The Nightmare Dilemma

12 J Marks the Spot

“What are you looking for in my office?” the man said again.

I blinked as his features blurred into Mr. Corvus. Not Marrow. Never him. It was just my imagination. How could I have not noticed the eye patch even for a second?

A dozen answers to this question flitted through my mind, including lack of sleep and the possibility of impending insanity, but I ignored them as I noticed the person standing behind Mr. Corvus. That awful sense of déjà vu came over me again.

Paul was looking at me with an alarmed expression. “What happened? Are you okay?”

Catching onto the focus of his gaze, I raised a hand to my cheek and gingerly ran my fingers along the bruise. His concern, especially the genuine sound of it, took me by surprise. It didn’t help that he was looking as handsome as ever. Maybe even more so with his short hair and that haunted look in his eyes like something had broken on the inside, something that needed to be fixed. That I could fix.

Don’t fall for that, I reminded myself. This is Paul, a manipulative siren, capable of forcing sympathy. A part of me winced at my easy use of stereotyping, but sometimes it was hard not to judge a person by their kind. Especially when combined with their past actions.

“I’m fine,” I said at last.

Mr. Corvus made a disgruntled sound. “You still haven’t answered my question, Miss Everhart.”

I blinked, coming back to my senses. “Oh, I was just…” I stooped and started picking up books, my face aflame. “Just…”

“Snooping?” Mr. Corvus said. Startled by what sounded like humor, I glanced up to see he’d raised his one eyebrow in a somewhat amused expression. “I’ve heard you’ve a habit of doing that.”

“It’s more like a compulsion,” I said, encouraged by the slight change in his attitude—subzero to only icy was still an improvement. “I just can’t help myself sometimes.”

“You’ve got lots of reasons to be suspicious,” Paul said in a quiet voice, his eyes fixed on the floor now.

Mr. Corvus cleared his throat. “Reason or not, that’s no excuse for you to invade my privacy.”

I swallowed. “I’m sorry, sir. The door was open and I didn’t think about what I was doing.”

“That much is clear.” Mr. Corvus ran his thumb and forefinger over the two halves of his mustache. “Apology accepted. Now clean this up. We need to get started with your detention.”

I nodded, picking up the pace.

“Give me a moment, Paul,” Mr. Corvus said, “and I’ll find the book I promised you.”

I looked up, suspicious again. What business did Paul have with Mr. Corvus? An unpleasant memory of how Paul would sometimes meet Marrow after class rose up in my mind.

Marrow could be anybody, I realized. The couple of times I’d asked about it, nobody seemed to know just how his return to life would be. Would he even look like himself or would he resemble someone else entirely?

A violent shiver went through my body. Stop with the paranoia already. I needed to focus on the real-life dangers present in this very room. Namely, Paul Kirkwood.

He knelt down and started helping me with the rest of the books. “So what did happen to your face?”

I sighed, risking a glance at him. The eye contact thing was getting easier. “Gym class. What else?”

He smiled. “I hope you feel better soon.”

I stood, not saying anything. The awkwardness of the situation was making me antsy, and I wished Mr. Corvus would hurry up so Paul could leave already. There was something wrong about exchanging pleasantries with this guy like we were old friends. Never mind that it was what I was supposed to be doing.

“Ah, here we go.” Mr. Corvus pulled a book from one of the drawers on his desk. He held it out to Paul. I stared at it, trying to read the title but not having any luck. The inscription on the black cover had faded long ago. “Be sure you return it as soon as you’ve finished.”

“I will, sir,” Paul said, accepting the book. He tucked it under his arm, gave me a final smile, then left.

“So,” I said, turning to Mr. Corvus and trying to act casual. “What was that book, anyway?”

He raised his eyebrow again. “Do you know what some would say about your curiosity?”

Sensing a trap here, I tried the cute and innocent defense. “Um, that it’s an admirable side effect of my smart and inquisitive nature?”

