The Nightmare Affair (10 page)

The lightbulb in a nearby lamp exploded.

“Nice one.”

I scowled at Eli. It was his fault my magic was on supercharge again and that I was too dizzy to obtain the proper level of concentration required for the spell. “Didn’t anybody tell you not to touch me when I’m dream-walking?”

“Well, yes, but they didn’t say why.”

I rolled my eyes. “Typical. Leave it to you to break the rules.”

He stood up. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Before I could answer, he started grinning. “You can’t stay in the dream if I touch you, can you?”

Too furious to speak, I turned around, only to crash into Lance standing just beyond the doorway to the bedroom. I grabbed my nose, which had struck his ridiculously hard shoulder, my eyes watering.

“That was quite a show,” Lance said. “Do you straddle all your victims even after they’re awake, or is it something special you reserve for Eli?”

Heat burst over my body, turning my skin as red as my hair. I pushed Lance out of the way and made a beeline for the door. I sprinted down the hallway and didn’t stop running until I reached my dorm room and locked the door behind me.

Then I slumped onto the sofa, taking a moment to wallow in misery as visions of the ridicule I would face tomorrow played out in my brain.

When I finally got tired of feeling sorry for myself, I stood and tried to shrug off the worry. I wanted to go to bed, but I remembered Lady Elaine’s insistence that I complete a dream entry as soon as a session ended. Considering how badly the rest of the night had gone, I didn’t want to piss off the old woman. Lance and Eli might be able to make my social life hell, but I had a feeling Lady Elaine could do a lot worse.

Sighing, I walked over to the desk where the eTab sat in its docking station beside my desktop computer. I opened it to the dream journal, typed a quick entry, and hit send. Then I pressed the home button and was about to put the eTab to sleep when I noticed the instant message app blinking at me. Only one person would IM here.

I opened a message from a user called OracleGirl: “Did the bird look like this?”

Below the message was a drawing of a bird that bore a striking resemblance to what I’d seen.

“Yes,” I typed back. “But the one in the dream had black feathers instead of red. What kind of bird is it?”

Lady Elaine took a long time responding. “Phoenix.”

Huh. I’d heard of them before, but I’d never seen one. They were as rare as unicorns and usually lived in the most remote places, far away from the eyes of ordinaries and magickind alike. Lady Elaine’s interest in the bird made me uneasy. I was on the verge of asking the oracle what it meant when her next message derailed me.

“Why did your dream-session end so early?”

I groaned. I hadn’t planned on telling anybody about Eli booting me from the dream. The last thing I wanted was to get a reputation for being a narc. But I didn’t see a way out of it short of lying—not such a good idea with an oracle—so I told her what happened.

“I see,” Lady Elaine responded when I finished. “Don’t worry. I’ll have a talk with Eli in the morning.”

Awesome. Couldn’t wait to see the results of that one.

7

The Diary

Eli wasn’t at breakfast the next day. I got to enjoy that fact for all of two seconds. Then I made the mistake of walking by Lance’s table with my tray in my hand and saw him reenacting my fall from last night.

I heard him say, “Yeah, she totally wrecked our room. Spilt soda all over the place. The girl’s psycho, I’m telling you.”

I took a step toward him, planning to knock him out of his chair, then pour milk on him for good measure.

Selene put a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t bother.”

She was right, and I knew it. The Will wouldn’t let me hit him. I contemplated using Mr. Ankil’s snatch-and-smack trick, but I hadn’t practiced it yet, and Lance wasn’t carrying his wand, just the stupid joker playing card he liked to fiddle with whenever he was bored, weaving it in between his fingers like he was some kind of card shark.

I’d once asked Selene what the deal was with the card, and she explained that Lance was obsessed with the Joker from Batman. In an ordinary high school, he would’ve been ridiculed for this behavior, but not at Arkwell. Most magickind teenagers were fanatics about ordinary pop culture. Almost everybody was a Comic-Con–attending, play-dress-up fan boy. And he had the nerve to make fun of
me
. Go figure.

I spent the rest of breakfast doing my best to ignore the laughs coming from behind me. I decided this was how I would live my life from here on out—pretending like the bad stuff wasn’t happening.

But I found out later that you couldn’t pretend something didn’t exist when it was staring you in the face. Or in my case, when it came up behind me in the hallway and closed my locker door while I wasn’t looking. I supposed I was lucky Lance hadn’t shut it on my fingers.

