The Nightmare Charade (31 page)

“You're skipping practice?”

“Sure.”

“But aren't tryouts this Saturday?”

He shrugged. “Missing one won't make a difference at this point, and it's a small price to pay if it means saving your mom.”

I kissed him then, but I hated the waiting, hated feeling idle when there was so much on the line.

Not that Eli was the only thing I was waiting on. The last I heard from Paul, he still wasn't quite done with my ID. I had no idea what was taking so long, but I knew better than to ask. It would involve some technical explanation that would make little sense to my technology-challenged brain.

But at least Eli and I had a dream-session that night. With Bollinger sacked, it seemed Lady Elaine would be taking her place as my dream-session escort.

“Temporarily,” she said when she greeted me at the door. She waved me out into the hallway. “How are things going with Deverell?”

I glanced sideways at her as we walked along, debating what to share. My mom's warning about not trusting the people around Lady Elaine had come back to me in full force recently. “He didn't tell you?”

“No. He's under instructions not to discuss anything with anyone, including me.”

Deciding the risk was worth whatever insight she might be able to share, I said, “We tried psychometry on it yesterday and it worked.”

“That's good. What did you find out?” She watched me sidelong, her expression anxious.

“Marrow's worn the same face all his life … er … lives, I mean.”

Lady Elaine pursed her lips. “I can't say I'm surprised to hear that. It explains why there are no recorded images of him. Even now the few photos we have of him from his time teaching here show only a blurred form where he should be.”

I shuddered, picturing it. It was like some kind of hybrid vampire thing, only with photographs instead of mirrors. Fitting, considering his immortal gig. “And the black phoenix, it wasn't always black. It was all red and gold in the beginning.”

“Yes, but what about Marrow's resurrection? How long did it take him to come back? How did he do it?”

By now we'd reached the foyer, and I offered my customary wave at Frank and Igor before answering. “Impossible to tell. The last time took him eleven months, but he had the help of the ‘Great Oak' whatever that is.”

Lady Elaine came to a full stop and swung to face me. “The Great Oak is like…” She paused and glanced around, checking we were alone. She must've decided Frank and Igor didn't count as she continued, “It's like the Death's Heart. It restores life.”

I inhaled, taken aback. The idea of a soul-sucking tree seemed too perverse to be true. I liked trees. They were big and old and alive. They shouldn't be evil. “Restores life? Does it steal it in the same way?”

Lady Elaine started walking once more. “No. Its power came from within itself. It gave of its own life to restore it in others. And it couldn't bring back the dead, but it could heal even the most mortal of wounds if the person was brought to it in time.”

“That's more like it,” I muttered, falling into step beside her.

Lady Elaine nodded, more to herself than me. “If Marrow needed the Great Oak to restore himself to full life back then, maybe he needs the Death's Heart to do the same now.”

A tremor went through my stomach. “It makes sense. Only I don't think he needed it. From what I heard, it just helped him recover faster.”

“Or perhaps his regenerative power is weakening. You said it was the last time he went through it, yes?”

“Right…” I trailed off, thinking hard. “But why go to all the trouble using the Death's Heart? Isn't the Great Oak still out there? Does it still work?”

Lady Elaine's nostrils flared. “It was destroyed during the Second World War. Magickind forces working with the Axis powers cut it down and burned it, roots and all.”

I stumbled at this news, shock turning me clumsy. “How … why … why would they do that?”

Lady Elaine's expression turned grave. “To keep the magickind supporting the Allies from using its power.”

Several swearwords went through my mind. Why did the poor tree have to pay for some stupid war? “I didn't think magickind took sides in ordinary wars.”

“Magic or ordinary, we're all people. And people always pick sides,” Lady Elaine said. “We can't help what's in our nature.”

We walked along in silence for a couple of minutes, both of us lost in our own thoughts and worries. I kept picturing the Great Oak, sadness squeezing my chest at the knowledge that it had been destroyed. It was such a waste. So wrong. The Great Oak sounded like the opposite of the Death's Heart—its counterbalancing force. I wondered if another would ever appear. Trees were born, weren't they? It could happen again.

