.

And that meant they still had time.

Taking the lead, Isobel tugged Varen after her as she charged down the stairs, past the window through which she saw Lilith pivot away from them.

Isobel didn’t stop to question why the demon would not try to follow them but tore around the next corner and down again, retracing with Varen the path she’d already taken once that day.

When their feet parted from the bottom step, though, the scene before them shifted once more. They halted to find themselves at another bottom step, one belonging to an ascending staircase, its steps wide and marble.

At the top of the landing, the twin angels they had passed before watched them still, their heads craned in the same positions as if they had known the whole time that Isobel and Varen would reappear soon enough.

But if they had run in a loop, ending up on the landing they’d just departed from, wouldn’t that mean . . . ?

Suddenly it dawned on Isobel why she’d seen Lilith revolve in place. Varen, it seemed, must have reached the same conclusion as well, because, yanking her forward, he started pell-mell up the steps.

Unable to keep herself from looking back, Isobel glimpsed the eerie pale light of the demon’s aureole in her periphery. Then, as Varen dragged her over the last step, beyond the angels, who swiveled their heads to keep the two of them in sight, she saw through the strands of her own straggly hair the demon climbing the stairs after them, seeming to float.

They backed away, and Isobel wanted to run again. But if all the stairways were similarly looped, threaded through the fabric of reality, then what route wouldn’t take them straight back to this point?

To her.

Looking left, Isobel saw the gold-framed arch and the hall of mirrors. Except now the hall no longer terminated in the woodlands, the place where she’d first thought to retreat. Rather, the walls faded into those of Trenton’s north hall.

When Isobel looked right, she scowled to see the familiar set of blue double doors that led to the gym.

Before she could change direction and start toward them, however, Isobel’s back met with something solid.

With a low and scraping sssssskkkkrrrrrr, she felt that something move.

Whirling, Isobel found herself trapped in Reynolds’s bleak and steady black stare, his dark form uncloaked, his sharp face unmasked.

His twin swords unsheathed.

35

Deadlocked

Reynolds elbowed Isobel, hard, and sent her sprawling.

She yelped and, skidding backward on the polished floor, slid to a halt in time to see metal flash.