Beside him, a young doctor dressed in a black coat, the white collar of his shirt rumpled and sweat-stained, stooped over his patient.
“Edgar!” the doctor said as he wrung the struggling man’s pallid hand, oblivious to the otherworldly storm that churned above them. “Edgar, you are safe!”
Poe, Isobel thought with dull shock. This man twisting in agony before her . . . it was Poe.
Her eyes grew wider as they swept upward, toward the fog roiling directly over his bed. Sharp faces and snatching claws swam through the haze, surfacing to snap at their tormented victim like frenzied sharks.
Terrified, Poe whipped his head from side to side on his pillow as though the rest of him were bound by invisible fetters. His chest rose and fell with quick breaths. He moaned and ground his teeth, the veins on his broad forehead bulging, standing out like blue cords.
That was when Isobel saw it—the thin silver string that stretched between the vapors whirling above the bed and the center of Poe’s heaving chest.
The quivering strand seemed to be made of a luminous and ethereal light, as wispy as gossamer.
Poe arched against the bed, shouting, while streams of shadows began to pour out of the tempest. Swirling tendrils of black smoke invaded the room, shooting out in every direction. The streams floated through the air like coils of ink in water and glided across the floor, skimming the walls before forming into the wraithlike figures of the Nocs.
But these were not the Nocs she knew.
Though they had hollow, shell-like bodies, they did not possess the red tint to their quill-coarse hair and claws like Pinfeathers and the others. Instead their claws were a deep blue, their hair and teeth indigo.
Then Isobel realized that she did recognize one of them. It was the Noc from the marble crypt she had stumbled into while in the dreamworld, that same creature who had asked her help in piecing himself back together. Here he appeared complete. Intricate carvings lined the salt-white skin of his naked chest. Etchings of ships tossing amid tumultuous waters sailed across his porcelain torso, while the detailed image of a diamond-scaled sea serpent wound its way down the length of one arm.
Scrimshaw, Isobel thought, remembering his name in a flash.
The Noc moved to hover over Poe. Leaning down, he grabbed for Poe’s other hand, his claws digging into his wrist, threatening to puncture the skin. The creature grinned. Mocking the doctor, he began to whisper in Poe’s ear.
“You made the mistake of trying to outsmart yourself again, didn’t you?” he hissed. “Now look where it’s got us.” He pointed a claw toward the ceiling. “Trapped. Right in the eye of the storm.”
“Edgar,” spoke a voice from within the fog.
The first sign of white came in the form of veils, the gauzy, silken material fluttering amid the eddying maelstrom.
Dropping Poe’s hand and shrinking back, Scrimshaw dissolved into wisps with the clipped cry of “Teka-lili!”
The other Nocs followed suit with the same strange outburst. They shot away in different directions, slithering into the walls and between the floorboards like snakes.
Poe’s screaming intensified when Lilith’s face surfaced through the murk.
The clouds of darkness rolled back from her flawless features. Her white arms, encircled in twining veils, stretched out from the abyss.
Her hands fastened around the silver cord as though grabbing hold of a rope, and she began to use the swaying ethereal strand to pull herself from the vapors.
“Edgar,” she whispered again, her dark hair flying back into the tumult that raged behind her. “You are bound to me. You must return.”
“REYNOLDS!” Poe screamed again.
The utter despair in his voice shook Isobel from her shock-induced trance. She looked around, searching for something—anything she could do to stop the torment.
She spotted Pinfeathers, still in bird form, perched in the sill of the rain-spattered window. With a flap of his wings, he took flight, soaring across the room, circling to light on her shoulder. His movement from one corner of the room to the other, unnoticed by Poe, Lilith, or the doctor, reminded her that there was nothing she could do. Nothing at all. Because the events unfolding before her had already transpired.
Isobel felt her knees grow weaker with every inch Lilith managed to draw herself from the chasm. She could feel Pinfeathers switching restlessly from foot to foot, rankled as well by Lilith’s presence, even if her visage was only a shadow from the past. Isobel knew he wanted to leave and hide just as the other Nocs had done. But he remained with her. And in spite of everything he had ever done to her, she was grateful.
Poe, his teeth gritted, turned his head away from the demon clawing her way toward him. He clamped his eyes shut to block it out, his face transforming into a tight knot of resigned anguish.
Reynolds, she thought. Poe had been calling for Reynolds. Where was he? Why wouldn’t he come? Why hadn’t he stopped this?
“There is nothing here that can harm you,” Isobel heard the doctor insist. “Edgar, listen to me! It’s over. Do you hear me? Whatever has happened, it is over!”
For one instant, the world turned black. Isobel blinked, trying to regain her vision. She felt Pinfeathers’s talons clamp her shoulder more tightly. Then the blackness lifted and that was when she realized someone else had entered the room, walking through her.