“Thanks, you jackass,” I said, glaring.

He grinned at me like a cat that knows it’s got the mouse cornered. He had bright green eyes, light brown hair, and a wide mouth, a bit like the Joker’s, actually. Still, he was handsome enough I had no trouble understanding why Selene had once dated him. “Anytime, sweetheart.” He leaned against the adjacent locker, arms crossed, head cocked sideways, and reeking of attitude.

“Don’t you have something better to do?” I said, reentering the combination. “Like, entertaining your little friends some more? I know. You could do something
really
spectacular this time like pat your head and rub your tummy. Or walk and chew gum. That is, if you think you can manage it.”

“No thanks. I’d rather sit here and look at you. It gives me so much
pleasure
.”

“Yep, I get that
all
the time.” I wrenched my locker door open, trying to whack him in the face with it. That would’ve given
me
loads of pleasure. The Will might restrict direct physical violence, but accidents happened.

Lance dodged the strike easily, and before I could stop him, he closed the door again.

“Would you quit it? Seriously, I’ve known cockroaches more mature than you.”

He leaned toward me close enough I could smell the musky scent of his shampoo. It was a surprisingly pleasant smell from such a rotten guy. “You could always report me like you did Eli. Then maybe I could spend the morning in the principal’s office and get an awesome lecture on proper dream etiquette, too.”

So that was what this was about. I should’ve known. I almost apologized, then remembered who I was talking to. I felt bad I’d gotten Eli in trouble, but he deserved the apology more than this creep. “Go away. You’re not worth the effort.”

“Oh, baby, you have no idea what effort I’m worth.” Lance made a rude gesture with his hips.

I ignored him and opened my locker a third time, keeping my hand on it so he couldn’t shut it again.

“Leave her alone, Lance,” Selene said, coming up behind him. Her expression was cool, and her voice held a sharp edge.

Lance flashed a mischievous smile at her. “Or what? You’ll break up with me and go sit at the losers’ table again? Put on a ball cap and act like a guy? Right. Because that was such an effective punishment last time.”

If sarcasm were butter, you could’ve spread him over toast. I could tell his words had hurt Selene. The sparkle in her eyes wasn’t from an overabundance of happy.

Lance made a kissing gesture at her then turned and strode away. I was so furious I wanted to hit him. I wanted it so badly, I almost saw myself doing it.

Then Lance flinched as if struck. He cupped the back of his head and spun around. “What the hell? Who did that?”

When no one answered him, he glowered at me before stalking off. The back of his neck was as bright as a cherry lollipop. I focused on it, this time actively engaging my telekinesis to try and do it again. I felt the magic leave me and then … nothing. The force of the spell simply evaporated, absorbed into The Will like always.

Selene looked at me, her violet eyes wide. “Did
you
do that?”

I frowned. “I’m not sure.” Only that wasn’t entirely true. It felt sort of like how I’d made that Milky Way appear in Bethany Grey’s dream, imagination instead of thought. But I’d had such vengeful thoughts hundreds of times before without any results. Somebody else must’ve done it.

I looked around, half-expecting to see my mother. She said she was going to play bodyguard, but she was nowhere in sight.

I noticed Mr. Marrow standing in the doorway to the teacher’s lounge, staring at me with a peculiar expression on his face. He must’ve seen what happened. My stomach sank as I recognized that look, shame washing over me. It lasted only a second before his usual, kind smile came to his face, but I knew that a moment before he’d been afraid. Of me. I’d seen others give similar looks to my mom whenever she did something she shouldn’t be able to do.

I smiled back, then turned around, trying not to think about it anymore. Since the day she’d left me and Dad, I’d promised myself I wouldn’t grow up to be like my mother.

Maybe that was easier said than done.

*   *   *

When I arrived at history class a few hours later, Mr. Marrow acted normal toward me, which was a relief. I wanted to ask him about Keepers, and I figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask him about phoenixes, too. The brief time I’d spent researching them this morning before school hadn’t told me much. Most of the articles seemed fixated on the immortality of the phoenix, the way they died and rose again from the ashes. Legend said that if a magickind was able to make a phoenix their familiar it would transfer some of its immortal powers to them. I didn’t know much about familiars other than that it was a magical bond between a magickind and an animal where the animal became a sort of magical servant. But I understood why people would want a phoenix as one. Lots of famous magickind had gone on quests to capture one for that very reason, although none had ever succeeded as far as I could tell.

