The Nightmare Dilemma

27 Shakedown

I decided I believed Eli’s reasons for not telling me why we couldn’t be together were genuine, but that didn’t make the not knowing any easier. I was up half the night thinking about it. I wondered if there was something wrong with him. The whole thing might’ve been a scene out of a soap opera where one of the characters finds out he’s got some terminal condition and he breaks it off with the love interest to try and save her from the heartbreak of losing him. That might be a cliché, but I imagined the premise was true enough.

Only … if Eli was sick, why would he have promised somebody else not to tell me about it? It didn’t make sense. Plus, the idea of him being sick was too horrible to consider even for a second. Then I wondered if maybe it was the other way around, that there was something wrong with me that I didn’t know about. But I couldn’t see how that was possible.

No, I didn’t think there would be any guessing the truth. I would just have to learn it for myself, some way or another. But not right now. There were too many other important things to worry about.

Nevertheless, stuff between us was weird the next day. We didn’t ignore each other, but we were both tense and far too quiet. Selene didn’t comment about it, but that was only because I’d told her what Eli had said. To my relief and disappointment she hadn’t speculated what his reasons might be. There just wasn’t enough to speculate on, I supposed.

When lunchtime rolled around, Eli and I ate quickly and then slipped out. We didn’t talk as we walked along, making our way to Finnegan Hall. The air around us seemed charged with electricity.

As we reached the door to Miss Norton’s classroom, Eli touched my arm. “You wait out here in case anyone comes by.”

I nodded, and he slipped inside. Time seemed to slow as I waited, silently walking up and down the corridor on the lookout for unwelcome guests. Every time I checked my watch, I expected to find that ten minutes had passed, but it always turned out to be one or two.

Then when ten minutes had finally come and gone, I turned to the door into the classroom, ready to pull him out of there. We were cutting it close. But just as I reached for the handle, the door swung open.

Eli jumped, startled to find me standing so close.

“What took you so long?” I peered into the classroom.

He ran his hands down the front of his shirt. “Nothing. I just wanted to be thorough.”

The sound of approaching footsteps echoed toward us, and we both darted down the hallway and around the corner, out of sight.

As we climbed down the stairs, I said, “Did you find anything useful?”

Eli sighed. “Not a thing.”

“Really?” I craned my head to look at him, and my foot caught on the step. Eli grabbed my arm, keeping me upright. But he let go almost at once, as if touching me was as dangerous as trying to handle a live wire. Yeah, this tension between us was really starting to suck.

But it only got worse later when we squeezed into the broom cupboard across the hall from Miss Norton’s office after fifth period. With the two of us in there, I had to practically stand on top of him. As it was, Eli wrapped his arms around my waist, the tight confines demanding it. The only good thing about the situation was that it was too dark for me to see his face. But I could hear his breathing, and each time he moved so much as an inch, my whole body reacted, tingles traveling over my skin in pleasant, yet unwelcome waves.

I tried to ignore the sensation by forcing my mind on the task ahead of us, but thoughts of what it would feel like to lean forward and kiss him in the dark kept pushing their way to the front of my mind. I decided it was a very good thing that I wasn’t exceptionally skilled at telepathy. I definitely didn’t want to know what thoughts Eli was entertaining every time his fingers moved against my back.

Finally, we heard the bell sound for the start of sixth period. Thank goodness. We waited a couple of seconds, and then Eli leaned even closer to me, reaching his hand toward the door. For a second his distinctive smell—something dark and musky and completely masculine—overwhelmed me, making me lightheaded.

As soon as the door opened I stepped out, taking a huge breath and blinking in the sudden brightness. Eli looked a little flushed, and the sight of it made my body burn even hotter than it already was. I turned away from him, embarrassed and annoyed at myself. I’d been attracted to him for months, but now that I knew for sure he wanted me too but that we couldn’t be together for some mysterious reason, my attraction to him had tripled. Quadrupled even. Go figure.

Stupid, rebellious nature.

Eli brushed past me on the way to the door to Miss Norton’s office. He pulled the moonwort key from his pocket, unlocked the door, and stepped inside. I hurried after him, my breath quickening from sudden adrenaline at what we were doing.

I looked around at the untidy sprawl of bookshelves and the paper-strewn desk.

Eli strode to the desk. “Let’s get a move on.”

He took one side of the desk while I took the other. There was a lot, but at least we were looking for something specific—anything to do with the Beltane Festival.

“Found it,” Eli said a few minutes later. He pulled out a folder from beneath the rubble of essays and homework assignments and opened it.

I came around the desk to see the contents more clearly. Eli stepped aside to allow me room, his body rigid as if he feared touching me again. He flipped through the folder’s contents. “Here we go.” He handed me a slip of paper. “Looks like the list of participants.”

