Someone snickered.
“Please,” Isobel said, spinning to search the shadows again. “No more tricks. No more games. If it’s really you . . . then help me. Help me find him. Help me find both of you.”
“If it’s really you,” the voice whispered, its nearness causing her skin to prickle, “you’ll know where to look. You always do.”
A hand stroked her hair, claws clicking as they grazed her shoulder.
She snapped her head to the right, but still, there was no one. Even the empty limb had vanished.
Behind her there came a quiet click followed by a low creak, and, turning, she saw that one of the tall double doors had eased ajar.
Her gaze trailed up the slim black crack to where, positioned at the top of the door frame in an extension of its decorative molding, the back-lit bust of the chamber’s Grecian warrior woman held the appearance of slumbering.
Isobel remembered that the statue hadn’t been sleeping when she’d been here before, though. Nor had it so closely resembled her, with its hair no longer tightly coiled but straight, falling long to rest around bare shoulders.
“Issssobel.”
Feet sinking into the thick carpet, heels trailing the dusty residue of her last nightmare, Isobel approached the beckoning call that had come from the open slit between doors—and whatever new horror waited beyond.
She paused in front of the gap and, peering up at the bust one more time, drew strength from the warrior’s image, from the suggestion of courage it gave.
Then, as she watched the sculpture’s smooth face, a thin crimson split appeared on one alabaster cheek. Blood seeped from the wound, blazing bright.
A phantom pain emanated from Isobel’s own mirroring scar.
She ignored it, though, and taking one knob in each hand, she pushed the doors apart.
12
Phantom Chased
Darkness waited for her in the long, silent hall.
Heavy chandeliers floated above untethered, their underbellies dripping shards of crystal.
The ominous, rolling presence of the smoke ceiling alerted Isobel that she was back in Varen’s Gothic palace, though now she wondered if she’d ever left its boundaries.
She leaned into the hall and glanced left. A pair of violet velvet curtains framed a high wooden archway that led into a joining corridor.
Craning her neck right, toward the opposite end of the hall, she squinted through the gloom—and started. Someone was there, peeking at her from behind a matching pair of curtains midway down.
Isobel withdrew fast into the purple chamber. Waiting a beat, she risked a second glance around the jamb.
The same figure moved in time with her, the stranger’s straight blond hair draping long, just like hers . . . leading Isobel to realize she wasn’t viewing a long corridor at all.
It was a short hall. One that terminated in—a mirror?
Venturing into the center of the passage, she faced her reflection, frowning in confusion. Because she knew she shouldn’t have a reflection. Not as long as she was here in astral form. Not as long as she was dreaming.
With cautious steps, Isobel started toward the image of herself. Taking in the details of her own dust-coated figure, she tilted her cheek slightly to one side to ensure that her reflection shared her scar. It did. She drifted closer before stopping a few feet away.
The image in the mirror matched her movements—her stillness—perfectly.
Until it winked.
Isobel blinked in surprise.
Smiling, her duplicate whirled—and ran.