Pinfeathers . . .
The Noc’s image was the first to spring forth from behind the previously locked door. Then came the memory of the rose garden and the chaos that had transpired there. From there, her thoughts reeled backward in fast rewind, and she recalled being in the graveyard where Poe was buried, and that that place had been the reason she’d come here, to Baltimore.
The tone of the heart monitor continued to sound its long and unceasing note, making it harder to think.
“Clear!” someone shouted again.
The doctor shocked her again, and Isobel saw her body convulse.
The sight made her wonder whether she wanted to continue remembering, and yet she knew she was dying. Or was she already dead? How? What had brought her here, to this point of destruction?
“We’ve lost her,” she heard someone announce.
Lost.
She’d been searching for something she’d lost. No, she recalled. Not something. Some one.
A vision of a pale face and black eyes flashed through her mind.
“Varen,” she whispered. Of course. She’d come all this way to find him, to face Reynolds in the graveyard, and to bring him home. But then, if she was here, where was he?
Had she been able to bring him back? She wasn’t sure. She couldn’t delve that deep.
Isobel looked up, distracted from her thoughts when she saw the nurses beginning to unhook the equipment from her lifeless form on the table.
She looked down at her astral body, searching for any sign of the silver cord, but now she could barely see the outline of her astral figure either. It was as if she was fading out, like a ghost.
But it couldn’t end like this, she thought. She had to know what had happened to him. At the very least, she had to know if she’d been able to bring him home. She couldn’t leave, she couldn’t go anywhere until she knew for sure.
“Stop,” she said to the man who’d begun to unroll a smooth, clean white sheet over her body.
“Stop!” she shouted again, and this time, as the lights above him and the equipment around him stuttered and fizzled, he did.
Isobel took her chance. She closed her eyes, using the split second of bought time to imagine the silver cord back into existence.
But it was too late, she was slipping backward, falling away. Dissolving. She opened her eyes to see the world whir into an indefinite blur.
The snap came like a punch to her gut.
Then her eyes flew open for a second time—her real eyes. She gasped, sucking in air as though she’d been drowning. She looked up and saw the sheet poised above her head and knew she was back in her body. Raising an arm, she pushed away the hands that held the white sheet just over her face.
The pain in her body came first, an intense surge of fire that raged like lava through her veins.
But it could not compare with what followed after.
A wail rose up from her depths. It left her as an inhuman cry.
Finally, she remembered everything.
Epilogue
He walked into the rose garden, passing from the woodlands through the open doorway.
With slow steps, Varen made his way toward the silent fountain.
Beneath his boots, bits of broken Noc and scattered shards popped and crumbled. All around, the fragments lay strewn like smashed artifacts.
Pieces of me, he thought.