I scanned the names, committing the ones I didn’t already know to memory.

“And this looks like stage blocking,” Eli said, unfolding a map.

I set down the list of names and leaned toward the map to examine it more closely, unsure of what Eli meant. According to the label, this was the inner island of Lyonshold. I searched the map for Senate Hall, knowing it was here somewhere, and saw it was dead center of the island. In the open area surrounding the hall, someone had drawn little circles in a regular pattern. Inside the circles were written the names of the same Terra Tribe members on the list I’d just read.

“So now we know where they’ll be,” I said, drawing a line between two of the circles with my finger. “But we still don’t know what’s going to happen when they light those torches.”

“No but—” Eli broke off as the doorknob rattled, making us both jump.

I sucked in a breath. “Did you lock it?”

Eli nodded, his eyes darting around the room, no doubt looking for cover. But there wasn’t any, not unless Miss Norton was so drunk her vision was impaired.

“Dusty,” a voice called from the other side of the door. “You in there?”

Realizing it was Selene, I dashed for the door, unlocked it, and yanked it open.

Selene fell into the room. “Come on! Miss Norton’s on her way.”

I didn’t waste time with questions—like how on earth she could know that—but bolted through the door, shouting over my shoulder for Eli to follow.

He did, slamming the door closed behind him. The three of us started to move down the hallway, but an outraged scream froze us in place.

“What were you doing in my office?”

We all turned to see Miss Norton charging us, her little fairy ears making her look like a lioness getting ready to take down a herd of wildebeests. I gulped, trying to come up with an excuse. None came.

Sometimes when you’re caught, you’re caught.

For the first time since starting my career at Arkwell, I was sent to the principal’s office with two accomplices. I’d sorta hoped that would make it more fun, or at least more bearable, but it didn’t. Not really.

There wasn’t room for all three of us inside of Dr. Hendershaw’s office, so the Will Guard who’d escorted us to the admin building—including Captain Gargrave, much to my dismay—put us in the same conference room where Sheriff Brackenberry and Lady Elaine had first recruited me to spy on Paul.

I wasn’t happy to be back here.

Neither were Selene or Eli, but we didn’t have time to bemoan our unfortunate luck as we decided on our collective story.

“Let’s just tell them the truth,” Eli said after several failed attempts at a believable excuse. “We know the Terra Tribe is planning something and this will make sure they get stopped.”

“Fine,” I said. “But we can’t tell them the stuff about Paul.”

Eli drummed his fingers on the arms of his chair. “Oh? Why not?”

“Because we promised him we wouldn’t until we had proof, and we don’t have it yet.”

The door behind us opened before Eli could reply. We all turned to look as Sheriff Brackenberry and Lady Elaine stepped in. The former looked bemused and the latter concerned. But neither said anything until after they’d shut the door and sat down. Sheriff Brackenberry leaned forward, resting his thick forearms on the table. “You’ve got two minutes to convince me you had a good reason to break into a teacher’s office.”

Eli started to answer, but I spoke over him. I had a lot more experience dealing with Brackenberry, and I didn’t trust him not to mention Paul. “We think Miss Norton is helping a student organization plan some kind of protest during the Beltane Festival,” I began. Then I told him everything we knew and suspected about the Terra Tribe, including their involvement in the protest on campus the other day as well as Britney’s connection to the group.

When I finished, Brackenberry sat back in his chair and stroked his beard. I waited with my teeth clenched. As far as I could tell, this could go either way—big, big trouble or us getting off easy.

The sheriff glanced at Lady Elaine. She shrugged, the gesture weirdly articulate with her bony shoulders visible in the snug turtleneck she wore. “Miss Norton is the faculty advisor for the group.”

Brackenberry grunted then faced me again. “Do you have any proof that Miss Norton was involved in orchestrating whatever this demonstration is?”

I shook my head, reluctantly. A couple of marks on a map and a last-minute appearance at the meeting didn’t constitute proof. Besides, all indicators were that the lighting of the torches was an official part of the Beltane Festival.

“I see.” Brackenberry cracked his knuckles, the sound as loud as tree branches snapping. “We’ll look into the claims about the festival, but I need to know if in your little investigation one of you took some kind of magical stick out of Miss Norton’s classroom. She says it went missing this very day, and that strikes me as quite a coincidence.”

It took every ounce of my self-control not to look at Eli. Miss Norton kept the talking stick—surely the object in question—in her classroom, at least during the school day, and he would’ve had a perfect opportunity to take it if he wanted to. Not that he had any reason for taking it that I knew of.

“No, we did not,” Eli replied, coolly.

Brackenberry turned that accusing gaze on me. “Well, then, you won’t mind turning out your pockets for me, will you?”