I turned my head toward Lady Elaine. “Are there other places like the Great Oak still around?”

A cool wind blew across the deserted campus toward us, and Lady Elaine quickened her pace, pulling her coat tighter around her body. “Not many, I'm afraid. Most of them have been lost, destroyed, or have gone dry.”

“Gone dry?” I hugged myself, wishing I'd thought to bring a jacket.

“Yes. Many of those places are like wells. They store magic, but not necessarily forever. Sometimes they break and the magic seeps out. But more often they go dry. They get used up by magickind and become no more than ordinary objects.”

I squeezed my hands into fists, hating the reality of this, even though it was something I saw happening all the time—and not just from magickind. Ordinaries were twice as bad. When I was little there'd been a wood behind my house, but it had been torn down last year to make room for a housing development. They hadn't been magical trees, but it hardly mattered. Especially considering all the empty houses there were around town. Why build new when the old were still good?

With an effort, I pushed the depressing subject away and refocused. “What where some of the other places?”

“Oh, there were healing springs. Mystical caves.”

Her words struck a chord inside me. “And all of them are about restoring health and life?”

“Yes, more or less.”

My head spun, the memories Bellanax had shared taking on a deeper meeting. So many of the places where Marrow had been resurrected were magical like the Great Oak was magical—restorative, healing places.
Holy places,
in the most fundamental sense. There was the Temple of Athena, the pyramids. It seemed that Marrow had been using these things to help speed up his resurrection from the beginning. I supposed that confirmed that he was behind the Death's Heart theft. Or more accurately, someone working for him was behind it, one of his many followers.

It has to be Corvus
.… Or at least he was involved somehow—the Borromean brand proved it.

But how to fish for information about him without rousing suspicions? “The last thing the sword showed us,” I said, taking a peek at Lady Elaine to gauge how well she was listening, “was a group of men getting ready to attack Marrow. I'm pretty sure it was right before Nimue locked him in a dream. But what was weird about it was that four of the men were Nightmares.”

I deliberately stopped speaking, hoping she would offer some insight, but she just kept walking, her gaze focused ahead.

“And even more strange,” I continued, “was that all the men were branded with Borromean rings on their chests.” I indicated the area, pressing a finger to my breastbone. “Right here. Have you ever seen anything like that?”

Lady Elaine considered the question. “I'm familiar with the Borromean rings, of course, but I don't know of any brands like you're describing.”

I frowned at her in surprise. I didn't think she was lying, but why didn't she know about Corvus? Maybe Valentine was keeping secrets.
Don't trust anyone,
my mom's warning came back to me.

We walked on in silence. With the conversation at an apparent end, my mind soon began to wander. Memories of Lady Elaine's vision came pressing in, digging,
clawing
at me.

It only worsened when we arrived at Eli's dorm. He was already asleep on the sofa, on his back, just like in the vision. Seeing him that way, I was afraid even to touch him. It was an automatic fear, like being afraid of a growling animal or a fire burning out of control.

“Go on.” Lady Elaine prodded me forward when I just stood there frozen.

I turned my gaze on her.
You did this to me,
I thought. I wanted to say it aloud, to hurl it at her like a curse. But I couldn't. If I did, she would think she'd won, that she'd convinced me to turn my back on my feelings for Eli. She hadn't. I wouldn't. We would fight our way through this like we did everything else.

Despite the quake in my stomach, I turned away from her, climbed on top of Eli, and entered his dreams.

 

23

Tryouts

His dream quickly became a nightmare. Lady Elaine's vision followed me into it. It was already there, waiting when I arrived. I was on the barge again, drifting along the dark still water. Voices shouted ahead of me, on the other side of the curtained platform. Stepping past it, I saw Eli standing across from another doppelg
ä
nger of me. He and the doppelg
ä
nger faced each other with wand and sword drawn. My other-self trembled with fear, tears on her cheeks; Eli trembled with fury. The look on his face made the real me want to start crying, too.

