The Nightmare Dilemma (Arkwell Academy) (8 page)

I choked as an image of me in an exotic stripper getup flashed in my mind. Water dribbled out of my mouth, and I wiped it away. “Ugh, don’t describe it like that.”

Selene huffed. “And I can’t believe you agreed to it.”

“Like I had a choice with so much at stake. You know how dangerous he is. How dangerous all of Marrow’s supporters are.”

Selene gave a little shiver. “I guess you’re right.”

Wanting to change the subject, I told her about last night and all the stuff with Britney. When I got to the part about seeing Eli in the dream, she didn’t react at all. I nudged her with my elbow. “Don’t you think that’s a little odd?”

Selene shrugged. “Weird, maybe, but I definitely don’t think he had anything to do with it if that’s what you’re suggesting.”

I picked up my napkin and wiped the salt from my lips. “Even after what happened in English?”

“Oh, come on, Dusty.” She wrinkled her nose. “This is Eli you’re talking about. He would never hurt Britney, and we know he’s not a Marrow supporter. His presence was just coincidence. I bet Britney has a crush on him.”

“She’s got a funny way of showing it.” I popped a fry into my mouth and chewed dejectedly. The idea of Britney liking Eli hadn’t occurred to me, but it was definitely possible. Eli’s attractiveness transcended all the kinds. I’d even seen Irene Stark checking him out once, the same person who believed so strongly in the superiority of her kind that she often refused to talk to someone if they weren’t a fellow fairy.

“It’s not as if most of us can control what we dream about the way you can,” Selene said. The note of reproach in her tone distracted me from my jealous musings about Eli.

I supposed she had a point. But then the image of that plinth and the unreadable letters rose unbidden in my mind. She was wrong about my ability to control my dreams, at least lately. I shuddered, remembering the deep, empty feeling inside me from the need to reach that plinth and discover those hidden words. I felt it even now.

Fortunately, a distraction appeared a moment later as Lance Rathbone walked into the cafeteria. He paused, surveyed the crowd, and then approached our table. Right away, I could tell there was something off about him. His clothes were in disarray, one pant leg stuck halfway inside a black kneesock while the opposite leg sported an untied shoe and a blue sock. One side of his shirt hung lower than the other from the misaligned buttons.

I looked up and saw his face was puffy and that two dark circles rimmed his cheekbones. His light brown hair lay plastered against his skull on one side and stuck straight out on the other. He peered down at Selene, blinking a couple of times as if in a daze. His green eyes, usually bright, seemed dull.

“Rough night?” I said, smirking. I winked at Selene, but she frowned back at me, her expression confused.

She stared up at Lance. “What happened to you?” she said with no trace of irony in her voice.

It was my turn to be confused. I examined Lance more closely, guessing my assumption had been wrong. The puffiness and bruises were too extreme to have been brought on by a sleepless night. He looked like he’d been beaten up. I knew Selene could be a feisty one, but I didn’t think she was into the kind of stuff that would leave her love interest looking like he’d had a run-in with a pissed-off gorilla.

Double ew.

Lance didn’t answer as he rubbed his eyes with his knuckles, leaving them even redder and puffier than before. “You seen Eli?” he finally asked, directing the question at me.

I shook my head. “Not since English. He got sent to the principal’s office.”

Lance surveyed the cafeteria. “And he’s not back yet?”

Selene and I exchanged a look. He was really out of it. If Arkwell had been a normal ordinary high school, I would’ve assumed he was stoned or something.

“You haven’t heard?” said Selene.

Lance slid a leg over the bench opposite us, whacked his knee on the table, and then plopped down, groaning.

I considered him a moment, shocked to find myself actually feeling concern. I’d never seen the guy looking so disoriented and clumsy.

“Heard what?” Lance said, rubbing his knee.

Selene relayed the story about Eli doing magic in English class.

“Huh,” Lance said when she finished.

Selene reached across the table and whacked him once on the top of the head.

“Hey.” He winced, putting a hand over his brow.

“What’s wrong with you?” said Selene.

Lance’s mouth opened but no words came out. It was as if what little part of his brain he normally used had a short in it. He closed his mouth, knuckled his eyes again, and then glowered back at us, looking more like himself than he had so far today. “Nothing’s wrong with me. I found this note and I wanted to show it to Eli.”