“Nope.” I stood up and did as he asked, although how he thought I would be able to hide that thing inside these jeans was beyond me.

“Okay, now the rest of you,” Brackenberry said, once he’d seen both of my pockets were empty.

Selene and Eli did the same, and Eli’s pockets—which probably were deep enough to conceal the stick—were as empty as mine. I wondered where he’d stashed the moonwort key, then decided I didn’t want to know.

The sheriff stood up. “All right. You three will stay here until we’ve sorted this out. And we’ll be checking your lockers for the stick, too, just to be sure.”

I shrugged. “Knock yourself out.” I hoped I wouldn’t regret saying that. I hadn’t cleaned out my locker in ages, but I didn’t think I had anything in there liable to get me in trouble.

Well, more trouble.

The moment Sheriff Brackenberry and Lady Elaine left, I turned toward Eli. “Was the talking stick in her classroom when you went through it?”

Eli shook his head. “I don’t remember seeing it, but it wasn’t exactly my focus.”

He waved at Selene. “So how did you know Miss Norton was coming?”

Selene grimaced. “Lucky chance. She passed by my classroom. I didn’t know for sure she was heading for her office, but I figured better safe than sorry. I asked to be excused and then I sprinted up the stairs, hoping to cut her off. She waddles pretty slow, but there just wasn’t enough time.”

“Why didn’t you send us a text?” asked Eli.

“I was stupid and forgot my phone this morning.”

I patted her arm. “At least you tried. But of all the bad luck. I bet the missing stick is the reason she came to her office in the first place.”

“Probably.” Eli leaned back and stretched his legs out in front of him, crossing them at the ankles.

We did only a little talking after that, which didn’t help pass the time any. And there was a lot of it. Sheriff Brackenberry and Lady Elaine didn’t return until more than an hour later.

Once again they sat down across from us, but this time Lady Elaine started off the conversation. “It turns out you were correct about the Terra Tribe.”

I sat forward, eager for news.

“They were planning a demonstration for the festival,” Lady Elaine continued. “The torches were enchanted with messages that would appear in the sky once they were lit. A speech along the lines of the one you heard Oliver Cork give during the meeting.”

I frowned. “That’s it? Just a speech?”

Brackenberry cleared his throat. “Perfectly harmless, if a little inflammatory. Still, I’m sure the Magi Senate will appreciate not having their celebration disrupted by a student protest. But unfortunately, it’s too close to the celebration to replace the Terra Tribe volunteers, so they will be permitted to light the bonfires, but they won’t have any access to the torches beforehand.”

I huffed and leaned back in my chair. I knew I should be relieved they hadn’t been planning anything nefarious, but it was hard not to feel a little disappointed, too.

“Speaking of perfectly harmless,” Lady Elaine said as she tapped her fingernails against the table. She wore bright pink nail polish. “I wanted to tell you that we’ve identified the curse used on Lance. It’s not deadly, at least not at first, and we should be able to break it any day now.”

Selene exhaled, the sound just barely audible. “What kind of curse was it?”

“One designed to inhibit a person’s production of fictus.” Lady Elaine glanced at Eli. “It prevents him from being able to dream.”

It was my turn to exhale. This proved it then. That curse had been intended for Eli. It was the only reason why it would be designed to affect fictus. Titus Kirkwood was definitely trying to stop Eli and me from seeing the future in his dreams.

“Now, if there’re no more questions,” Sheriff Brackenberry said, “we need to discuss your punishment for today’s fiasco.”

Eli, Selene, and I all glanced at one another, sharing mutual dread.

“We’ve decided to let Miss Norton determine your punishment,” Lady Elaine said. “She wants two weeks of Saturday school starting next week and suspension from the Beltane Festival.”

I gripped the arms of my chair. “How’s that fair? Don’t let her decide. She was the one behind the protest.”

Brackenberry shook his head. “You don’t know that for sure, and Miss Norton denies any knowledge of it. The punishment is hers to make as she’s the offended party.” He paused, a toothy grin stretching across his face. “Just consider yourself lucky that we didn’t let Dr. Hendershaw decide. She’s not exactly your biggest fan.”

That was certainly true. I slumped down in my chair, accepting defeat. This was the worst possible punishment ever—and I wasn’t talking about the Saturday school, although that was certainly bad enough. We needed to be at the festival. Just because the Terra Tribe wasn’t involved in something bad didn’t change the likelihood that something bad was coming.

For one brief second I regretted not telling Brackenberry and Lady Elaine the truth about Paul. But then I remembered there was still one more day to go. One more day to find the answers we needed.

But with a terrible sinking feeling in my stomach, I knew if we didn’t succeed we would have to tell them anyway. Even though it meant putting Paul’s life at risk.