The Nightmare Dilemma

4 Tragical History

While I waited for Eli, I contemplated my eggs and bacon for a couple of minutes, and then got up and threw the contents of my breakfast tray into the garbage. Something inside the trash can growled, and I realized too late that I’d forgotten to sort out my silverware. A moment later the fork came hurtling out of the can like a missile and whacked me in the forehead.

“Hey,” I said as I rubbed my stinging skin. Good thing I hadn’t used a knife this morning.

A head covered in scraggly brown hair emerged over the top of the can. The trash troll fixed a glare at me with its huge black eyes. It looked like a really ugly, twisted version of a Mr. Potato Head with a head and torso twice as long as its stubby legs and arms. It bared its teeth at me, mumbling incoherent words.

It dawned on me that I was being scolded. By a trash troll. Glaring, I shooed at it. “Go on, get back in there. It was just an accident.”

The troll muttered something more then stuck its tongue out at me before disappearing. I backed away from the trash can, on the lookout for more projectiles. It seemed even the trash trolls had developed their own spirit of rebellion, same as us students.

Eli arrived back at the table at the same time I did, his tray laden with food. I sat down across from him and watched with mild interest as he began shoveling. “Looks like the senate finally decided to do something about all the fighting,” Eli said between mouthfuls.

“It’s something all right.” I flashed a scathing glance at Gargrave. “But I’m not sure it’s the right something.”

“What is it?” Eli’s gaze locked on my face.

“Someone attacked Britney Shell last night.”

He stopped mid-shovel, a bit of egg falling off the tip of his fork. “What? How? What happened?”

I spent the next few minutes telling him about my adventures last night. He was thrilled at my success on getting such good details out of the sheriff, but when I got to the part about the almost-Paul, Eli dropped his fork onto his plate with a loud clang. “He was in the dream?”

I flinched at the vehemence in his tone. It was deserved—Paul had betrayed both of us to Marrow—but I was the one he’d pretended to date for several weeks leading up to it. I should be the angry one, but mostly I wanted to forget it.

“Yeah,” I said, “but I don’t think it was actually him. He looked different. And Lady Elaine said it didn’t mean anything since Britney’s not a dream-seer and her dreams are just dreams.” Good thing, too, I thought. Or you would be a suspect in the attack by now.

The bell rang before Eli could ask any more questions. I waited while he dumped his tray with considerably less trouble from the trash troll, and then we walked together to homeroom. For reasons unbeknownst to us, Eli and I had the exact same schedule. I didn’t mind. Any excuse to be with him. And walking was the best part, the way he leaned into me, our bodies touching more often than not. Every time his hand brushed against my fingers, my heartbeat lost its rhythm as I hoped that this would be the time he would finally take hold of my hand.

The morning announcements lasted three times longer than usual. The principal started off reminding us for at least the hundredth time about volunteer opportunities still available for the Beltane Festival on May first. They’d been hyping the festival for months now. Normally, Arkwell held its own celebration on campus, including a dance, the magickind equivalent to prom. But this year marked a centennial for the foundation of Lyonshold, the capital city of magickind in the United States, and the Magi Senate decided that the students should join the huge celebration. Volunteers would get to do stuff like light the bonfires and dance in some of the rituals.

Yeah, there was a negative two percent chance that I would volunteer for such a thing. Still, I was looking forward to going as a regular spectator. I’d never been to Lyonshold. Since it was hidden on a magical island somewhere in the middle of Lake Erie, students only visited during holidays and celebrations. Or capital trials, I supposed, thinking about Paul.

Next Dr. Hendershaw went into a detailed, and wholly unnecessary, introduction of the Will Guard. Then she delivered even more bad news when she informed us that not only was the Guard authorized to use magic on us, they could also hand out detentions.

Awesome.

Afterward, Eli and I headed to first period.

“So I wonder who attacked Britney,” Eli said as we walked along.

“No idea.”

Eli glanced down at me. He was so tall my head barely reached his shoulder. “You know that the Dream Team is going to have to investigate this, right?”

I scrunched up my nose, a little embarrassed by the current name of our amateur detective agency. But Eli had picked it and that made me love it a little bit, too. “Aren’t we supposed to wait until we get hired before investigating?”

He snorted. “Eventually. But until we get established, we’re mainly pro bono.”

“Hey,” I said, my brain making a sudden and completely unrelated connection. “Why wasn’t Lance at breakfast?”

Eli looked puzzled but said, “I think he’s sick. I had to turn off his alarm because he slept through it. When I woke him up he was really out of it so I just let him go back to sleep.”

“Huh.” I chewed on my bottom lip, thinking it over. “You don’t think he was out after curfew, do you?”