He reached into his front pocket and pulled out a folded slip of paper. “Seems kind of important.”

Selene and I grabbed for it at the same time, but she got there first, ripping it out of his hands. She set it on the table and flipped it open, revealing a typed message on the inside addressed to the “Dream Team.” My eyes read the words at once, but my brain took several seconds to absorb the meaning:

Meet me in the library tunnel alcove. 10:00. About a case. Life and death.

“When did you find this?” I said, my voice constricted by fear. It couldn’t be a coincidence, not given the time and place.

“Uh…” Lance stuttered. “This morning.”

Selene narrowed her eyes. “Are you sure?”

Lance scratched his chin as if the question required deep introspection. Gritty black marks rimmed his fingertips. “I think so, only I kind of remember seeing it last night maybe, but I thought I dreamed it. It’s weird, but everything after dinner yesterday is fuzzy.”

“Um, that’s a little more than weird,” I said.

Selene waved at Lance. “Let me see your necklace.”

“Why?”

“Just let me see it,” she snapped. Selene normally wasn’t this rude to people, but Lance was the exception, part of their strange love/hate thing.

Scowling, Lance obeyed, pulling the thick silver chain out from underneath his shirt collar. “Happy?” he said.

“Never with you,” said Selene. “Take it off and place it on the table.”

Lance grunted but again did as she said. He unclasped the chain and dropped it in front of her.

Selene didn’t pick it up, but held her hand over it. Then she closed her eyes and began to hum. My skin tingled with the familiar, pleasant feeling of her siren magic. The chain and the round, flat charm attached to it began to glow. At first it shone bright yellow but then little tendrils of black began to seep through like bloodstains through clean gauze.

I examined the charm that I’d first taken as some kind of Catholic saint medal, but then I realized it was an engraving of the Joker, Lance’s pop culture hero. I flashed Lance a you’re-a-moron look, but it was wasted as he wasn’t looking at me. Instead his eyes were fixed on the joker playing card he was shuffling back and forth in his hands. From the beat-up look of the card, it was time for a new one. A piece was missing from one of the corners.

I returned my attention to Selene, who stopped humming and pulled her hand away. The glow on the necklace vanished.

Lance returned the card to his pocket and, with something like his normal swagger, said, “Well, my little Sherlock, what did you deduce?”

Selene didn’t answer at once. She picked up the note and ran her thumb over it. I half-expected her to start humming again, but she didn’t. Finally she said, “I think you’ve been cursed.” She hesitated, biting her lip. “At least, there’s some kind of unpleasant magic lingering on your necklace. It’s a talisman, right? And you never take it off?”

Lance nodded, his gaze fixed on the joker charm as if seeing it in a new and sinister light.

I touched Selene’s arm. “How can you tell?”

She turned her eyes on me, the irises a startling shade of violet. “It’s a detection spell we’ve been learning in my musemancy class. We’re studying siren defense right now. It’s supposed to reveal the presence of any magic on an object to let us know if it’s safe to touch.” She grimaced. “I guess back in the day, a lot of witchkind and even some ordinaries used to enslave sirens with magical necklaces and bracelets and things. Pretty nasty business.”

“No kidding.” My mind drifted back to the conversation with Brackenberry and Lady Elaine about the unrest between the kinds. I had a feeling that Selene wasn’t studying siren defense right now because the curriculum called for it.

Lance picked up the necklace and put it on. “So you’re saying somebody cursed me?”

“I think so,” said Selene, “although I’m not really skilled at the spell yet. But the magic I detected is residual, not active. And it’s clear
something
happened to you. Question is, who would want to harm you?”

“Um, anybody that’s met him?” I offered.

“Ha, ha,” Lance said, rubbing his temple.

Selene’s brow furrowed. “Who was the last person you remember seeing?”

“Eli probably. Who else? He is my roommate.”

I rubbed my arms, warding off a sudden chill at the coincidence. Was it possible Eli had seen the note, too? If so, it might’ve given him reason to be down in the alcove.

Selene started to ask Lance another question, but someone called his name from across the way. Lance stood up, his eyes lingering for a moment on Selene. “See you later.” Then he turned and walked off.

