The Nightmare Dilemma

13 The Guilty

“I swear I don’t remember anything,” Lance said as he paced the length of Room 013. It was the unofficial headquarters of the Dream Team, in the basement of the library. “I’ve tried, but I just can’t remember.”

“It’s okay, man. We believe you,” said Eli.

I glanced sideways at him, eyebrows raised. Fortunately, most of the swelling from my run-in with the baseball bat had gone down overnight, and the gesture didn’t hurt overly much. I didn’t believe Lance. Not yet anyway. The fact that I was even willing to believe him had mostly to do with Selene.

After I found the joker card, I still managed to track down Culpepper who gladly gave me a full box of Milky Way Midnight bars, as well as his cell number in case I ever needed it. Then I came back to the dorm and immediately showed the card to Selene. I was all prepared to e-mail Lady Elaine with the info, when Selene asked me to wait and hear Lance out first. Of all the times for the love part of their love/hate thing to kick in. But I’d agreed and spent a long, frustrating day in classes fretting about it. That was, when I wasn’t fretting about Paul. I’d only seen him from a distance once or twice, and I still had no idea how to go about getting close to him.

“I wouldn’t speak for all of us,” Selene said, distracting me from my musings about Paul.

“Yeah, same here,” I said.

Selene smiled at me, but it vanished a second later as the chair she was sitting on gave a little buck beneath her. “Cut it out, Buster,” she said, kicking the chair with one boot heel.

I stifled a grin. For some reason, the animation phenomenon was ten times stronger in Room 013 than anywhere else on campus. Enough so that one of the chairs had taken an unnatural liking to Selene. She’d fought off its attentions at first, but now she seemed to regard it as more of an unruly pet. She’d even given it a name.

Lance stopped his pacing and glared at me, ignoring Selene completely. “Why the hell would I attack Britney?”

“That’s easy. Because she dumped that bloom-and-grow potion on your head.”

Lance rolled his eyes. “Give me a break. My version of retaliation is a little more eye for an eye, as you should know firsthand.”

I grimaced, realizing he had a point. I had several unpleasant memories from our feud last semester. Thank goodness we’d called an unspoken truce after the stuff with Marrow.

“Besides,” Lance continued, “I already evened the score on that one. Put a little pennyroyal in her tea.”

I gaped at him. “Pennyroyal is poisonous.”

“Not to mermaids it’s not.” Lance bared his teeth in a huge grin. “Just makes ’em sweat. A lot.”

I grimaced, remembering clearly the day Britney had been sweating so much in our alchemy class that the air around us felt as humid as a tropical rain forest.

“Typical,” Selene said, folding her arms.

Lance pointed at her. “And you said I’d been cursed, so whoever attacked Britney must’ve attacked me, too.”

“Maybe,” said Selene. “But why were you down there in the first place?”

“The note, obviously,” said Eli, not looking up. He was standing over a table with his wand pointed at the joker card and its remnant, their torn edges aligned. “Diorthon,” he said, and a wisp of yellowish light puffed out from the tip of his wand.

I jumped up from my seat. “What are you doing? Don’t mend it. That’s our only proof he’s guilty.”

“Excuse me?” Lance said.

“Doesn’t matter anyway,” Eli said through gritted teeth. “It’s not working.” He gave the wand a flick, engaging the glamour. The piece of wood vanished and a thick gold ring appeared on his palm. He slipped it onto his index finger then faced me, his expression hard. “And he isn’t guilty of anything other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

I put my hand on one hip. “How do you figure?”

Eli waved at Lance. “He must’ve found the note and decided to investigate it himself. It did say it was a matter of life or death. And he couldn’t have known when I was going to get back from dinner with my dad.”

“Yeah.” Lance bobbed his head in agreement.

Selene snorted. “Why would you even care what the note said?”

Lance shuffled his feet, looking uncomfortable.

“Because he wants to join the Dream Team,” said Eli, grinning. “It’s an excuse to be near Selene.”

Lance jerked his head toward Eli, a scowl twisting his features. “Thanks, man. A lot.”

Eli shrugged. “Sorry. But hiding your feelings is just stupid. Being upfront is always better.”

Look who’s talking, I thought. He and I had spent another day sitting in the same classes and not talking about that kiss. Actually, if it hadn’t been for me finding the piece of that joker card, I didn’t think Eli would’ve talked to me at all today. He was still unhappy about the Paul situation.

Frustrated all over again, I pointed my hand at the joker card and the piece I’d found. “Diorthon.” A bright flash of yellow light erupted from my fingertips. The magic struck the two pieces, and a loud crack echoed around the room. The bigger one shot up five feet into the air while the smaller one burst into flames.

Eli reached out with his right hand and snatched the bigger piece as it fell, and with his left he stamped out the flames before the desk caught fire. “Nice.”

Lance clapped his hands, grinning. “Bravo! So much for evidence.”

I plopped down into my chair, annoyed with my shortcomings. I scooted over next to Selene and Buster. Selene’s face looked slightly pink, but I knew the blush wasn’t on account of my embarrassment. She was used to my magical mishaps and probably relieved that she hadn’t been in the line of fire this time. No, she must be thinking about what Eli had said about Lance. I suppressed the urge to gag.

“Are you sure you don’t remember anything from that night?” Eli said as he brushed the ashen remains of the card off the table onto the floor.

All the computers in the room beeped at once, the noise like a high-pitched foghorn going off. I jumped in my seat and nearly fell out of it. Selene wasn’t so lucky. She tumbled to the floor as Buster gave another hard buck and rolled to the right.

“I’m sorry!” Eli shouted to the room at large. It wasn’t the first time one of us had upset the place. “I’ll bring a vacuum next time. I promise!”