Mr. Corvus did not smile. Instead the eyebrow lowered, making his expression even more intimidating. “Nosy is what they would say. Or better yet, mind your own business.”

I gulped, feeling thoroughly chastised.

“Now, take a seat and we’ll begin.”

I did as he said, pulling out the chair in front of the desk and plopping into it, my nervousness bringing out my clumsiness.

Mr. Corvus withdrew yet another book from the desk drawer and set it down in front of me with an audible thud. I’d never seen a book so large and heavy before. Like the one he’d given Paul, this too had a black cover that was clearly made of some kind of leather, but I had a feeling it wasn’t cowhide. The texture seemed too hard and scaly. Lizard maybe. And utterly creepy. Strange silver symbols were engraved on the front. They didn’t look like any of the rune alphabets I’d seen translated in various textbooks, but more like pictographs, Egyptian hieroglyphs maybe, although without any of the typical cranes or ankhs.

Mr. Corvus opened the book to a page bookmarked with a white feather. The top half of the page consisted of a single large symbol, which I took to be an illustration rather than a pictogram. It showed three linked circles, one on top and two on the bottom, but all joined in the middle. Beneath the illustration were more of the strange pictographs like on the cover. They ran in lines down the center of the page, arranged like a poem.

“Your task for this detention is simple,” Mr. Corvus said. “You will translate the first line of this text.”

My jaw fell open in disbelief. “Um, how the heck am I supposed to do that?”

“You mean you can’t read this already?”

I did a double take, my eyes darting to the pictograms and then back to Mr. Corvus. His expression remained deadly serious, and his tone suggested that he had doubts about my intelligence in general. “Uh…”

“I’m only teasing, Dusty.” A ghost of a smile flickered across his face.

Yeah, I wasn’t seeing the funny in this one.

“If you could read it without any effort, then it wouldn’t be a very effective punishment, now would it?”

I shook my head. I was beginning to think my new history teacher was two rungs shy of the top of the crazy ladder.

Mr. Corvus fetched a third book from his desk and plopped it down next to the other. This one was equally as large, although it had a normal-looking cover. “This is the translator. You’ll find everything you need in there.”

I reached out and pulled it open, dreading what I would find. As I expected, the book was organized by symbols that appeared as random as the cracks on the gym floor. “How am I supposed to look anything up without knowing how stuff is ordered?”

“The old-fashioned way, I suppose. One by one.”

“Right,” I said through gritted teeth.

This was going to take forever.

Forever turned out to be three hours. By the end of it, my eyeballs felt as if some tiny creature had been running a vacuum over their surface all afternoon, and I was so hungry my stomach had started to gnaw on itself. As detentions went, this one wasn’t much better than the toilet-cleaning duty. Way to go, Mr. Corvus. The crappy teacher award has got your name on it.

As if he’d heard my sarcastic thoughts, Mr. Corvus set down the book he’d been reading, pulled off his single eyeglass, and then fixed his gaze at me. His one eye was so dark a blue it was almost black, the color like a raven’s wing in sunshine.

“Let me see your progress so far,” Mr. Corvus said.

Dread now pounding in my temples, I picked up the paper with my scrawled notes and handed it to him. I’d written the definition beside every picture after verifying each one three times, and still it made no sense:

Circle

Break

Twelve

Blood

One

Mr. Corvus examined it for a moment and then handed it back. “Nicely done.”

“Really?” I read the words again, wondering if I’d missed something.

“Yes, it’s very close.”

“So what does it mean?”

Mr. Corvus leaned back in his chair and tented his fingers in front of him. “Well, the meaning is so obscure it would take hours for me to explain properly, but I assume you don’t wish to spend those hours.”

I shook my head, although the idea of spending all that time on the stupid thing and still not understanding it irked me. Then I remembered I was dealing with a teacher, and I rephrased the question. “What does it say then?”

