“That’s not true.” Shaking her head, she clutched the lapels of his jacket, Varen’s old green mechanic’s jacket, which, like the pink ribbon, she had lost in the dreamworld—to the dreamworld. Pinfeathers must have found it. Did he want to hold on to it like he had the ribbon? To keep it because of what it represented?
Lost things found . . .
“You aren’t like that.”
“Recent history would suggest the contrary,” the Noc said.
Her eyes traced over his collar, where the top two buckles of his underlying jacket lay undone. Within, an impossible network of cracks netted his chest and throat. With the exception of the large piece plating the place where his heart would have been—its jagged edges poking just above the black fabric—the jigsaw collection contained no shard bigger than a small coin.
Aware that neither Scrimshaw nor Pinfeathers could have been responsible for their own reconstruction, Isobel found herself again wondering who had performed the task.
“What happened on the cliff wasn’t really you,” Isobel insisted. “You’re different than that. You’re both different. That’s why she wanted you. That’s why she—”
Snatching her by the wrist, Pinfeathers swung her around fast. The trees, his broken face, the sky and the road swam by in a colorless blur.
“She wants you,” he hissed.
One of his arms looped her waist, and the Noc pulled her snug against him. “But then,” he added, pressing cold lips to her ear, “don’t we all?”
Isobel held her breath. She fought against a shudder, but unlike during her initial encounters with the Noc, she had no urge to pull away from him or to try to jerk free.
He wouldn’t harm her. She knew that. And though she wasn’t sure how she could be so certain, it didn’t change the fact that on some intrinsic level, she was.
“So she knows now,” Isobel said, more to herself than to the Noc, “that I’m alive.”
“As well as she knows you were never dead.”
Isobel blinked. Frowning, she clutched the arm that encircled her waist.
“Wait,” Pinfeathers said, speaking in a monotone, feigning disbelief, “don’t tell us you bought oil from that old snake again. Really, cheerleader, you have no discernment. No ability to see things the way they really are. Otherwise, you might have seen me coming. All of this. Everyone else did.”
So Reynolds had lied to her. About Lilith thinking she was dead. But why? Even if she hadn’t fully believed him, that he was on her side, she’d wanted to. Desperately.
“What’s happening?” Isobel asked. “Tell me.”
“But you know what’s happening.”
She wanted to spin in his grip and face him. When she tried, though, he only squeezed her more tightly, forbidding the movement.
“Then tell me how to stop it,” she pleaded. “Tell me you know how.”
“First, you’d have to stop us.”
“I keep trying. But he—you won’t believe me.”
“Oh, we want to,” he said. “We do. But then, it would destroy what’s left of us to find out we were wrong. And with the pain already too much to bear, why not just go ahead and eliminate the guesswork? And everything else along with it.”
“It’s not going to help, is it?” she asked, her shoulders sagging. “That’s what you’re saying. I can’t prove anything to him, can I?”
“No,” he said, laughing again, “but trying sure stirred the hornet’s nest, now, didn’t it?”
She jerked her head toward him and, in her mind, something clicked with those words.
“Oh my God,” she breathed. “Reynolds. She sent him to find me. She wanted me to go into the veil. She knew I would try to make him believe. They both did. She knew how Varen would react. What he would do. She knew. She—”
“Doesn’t need you anymore, FYI,” Pinfeathers whispered in her ear, the drop in his voice causing her blood to freeze. “But how to get rid of you. How? How to lure you in close? How to hurt you inside and out? And keep you from fighting back?”
He nuzzled her neck, lips trailing to her shoulder.