The computers beeped again in final scolding then fell silent.

“Great headquarters you got here,” Lance said, rubbing his ears.

“Just one more reason for you not to join us,” Selene said, getting to her feet. Buster wheeled toward her, but she put a hand up. “No. You stay. I warned you last time what would happen if I fell off again.”

If it were possible for a chair to look crestfallen, Buster did.

Lance shook his head, his expression both amused and disgruntled at the same time. He turned to Eli. “To answer your question. No, I can’t remember a thing. But I think the curse is still having an effect. I’m having a tough time sleeping, and I can’t focus at all.”

Despite my aversion to doing such a thing, I took a good long look at Lance. Deep, dark bruises rimmed his cheekbones beneath bloodshot eyes. And it was clear from the baggy jeans and ripped up sweatshirt that he hadn’t put his usual level of effort into getting dressed this morning. I wondered if his socks matched today.

“You should go to the infirmary,” Selene said, the tiniest hint of concern in her voice.

“I can’t,” Lance said, not looking at her. “Not now.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because they’ll want to know what happened to him and where,” said Eli.

I frowned, coming to grips with the truth that we weren’t going to turn Lance in. Only, who was I kidding? I’d known from the start we weren’t going to. He was our best clue yet, but if the sheriff found out he’d been there, who knew when we’d have access to him next.

Holy crap, I’m turning into Eli.

I exhaled, not entirely displeased with the revelation. “What we really need is a way to jog Lance’s memory.”

Eli turned to me, his expression brightening for the first time since he failed to mend the joker card. “That’s a great idea.”

I blinked. “Um, you know that jogging a memory is just an expression of speech, right?”

“Not among magickind it’s not. With mind magic it’s possible to extract memories.”

Duh, I realized. We learned about that particular police procedure after the fight with Marrow.

“We need to ask Deverell how it’s done,” Eli went on. “If anybody would know, he would. Tomorrow, I’ll—”

“No,” I said, cutting him off. “I’ll do it. He likes me better.”

Selene giggled. “You mean you like him better.”

Eli glanced between the two of us, frowning. “What do you mean?”

“Dusty thinks he’s hot.”

I felt a blush threaten to warm my face, but I managed to fight it back. I shrugged my shoulders instead and grinned. “Well, it’s true.” I glanced at Eli, wanting to see his reaction. He was watching me with his mouth opened and eyes narrowed.

“You can’t be serious?”

I smirked. “No harm in looking. And besides, of all of us, I’m the most capable at psionics. It’s my strongest subject.”

“Nuh-uh.” Lance pointed a finger at me. “No way am I letting you mess around in my brain. You might incinerate it.”

I rolled my eyes. “Like you’d even miss it.”

“Ha, ha.”

Eli cut off any further remarks with a whistle. “Don’t start.” He glanced at me, his expression still dark. “You talk to Deverell then, but do it soon. If Lance is still under the curse we need to figure out a way to break it as quick as we can.”

I tilted my head and gave Lance an appraising look. “I don’t know. I think it might be an improvement.”

Selene snorted.

Lance opened his mouth to say something, but I waved him off. “I’ll leave lunch early tomorrow and try to catch Deverell before class.”

After that, the meeting adjourned. Selene darted for the door, in a hurry to make it to her Musemancy Club meeting on time. Lance followed her not long after.

I lingered behind on purpose, same as Eli.

“So,” he said, running his fingers through his hair.

“So.” I waited, breath held for him to go on. There were a thousand things I wanted to say to him, questions I wanted to ask, but I couldn’t find the nerve.

After a few seconds, I couldn’t stand the silence any longer. “Can you bring the moonwort key to dinner tonight?”

Eli cocked his head. “Sure, I guess. Why do you want it?”

I searched for a safe response, knowing I didn’t dare tell him the truth—that I wanted it to break into Paul’s locker. I decided on a half-truth. “I want to check Britney’s locker, see if there’s anything useful in there.” I hadn’t planned on doing that, but once the idea occurred to me it seemed a worthwhile task.

“Okay,” he said, “I’ll bring it.”

“Thanks.” I opened my mouth to ask him about that kiss, but my courage failed me as I saw his expression. He seemed so cold, so distant, as unapproachable as a snarling hellhound. I picked up my backpack and turned to leave.

“Hey,” Eli called as I reached the doorway.

I glanced over my shoulder. “Yeah?”

He ran his fingers through his hair again, not looking at me. As I watched him struggle with what to say, my gaze fixed on his parted lips, and my body tingled, the memory of our shared kisses always so close to the surface. I wanted to run over and kiss him again. If only I could be certain he would welcome it, not back away and tell me he was sorry. But his swings from hot to cold left me too confused for such courage.

Eli drew a breath and then said on an exhale, “Never mind…”

Swallowing my disappointment, I turned and walked off, wishing that I hadn’t stayed behind in the first place.

Eli brought the moonwort key to dinner that night, but once again he decided to sit at Lance’s table. I didn’t want to read anything into his decision to sit there, but I couldn’t help wondering if he was still avoiding me. I kept glancing over at him, fuming each time I caught Katarina flirting at him. At least he brushed her off same as always.

Nevertheless, as I fell asleep that night, it was with horrible images of Eli and Katarina dating again, swirling in my head. I half-expected those images to follow me into my dreams.

They didn’t.

I dreamed of the plinth again. Everything was the same as before, the tower, the wind, the all-consuming need to read the word.

Only this time, after hours of digging and clawing and scratching, I finally uncovered not just one but two of the letters.

B E

That was all. A consonant and a vowel and only two out of eight. And yet here, in this place, this dream, those were the two most important things in the world.