I didn’t have a clue what the phoenix meant in Eli’s dream. The most obvious interpretation was that something or someone was going to be reborn, only I couldn’t see how that fit with Rosemary’s murder. Maybe the phoenix represented an upcoming event unrelated to her death. Or maybe it meant nothing at all. The whole thing was beyond frustrating, like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle in a pitch-black room.

I didn’t get a chance to talk to Marrow. When class ended, he disappeared out the door ahead of everybody else. I hoped it was because he had an important lunch date and not that he was avoiding me.

When school ended for the day, I came back to his classroom. The door stood ajar, but I knocked anyway.

“Come in,” Marrow called.

Trying not to be nervous, I marched straight to his desk.

“Oh, hello, Dusty,” said Marrow. “You weren’t who I was expecting.”

“Sorry, I was just hoping to talk to you.”

“Oh? What about?”

I adjusted the strap of my backpack. “I thought you might be able to help me with this dream-seer stuff.”

“I see.”

“I’ve got all sorts of questions.”

“Such as?”

“I heard you and Lady Elaine talking about Keepers, and she told me that the spell was guarding something, but she didn’t say what. I was hoping you could tell me.”

Marrow leaned back in his chair and tented his fingers in front of him. “Why do you
need
to know what the spell is guarding?”

The question took me off guard. I supposed I
wanted
to know mostly out of curiosity, but I sensed that wouldn’t be a good enough answer. Then the reason for why I
needed
to know came to me. “I think it will help me identify the killer.”

“How so?”

“Because the type of object it is might point to the type of person who’d want it.”

Marrow smiled, a pleased glint in his eyes. “Very good. But I’m not sure I’m the one who should tell you. It’s a sensitive subject.”

I grimaced, unsurprised by his hesitation. “So Lady Elaine said.”

Marrow chuckled. “Yes, she can be quite a stickler for rules. She—” He broke off as someone entered the classroom. I looked toward the door and saw it was the boy I’d met in the library on Monday.

“Hey,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

Paul grinned as he walked toward us. “Mr. Marrow is helping me with my college admission essay.”

“Oh, yeah? Where to?”

He looked a little embarrassed. “MIT.”

“For real?” I couldn’t keep the surprise from my voice. A lot of magickind decided to attend an ordinary college after graduating rather than go to one of the four international magickind universities, but I knew there weren’t many of us smart enough in ordinary classes to make it into a college as prestigious as MIT.

“It’s only an application. No guarantee of admission,” said Paul.

“He’s being modest.” Marrow stood and came around the desk. “Our Mr. Kirkwood here is quite brilliant with computers and other ordinary technologies.”

Well, that explained his fascination with my eTab, but I was surprised to learn his last name was Kirkwood. They were one of the most prominent witchkind families around, on par with the Rathbones. He hadn’t struck me as the politician’s-kid type.

“That’s fantastic,” I said. “I’m impressed.”

“Yes,” said Marrow. “But I’m afraid we do have a meeting now. Perhaps you and I can finish our conversation later. I’ll consider your request and get back to you.”

“Oh. Sure. Thanks.” I glanced at Paul. “Well, I guess I’ll see you around.”

“Definitely.”

I left the classroom as quickly as I could, absurdly happy at his friendliness and that I’d managed a whole conversation with a cute boy without being a klutz. It was a nice change.

I hurried across campus toward my dorm. The clouds hung low overhead, bloated and gray with the promise of rain. Thunder rumbled nearby.

By the time I reached Riker Hall ten minutes later, I was soaking wet and wishing I’d taken the tunnels. But I hadn’t wanted to be down there by myself this late in the day, not with a killer on the loose. The tunnels at Arkwell weren’t like those on other campuses. Sure, they served the same purpose of allowing people to get from any of the more than twenty buildings on campus without going outside, but they weren’t well-lit underground hallways. They were actual caves, dark and damp and with jagged walls and uneven floors. There were even canals running parallel to the walkways for merkind and naiads and other water types to use. In other words, there were lots of ways for a killer to do his business—drowning, head-bashing—and a lot of dark corners to do it in.