Eli shrugged. “Probably. I didn’t see him at all last night. I had dinner with my dad off campus and didn’t get back to the dorm until late. He wasn’t there.”

We arrived at the classroom and took our usual seats toward the back. “Didn’t that seem a little weird to you?”

Eli set his bag on the floor, chuckling. “This is Lance we’re talking about. He sneaks out all the time to set up his pranks.”

“Oh, right.” I scowled at the memory of one of Lance’s pranks that had been directed at me. A few hours before my restroom-cleaning detention with Ms. Hardwick last semester, Lance had stopped up every toilet and sink in the first-floor bathroom of the administration building. I still needed to pay him back for that.

“Why are you so concerned about Lance this morning?” Eli paused, frowning. Then he rolled his eyes. “Please don’t tell me you think he attacked Britney, because that’s absurd.”

I scoffed. “Shouldn’t we consider everyone a suspect until proven innocent?”

In truth, I hadn’t been thinking about Britney at all, but Selene. The idea that the two of them were out together might be far-fetched, but it wasn’t outside the realm of possibilities. Selene and Lance had dated for a while freshman year, and over the past few months they’d been developing a strange love-hate relationship, not exactly friends but not quite enemies either. Lance had been pretty upset about Selene getting hurt during our fight with Marrow, although he never admitted it outright. I only knew from Eli. Selene refused to believe it entirely. But there was no denying that every time the two of them were together the air seemed to crackle. Maybe they’d finally given in.

That would explain Selene’s reluctance to tell me. I’d be ashamed of a midnight rendezvous with Lance Rathbone, too. Sure, he was good-looking, but he was also a bona fide jackass with a capital J.

“Yeah, well,” Eli began, but he broke off as a girl with long brown hair entered the room. His ex, Katarina Marcel.

Actually everybody in the classroom went silent at Katarina’s arrival. She was a siren, same as Selene; only she didn’t go around trying to downplay her beauty. Just the opposite. Today she wore a tight, sage green top that laced up the front and a pair of skinny jeans. She looked like she’d just stepped off the runway at a fashion show. Her beauty was so mesmerizing, even I had a hard time not staring at her.

It helped when she leveled a nasty, hate-filled look at me. The look lasted only a second before she turned her gaze on Eli, a stunning smile rising to her lips.

I heard Eli’s quick indrawn breath, and jealousy stung my insides. Ever since Eli had broken it off with Katarina, she’d been doing her best to get him back. Well, the best she could without truly invoking her siren magic. That was half the reason he’d broken up with her in the first place—he couldn’t be sure his attraction to her was genuine.

I sort of hoped the other half was his attraction to me, but so far he hadn’t given me any proof beyond that one kiss, which he’d never once mentioned.

Katarina strolled past our line of desks and sat down a few feet away. The smell of her perfume as she went by made me feel faint, in a dreamy, buzzed kind of way. Stupid sirens.

“All right, class,” our teacher Miss Norton said from the front of the room. “Let’s begin. Please open your books to page eighty-four.”

I pulled out my well-worn copy of The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus. The best thing I could say about the book was that it was light and easy to carry around.

“Now.” Miss Norton motioned to the dry-erase board where two lines from the play were written in her neat handwriting. “This quote is from act five, scene one, which all of you should’ve read overnight.” She began to recite, gesticulating wildly. “‘Her lips suck forth my soul: see, where it flies! Come, Helen, come give me my soul again.’”

Norton ceased her dramatic performance, pushed her wire-rim glasses back up her nose, and then surveyed the room. “Who would like to guess what magickind inspired Christopher Marlowe to describe Helen thusly?”

Silence met her question. A dozen possible answers occurred to me, but I wasn’t about to voice any of them to this group. The various kinds had been getting more and more sensitive to any comments about their nature that could be considered derisive.

Just last Thursday, passive, quiet Britney had dumped a beaker full of bloom-and-grow potion over Lance’s head after he referred to all naturekinds as tree-huggers during our alchemy class. Lucky for Lance, the potion wasn’t toxic, but it did make his face break out in tiny, green leaves, which soon covered his whole head until he resembled a walking, talking Chia Pet. Pretty funny, really, although a little overreactive on Britney’s part. Lance had said hundreds of worse things before.

Apparently, I wasn’t the only one aware of the dangers of voicing such opinions, as the silence stretched onward, nobody willing to raise a hand.

Miss Norton ran her gaze over the group again. I sank down lower in my chair, hoping her attention wouldn’t land on me. She appeared exceptionally bright-eyed and awake this morning. Her alleged Coke addiction (the drink, not the drug) seemed to be under control lately. As a fairy, Miss Norton was prone to the intoxicating effects of sugar.