“Eli,” I said, waving at him. “Eli! I'm over here. This is a dream, Eli. Snap out of it.” But he didn't hear me, completely fixated on the fight.

Unable to bear it a moment longer I closed my eyes and willed the dream to change. The dream-seer curse had no place here, no bearing. We had more important things to uncover.
Corvus,
I thought.
The Death's Heart, my mom, the Great Oak, Marrow
. I willed the thoughts to translate into the dream, to manipulate into signs and symbols we could follow.

But when I opened my eyes again, nothing had changed. Eli was still engaged in the fight with his dream version of me. My doppelg
ä
nger had lowered the sword, opening herself up for the attack.

“Stop crying. Fight me. Fight me!” Eli's voice seemed to shake the entire ship, the dream vibrating with his anger.

“Eli!” I shouted. I walked over to him as close as I dared without getting ejected from the dream. But it did no good. He was lost to me, caught in the fever grip of the dream emotions.

He raised his wand, pointed. “
Peiran!
” he screamed.

The attack spell struck the other me in the chest, and she fell backward, landing hard. The sword skidded out of her hands. Eli went for it, but the moment he picked it up, the sword transformed into a knife. The blade was made of bone, slick and white and deadly sharp. He turned the knife over, holding it like a cleaver as he knelt over her prone body.

“Eli, stop!”

He plunged the knife down. It sank into the other Dusty's chest hilt deep. My doppelg
ä
nger and I screamed at the same time. Terror, hurt, shock, it was a harmony of pain.

The sound of it finally broke the dream's hold over Eli. Or maybe it was the feel of hot sticky blood pooling over his fingers, or the sight of my doppelg
ä
nger's face first turning pale and then blank as the life seeped out of her.

“Dusty?” he said, his gaze confused as he peered from her to me. He stood up, wrenching the knife free.

“It's me,” I said. “I'm real. She's just a dream thing.” I pointed to the doppelg
ä
nger, and then summoning all the magic and force of will I possessed, I vanished her from the dream. The only sign of what had happened was the blood still staining Eli's fingers and the knife in his hand. Eli stared down at it for a moment.

When he looked up, tears stood in his eyes. They weren't falling, but they were there. They made him look broken, defeated. The sight hurt me worse than anything else so far.

“I didn't mean it, Dusty.” He shook his head as if trying to convince himself as much as me. “It was just the dream. It had me.”

“I know.” I tried to smile but failed. “It's not your fault. I was thinking about Lady Elaine's vision when I entered the dream. I think I brought it in with me.”

Eli's mouth closed, his jaw clenching. A vein pulsed in his temple. “It's not real. The curse isn't real. This won't ever happen.”

I nodded, even though it sounded like he was trying as much to convince himself of this truth as to give me comfort.

He dropped the knife then stepped closer to me. “I will never hurt you.”

“I know,” I said again, my voice firm and steady. I believed him. He was real and he was here. Lady Elaine's vision was just haze. We would see our way out of it together.

I leaned toward him, wanting to kiss him, overwhelmed with the urge. I stopped myself just in time. We couldn't do that here. And although I knew it was just a limitation of the dream, the separation cut deep. It cut right to the heart.

*   *   *

Things were tense at breakfast the next morning, the dream and vision lingering in both our minds. Eli and I sat side by side, our bodies touching casually here and there, but our inner selves remained distant. I hated it, wishing I could do something to make it better. But only time would help—and getting things back to normal.
As soon as we find my mom, we'll be okay
, I told myself over and over again.

The waiting became more tortuous than ever. I spent every spare moment going over the police files without turning up anything. The day crawled by, seconds imitating minutes, minutes imitating hours. When my session with Deverell finally started, I could barely concentrate, not knowing if Eli could be talking to Corvus right this moment.