Selene made a noise like a grunt, although it was far too feminine and delicate a sound to be labeled one. “Typical.” She returned her focus to the note. “Looks like somebody wants to hire us for a case. I wonder who it is.”

“I’ve got a pretty good idea,” I said, a little surprised Selene hadn’t come to the same conclusion already. Then again, I hadn’t gone into details about where Britney had been found.

Selene arched her eyebrows. “Who?”

“Britney Shell. The library tunnel alcove was where she was attacked, and assuming the note did arrive yesterday, then the timing lines up, too.”

Worry clouded Selene’s expression as I finished speaking. She began to trace a finger along the pink scar that ran down the side of her face from her hairline to jaw. I knew the gesture was a recently developed nervous habit. I could tell she was connecting the dots just as I had. Two people cursed in the same night, one unconscious in the hospital and one with unaccountable memory loss. And the only things connecting them were a note and … Eli.

“Are you still so sure Eli had nothing to do with it?” I asked, hating the doubt rising up inside me. I wanted to believe his complete innocence, but always the memory of Paul haunted me. And this was the magical world where anything was possible. He could be under a spell, or maybe it wasn’t Eli at all but some kind of shapeshifter. Either way, I had to get to the bottom of it.

Selene’s finger stilled on her face. She stared back at me, her eyes thoughtful. But she didn’t answer. There wasn’t one to give.

8

Conductor

That night, I headed to my dream session with Eli, dreading it more than I had in months. The school day had ended with no sign of him, but he’d sent me an e-mail a few hours after dinner saying he was finally back.

Can you come to our session early?
he’d written.
We’ve got lots to talk about
.

He had a gift for understatement.

I took the direct route to his dorm room, through the commons. The rain had finally stopped, but the air remained damp and chilly. The wet surfaces of slanting roofs, archways, and parapets of the dark stone buildings that comprised Arkwell’s medieval-esque campus glistened in the pale sliver of moon overhead.

By the time I reached Flint Hall my shoes were sodden and my hair twice as poufy from frizz. I climbed the stairs to Eli’s floor trying not to squeak with each step. When I walked in, the living area of the dorm Eli shared with Lance was empty. I glanced around, surprised by Eli’s absence.

I cleared my throat. “Anybody here?”

Eli stepped through the doorway of the thin divider that separated the sleeping quarters from the living area. He was shirtless. I stared, openmouthed, unable to help myself. He wasn’t just shirtless, he was wet. Droplets of water glistened on his chest that was hard with muscle and absolutely perfect, even with the three scars that ran diagonally from his shoulder to his rib cage. The scars, like the one on Selene’s face, were still pink with newness, the wounds suffered in our fight with Marrow. On the left side of his chest perched a black scorpion tattoo.

I forced my gaze up, a warmth that had nothing to do with my brisk walk across campus heating my body. Eli’s black hair stuck up at odd angles, wet and sexy as hell. I wanted to brush it out with my fingers.

Finally, I dropped my gaze to his face. Eli had frozen, too, and was looking at me looking at him. Something vibrated in the air between us. The sweet, tingly memory of that one kiss overwhelmed my senses as if it had happened a moment ago instead of weeks.

A slow, mischievous grin stretched across Eli’s lips and the intense feeling broke. I let out the breath I’d been holding and felt my body relax. I could handle the playful Eli a lot better than the smoldering, serious one of a moment before—
that
version of Eli scared me. In all the right ways.

“Sorry,” he said. “But I had to squeeze in a quick shower. I was smelling a little funky.”

At the word smell, I took a deep inhale and immediately regretted it as my thoughts went fuzzy from the impact of his soapy, masculine scent. Nobody should smell that good.

I closed my eyes and shook my head, forcing my mind to focus. “Why’d you wait so long to take one?” I said, once I felt marginally in control again. I opened my eyes and dared another look at him. It proved to be bad timing as he was in the process of threading his arms through a T-shirt and pulling it over his head. The muscles in his arms and chest moved in alarming ways, all sinewy and popping.

He caught me staring again as his head emerged from the top of the shirt. I dropped my gaze from his bright, knowing eyes, my skin reddening from head to toe.