Of course, the scent was one Isobel knew well, and so it was possible, she mused, that she was simply more attuned to it.
Now, the moldering smell carried her mind backward through time, transporting her to the moments she’d spent locked in the arms of a friend she both loved and hated. Moments that had proved to be Reynolds’s last.
Had he planned it that way?
Oh, who knew. . . .
Wherever Reynolds was, though—and she had to believe he was somewhere—Isobel knew he would be glad about being there. Freed, along with the other Lost Souls. For dying, she knew—dying for good—had been part of the plan.
His and Varen’s.
Maybe she would see Reynolds again one day. Then again, maybe not, she thought, squinting when a spark of sunlight lit the gravestone’s polished surface, causing the name chiseled there to blend out of sight.
“Hey,” came a voice to her left, followed by a familiar clank of bracelets. “You okay?”
Having been so lost in her thoughts, Isobel hadn’t heard anyone come up behind her.
“Yeah,” she said, responding too quickly. “No,” she amended, lifting a hand to cover her face as more hot tears streamed forth.
Stupid, stupid. She so should have known better than to wear makeup.
“Here,” Gwen said, plunging a hand into her patchwork purse and retrieving a wad of tissues, which she handed to Isobel. “They’re clean, just a little crumby. Graham cracker mishap.”
“Thanks,” Isobel said, and, swallowing, forced the upsurge of emotion back down. Though she blotted her face, she knew by the streaks of black on the tissue that the damage had been done. “So much for waterproof. . . .”
“You do know they make that stuff out of bat poop, don’t you?”
“I do now.” Isobel sighed.
“Where’s Blondie?” Gwen asked.
“Should be here any minute. Where’s Mikey?”
“Told him to wait in the car,” Gwen said, jerking her head over one shoulder. “He still doesn’t know . . . the details. Really, though, I was there and I still don’t know the details. At any rate, I thought it would be better that way. Keep ’em in the dark for the time being. Given everything that . . . well . . . you know.”
Isobel nodded again. “I know.”
Glancing up, she met Gwen’s gaze full-on for the first time. Gently she brushed aside her friend’s bangs, eyeing the fading welt Reynolds had dealt her when he’d knocked her out cold. Though Isobel had caught hell from Gwen about the whole episode, not to mention a nice long tirade about being gullible, she had to admit she was glad Reynolds had made the executive decision to put Gwen out for the count. Otherwise, they might not both be standing here now.
“What did you tell Mikey about your head?” Isobel asked.
“Same thing I tell everybody else. That he shoulda seen the other guy.”
Isobel grinned in spite of herself, but her smile fell at the sound of a slamming car door. She whirled around.
Gwen’s gaze followed hers to the tall and lean blond figure now striding toward them through the yard of stones, a small plastic-wrapped bouquet in one hand.
“I don’t care what color he dyes it.” Scrounging through her purse again, Gwen drew out what—after a double take—Isobel saw was a sleeve of chocolate cookies. “I mean, you can take the blond out of the goth, but you can’t take the goth out of the blond,” Gwen went on, biting down on one of the cookies. “Mark my words, these Dark Knight tendencies will prevail through the years. He’ll probably sleep in the closet, too. Upside down, arms crossed. But the good news is that the two of you are going to have some damn beautiful golden-haired babies.”
“Appropriate,” Varen said as he drew to a stop beside Isobel.
“You know what they say,” Gwen said with a shrug, stuffing the rest of the cookie into her mouth. “Two uglies make a pretty.”
Isobel’s smile returned. Her eyes lifted to Varen’s, and after a beat, he offered her a subdued smile of his own.
He looked so very different this way. The same and yet . . . not. It would be a long while before Isobel got used to seeing him with his hair shortened to half its previous length, dyed its natural color—only a shade lighter than her own—and styled with a shorter swoop that didn’t obscure his gaze. But she thought his eyes, green and bright, looked somehow warmer now than when his hair had been black.
“Should you really be driving this soon?” Gwen asked. She aimed a thumb at the Cougar, which Varen had left parked to one side of the winding road, beneath the drooping branches of a naked willow tree. “I mean, I get that there wasn’t any bone or muscle damage, but I thought the doc told you the sling was supposed to stay on for at least two weeks. I just sustained a fracture, and I had to wear mine fo—”