Mr. Corvus smiled, clearly pleased as he leaned forward and took the paper back. He grabbed a pen lying nearby then scribbled down a sentence. He turned the paper around so I could see it.

“Only the blood of the twelve can undo the circle,” I read aloud.

Mr. Corvus nodded. “Well, that’s as close to a literal translation as possible.”

“It sounds a little morbid.”

“It is a little morbid.”

I started to ask him what the book was about, but my stomach let out a huge grumble.

Mr. Corvus cleared his throat. “You may go.” He folded the slip of paper with my translation and dropped it into the trash.

Feeling light-headed and more than a little annoyed to see my hard work chucked in the garbage, I turned and headed for the door. It was too late to catch dinner, and I struggled to remember what edible items we had stashed in the dorm. Probably nothing. I could always hit one of the vending machines but the idea of forcing down some of that sugar-free, taste-free crap made me gag.

What I really wanted was a big fat, calorie-packed candy bar. Yep, bring on the sugar rush and the instant—if temporary—relief from my headache and sleepiness. But contraband like that wasn’t easy to get ahold of at Arkwell.

Fortunately, I knew a guy. If I could track him down at this time of night that was. I thought I might be in luck, though. I even felt pretty sure that he would answer the door for me. I hadn’t spoken one on one with Mr. Culpepper—Arkwell’s resident maintenance man and the chief purveyor of black market items—since my short stint in the infirmary after we defeated Marrow, but every time I passed him in the hallways and corridors, the dark, surly look on his face would vanish for a second and a friendly smile would flash across his features.

I decided to try him in the maintenance office first. If he wasn’t there, I would try his secret hideaway out in Coleville Cemetery. We’d end up out there regardless; unless I got lucky and he was carrying around a Snickers bar in his pocket.

As I reached the bottom floor of Monmouth Tower, I turned immediately toward the corridor leading to the tunnels, even though the weather outside was nice enough for walking. The library tunnel alcove was on the way to Barbary Hall, where the maintenance office was located. I’d planned on investigating the crime scene with Eli, but considering how badly today had gone, I wasn’t sure that would happen. It wasn’t likely I would find anything useful, but I wanted to give it a try at least.

When I reached the alcove’s large entryway some ten minutes later, I stopped and stared in at it, trying to reconcile the images from Britney’s dream with the real thing. It wasn’t hard. Aside from some distortion differences, the two visions were a pretty close match. I stepped into the alcove and walked slowly around the pool searching for anything out of the ordinary. Eli was far better at this than me, but I did my best to emulate the methodical way he let his eyes scan back and forth.

Yeah, this was a waste of time. Nothing looked out of place. How could it? Aside from the water in the pool and the thin layer of slime on the floor, there was nothing here.

I stepped out of the alcove and walked to the place where Eli had stood in the dream. Here, her attacker had stood here. Most likely, anyway. I cast a fire spell and knelt down to examine the ground. The flames perched in the palm of my hand danced about, the shifting light more of a hindrance than a help. I focused on the spell, willing the fire brighter and steadier.

It didn’t make a difference. Once again, there wasn’t anything to see. The ground here was covered in the same, thin layer of slime and that was all. It wasn’t even dense enough to leave footprints. Sighing, I stood up and took a couple of steps farther into the tunnel itself, guessing that the attacker had come this way.

Then I saw it, a little piece of … something … lying very close to the wall. Trash, most likely. It was so small, at first I couldn’t believe I’d seen it at all. I stooped down and picked it up, praying I wouldn’t regret touching it. It looked like paper, but you never could tell with magickind. It could easily have been a piece of manticore eggshell, which wasn’t as poisonous as the creatures housed inside them, but which could still make you sick if you held it too long.

But it wasn’t trash or anything magical at all. I picked it up, pinching it between my fingers. It was a thin piece of plastic-covered cardboard. A pattern of red and white swirls marked one side of it, and on the other was a black letter J.

J

As in Joker.

It seemed Lance Rathbone had been down here after all.