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“I can tell you know what I’m talking about,” Darcy went on when Isobel didn’t reply. “And I know you saw me, too.”

“Excuse me, Darcy?”Advertisement

The man with the wavy hair—Bruce’s nephew—stepped out from beneath the tent. As he made his approach, hands stuffed in the pockets of his dress slacks, he gave Isobel and Gwen a quizzical half glance.

“Our flight leaves in just a few hours,” he said, stopping to check his wristwatch. “I hope you don’t mind my interrupting, but is it okay if we go ahead and take care of those papers while I’ve got you here? For the car . . . ?”

“Cue optimum bail time,” Gwen rasped, tugging hard on Isobel’s arm.

Isobel stayed put, fixated on Darcy.

“Now is fine,” Darcy said to the man, and just like that, she started away with him.

Isobel fought the urge to rush after them, knowing the car they were talking about had to be Varen’s Cougar.

Bruce must have left the Cougar to Varen in his will when Varen never returned for it. Without Varen here to claim it, however, she could only assume the car would transfer to his parents instead.

If Darcy had agreed to accept the car on Varen’s behalf, did that mean Varen’s father and stepmom were still waiting for him, expecting that he might stroll through the front door any day?

“Mrs. Nethers?” Isobel said.

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Darcy stopped, peering at Isobel from over her shoulder.

Hurrying forward, Isobel started to speak again but stalled, at a loss for what to say when there wasn’t any feasible way to explain all that had happened. Even if Darcy did suspect otherworldly forces, Isobel didn’t know how to affirm her suspicions with a stranger waiting and watching, listening in. She wasn’t sure how to tell Darcy who she was either. That she and Varen had been . . .

Her shoulders sank, the impulse to speak withering under that expectant stare.

But then Gwen bumped one of her arms, her bangles clinking as she handed Isobel a folded slip of well-worn paper that she would have recognized anywhere. It was the final note Varen had written her, the one Isobel had found secreted away in the pocket of his green mechanic’s jacket the night she’d learned that she’d left him behind, in the dreamworld.

Isobel had entrusted the note to Gwen just before Baltimore. And the small scrap of paper still remained her only tangible evidence that Varen had loved her.

Except . . . he didn’t anymore.

The scars she now bore, both the inner and outer, were her proof of that.

Isobel took the note, recalling the instructions she’d given Gwen along with it: that if Isobel failed to return from the dreamworld, Gwen should give the note to Varen’s stepmom.

Isobel had come home, but she’d done so alone. And that made the suggestion Gwen seemed to be offering, in producing the note at this moment, feel right.

So Isobel extended the paper to Darcy, who took it with slow, hesitant fingers. Isobel backed away again, pain squeezing the ruins of her heart.

“C’mon,” Gwen said. Slinging an arm around Isobel’s shoulders, she angled her away.

And as the sight of Darcy, the casket, and the white square of paper left her vision, Isobel felt the sudden lifting of an inward pressure she hadn’t realized was there.

Because giving up the note forced Isobel to accept the most difficult truth of all.

That the quiet, strange, brooding goth boy she’d fallen in love with over the span of a beautiful and terrifying October no longer existed. Just as Lilith had said.

That Varen would have been here, at the grave site. That Varen would have cared that she was too. He would have heard her out.

But he wasn’t there.

The boy who had composed the words written on that slip of paper was gone.

And he wasn’t ever coming back.

To avoid being seen pulling into Trenton’s main lot, Gwen chose a parking spot on the side street closest to the door they’d used to sneak out.

A pair of senior boys lounged against the building, the smoke from their cigarettes rising in coils. Their presence there meant the bell ending third period had already rung. Before Isobel could let herself out, however, the car door’s lock slid down with a harsh clack.

“Confession.”

Isobel turned her head and saw Gwen watching her with furrowed brow, one hand poised on her door’s lock panel.

“I totally read the note,” Gwen blurted.

Leaning back, Isobel let her head thud against her seat. Heat crawled up her neck and cheeks. “C’mon, Gwen. I mean, I sort of knew you would.” pqdm.com