The Nightmare Dilemma

22 Latin Lessons

I didn’t give Eli the details about my meeting with Mr. Deverell, and he didn’t ask for any.

“So long as you’re working to fix it, then I’m good,” he said. Thank goodness for that. I had enough to worry about without adding Eli’s concern over me being haunted by some unknown ghost into the mix.

As if in contrast to my bleak mood, the weather outside had taken a pleasant turn toward nice. All during sixth-period alchemy, everybody else in the class and I kept taking long, longing looks out the window at the bright sunshine. We suffered through gym afterward and then Selene, Eli, and I made a mad dash for the commons.

So did the rest of Arkwell. The place was packed with students. One group was attempting to pass a Frisbee back and forth with only moderate success—magickind tended to struggle with hand-eye coordination—while another group was kicking a soccer ball with even worse results.

But most of the students were lounging in the sunshine, sleeves rolled back and faces turned toward the sun. The grass was too wet to sit on, so people were squatted on the cobblestone paths or on the low stone walls separating the pathways from the grassy areas. Eli, Selene, and I found a place to sit on the latter.

Nobody felt much like talking. Selene pulled out a book to read while Eli leafed through the pages of his case notebook. I closed my eyes and leaned my head back, letting my thoughts wander as the sunshine lit up the thin skin of my eyelids.

But a few minutes later, the sound of an approaching noise pulled me out of my happy place. I slowly opened my eyes and peered around, blinking to clear the spots from my vision.

“What the hell is that?” Eli said from my right.

A moment later I saw a group of people in brown cloaks walking down the main pathway toward the center of the commons. The hoods on the cloaks covered their faces, but as they drew nearer I realized they were chanting.

Selene tensed beside me, and she covered her mouth with her hand.

“What is it?” I said, glancing at her a second before returning my attention to the newcomers. They were filling up the center of the commons now, more than twenty of them at least. The lounging students were giving way to them as if repelled by those strange words. But I didn’t think it was an incantation. The words lacked the characteristic under-hum of magic. Yet there was magic nearby. I could feel the faint prickle of it on my skin.

“Fiat justitia ruat caelum,” Selene murmured in time with the brown cloaked figures.

I turned my head, gaping at her. “How do you know that?”

“It’s Latin.”

Latin, I thought. Selene would know. She’d been studying the language for the last two years.

“What does it mean?” Eli said, standing up. Nearly everyone else was doing the same, all eyes fixed on the unfolding scene.

The cloaked figures had formed a circle in the middle of the commons, facing outward. In the center of the circle several of them carried a long glass case, like pallbearers. Inside the glass, lying on a blanket of flowers, was a person I had no trouble recognizing.

Britney Shell.

Except, it wasn’t. It was someone else pretending to be Britney. An odd blurring around the girl’s face gave it away, an indicator of an illusion spell. Putting an illusion spell on a living thing was upper-level magic. And these cloaked figures had done a subpar job of it.

As more and more people recognized the person in the glass case, I heard Britney’s name whispered over and over again. It seemed most people didn’t realize it was someone else in disguise.

“Is she dead?” they whispered.

“When? How did it happen?”

And all the while the brown cloaked figures chanted, “Fiat justitia ruat caelum. Fiat justitia ruat caelum.”

It slowly dawned on me that this was a protest, the magickind version of a sit-in. But the phrase they were chanting didn’t seem like a peaceful one. And displaying Britney—who most certainly was not dead—inside a glass coffin was nothing short of antagonistic.

Eli grabbed my wrist. “Come on. This is going to get ugly.”

I nodded, and as he started pulling me away, I grabbed hold of Selene and tugged her along, too. By the time we reached the nearest walkway leading away from the commons, the crowd had started to shout at the assembled group, the tension close to an explosion.

Then it happened. Someone in the crowd let fly a spell. I turned to watch as a jet of red light soared toward the brown cloaked figures and smashed into the case. It shattered, spraying glass everywhere, and the girl inside it screamed as she fell. For a second the scene seemed to freeze in place.

In the next, chaos erupted. The cloaked figures retaliated with a barrage of spells and other magic. Shouts of outrage and screams of pain filled the air. Eli was dragging me now.

“Let’s go,” he shouted over his shoulder. “This isn’t our fight.”

He was right, and I knew it. Already I could see the flash of red as the Will Guard began to converge on the scene. They would subdue the crowd in moments, and I didn’t want to be in their line of fire.

Still, as we turned down a path, I took one final look back at the fight, my gaze drawn to two of the cloaked figures. Both of their hoods had fallen back in the struggle, revealing their faces. A shock of recognition went through me. With an effort, I ripped my gaze away and returned my attention to the path ahead.

We managed to escape the fight and the Will Guard, running all the way back to Riker Hall before coming to a stop.

I hunched down, recovering my wind. The adrenaline pumping through my system had my heart and lungs doing double-time. “I saw their faces,” I said between pants.

“Who?” Eli asked, wiping a trickle of sweat off his forehead.

“Oliver Cork and Melanie Remillard. They were wearing the brown cloaks.”

Eli froze in place, his hand still against his forehead as if in a salute. “But they’re both members of the—”

“Terra Tribe,” I finished for him. “Just like Britney.” I looked at Selene, grimacing. “What was that phrase they were chanting?”

“It was Latin, right?” said Eli.

“Yes.” Selene paused and drew a long breath. “Fiat justitia ruat caelum,” she recited. “Let justice be done, though the heavens should fall.”