“Anybody?” Norton said into our continued silence. She sighed and then opened the top drawer of her desk and pulled out her infamous talking stick. It looked like an exceptionally crooked wand, although I didn’t think it was. As a naturekind, Miss Norton had no need of a wand or any other magical instrument to wield her magic.

“All right. This is your last chance.” Norton made a sweeping gesture with the stick toward the room at large. “If I don’t get a volunteer, I’m going to have to choose someone.”

Come on, somebody speak up. I glanced expectantly at Katarina. She hardly ever let a chance of being the center of attention go by. But no such luck. Katarina had her eyes carefully focused on her book, although I caught her taking a quick peek at Eli.

“Suit yourselves.” Miss Norton let go of the stick. It hovered in the air before her for a moment and then began to move about the room, sweeping this way and that as if it had a mind of its own. I cringed each time it made a pass in my direction.

Finally it zoomed to the other side of the room and hung suspended over Nick Jacobi’s chair. I let out the breath I was holding, glad to have dodged the bullet.

Next second the stick did a mad race back across the room right at me. It moved so fast, I actually ducked, certain it would strike me in the head.

But instead it swerved right and stopped inches away from Eli’s face. He stared at the stick, his eyes going crossed and his mouth twisting into a frown. Then exhaling loudly, he seized hold of it, resigned to the inevitable.

“So,” Miss Norton said, smoothing the folds of her fluffy, flowered housedress. “Which magickind do you suppose it was, Mr. Booker?”

Eli shifted in his seat. I swallowed back guilt. I should’ve raised my hand.

“Any day now,” Miss Norton said.

Eli looked up. He fixed his gaze on Miss Norton, as if pretending she was the only other person present. He took a deep breath and then said in a quiet voice, “Siren.”

Eager whispers broke out in response to this, and nearly everybody turned their gaze on Katarina, the history between them common knowledge. My skin went red, both in vicarious embarrassment for Eli and a sudden swell of pity for Katarina. I didn’t like her, but I imagined the statement must’ve hurt.

It was even possible Eli wasn’t referring to her at all. Katarina hadn’t done anything so heinous to him as to be compared to a soul-sucker. No, I had a feeling Eli was thinking about what Paul had done to me. He was only a half siren, but that was plenty enough.

“And what makes you believe it was a siren?” Miss Norton said.

I closed my eyes. This couldn’t get any worse.

Wrong.

“It was me.” Katarina’s voice cracked. “He thinks I used my siren powers on him.”

Eli turned a smoldering look on her. “This has nothing to do with you.” He turned back to Miss Norton. “I just meant that sirens are capable of bending people’s wills, which is a lot like stealing someone’s soul. Plus the reference to flying could be literal since sirens really can fly. And Helen is supposed to be extremely beautiful, so the description fits.”

“Aw,” Miss Norton said, pointing a finger in the air. “But what about some of the demonkinds that really do feed on the soul?”

“I haven’t heard of any that are supposed to have the kind of beauty Helen did,” Eli said, thrusting out his jaw.

“Wait,” Nick Jacobi said. He slapped the top of his desk. “Are you trying to say that demonkind are ugly?”

“Yeah,” Royce Davidson said from beside Nick. Royce was a Metus demon, the kind that feeds on fear. “What about succubi? Could’ve been one of them.”

“That’s right,” Nick said. I could tell he was still on edge from the fight in the cafeteria. The hint of red flashed in his eyes through the glamour. He turned those eyes on me, his face twisting into a glower. “Or it could’ve been a Nightmare.” He paused. A vicious grin parted his lips to reveal large, pointed teeth. “Oh, never mind. I guess Nightmares aren’t pretty enough, are they?”

Eli stood up, the legs of his combo desk-chair scraping against the stone floor. He pointed the talking stick at Nick. The vision of him in Britney’s dream swam in my head. “You shut your mouth.”

Nick stood, too. “Go ahead and try. Ordinary.”

“No, boys,” Miss Norton said, moving to intervene.

Nick extended his hand. “Hypno-soma!” A jet of red light flew out from his fingertips.

Eli ducked sideways, just barely missing it. “Fligere,” he shouted back, aiming the stick.

What was he doing? He couldn’t work magic.

But the spell erupted from the tip of the talking stick. Miss Norton, still in motion, stepped in front of it. The spell struck her in the chest. Her eyes went wide, and she tipped backward, landing in a heap on the floor.

A silence louder than the shouting and flying spells descended in the room.

I turned my head toward Eli, my stomach sinking.

So much for the no-magic defense.