by Sarina Dorie
A knock pounded at the door a moment later, cuing me that it had been the former hypothesis, not the latter.
“Go away,” Vega grumbled into her pillow.
I jumped out of bed and opened the door before Thatch woke Vega.
He eyed my pink Strawberry Shortcake pajamas with disdain. “Why aren’t you dressed yet?” He made no attempt to quiet his voice.
I put a finger to my lips. I already had made one person angry at me. I didn’t need Vega angry too. “I’m sorry. I’ll hurry,” I whispered.
I closed the door, stumbling over bedposts and the corner of the large mirror on its stand between the wardrobes. I fumbled in a drawer of the dresser for the matches to light a candle. Dressing became easier at that point, but I didn’t realize I was wearing my dress inside out and two different color shoes until I had made it out into the hallway where Thatch stood. His wand emitted the luminescence of a ninety-watt bulb.
He looked me up and down with obvious disapproval. His thick dark hair was immaculately styled. It didn’t look like he’d dressed in his suit in a hurry. He flicked a hand at my candle, and it sputtered out.
“Come along. I’m not going to chastise you in the hallway of the women’s dormitory.” He strode away, taking long strides.
I didn’t know what to do with my candle. I set it down next to the door and chased after him, struggling to keep up with his long legs. He descended stairs and strode across hallways. The school was a twisting maze of shadows beyond the light of his wand. I reoriented myself at the top of another set of stairs when his light flashed across my biological mother’s portrait. Her eyes watched me as I passed. There were no serpents in the painting, only ravens. So many wings surrounded her she looked as though she herself possessed black wings like the Raven Queen.
Shivers skated down my spine.
We descended more stairs into the subterranean depths of the school. I knew this route to the dungeon well by now. Thatch unlocked doors with a set of keys, letting the thick wood whack into the stone walls as he threw them open. After passing through his classroom, into a chamber of antique torture devices, and to his office, he finally stopped.
He spoke slowly, enunciating each word with the gravity of a black hole. “What. Were. You. Thinking?”
I started to speak, but he put up a hand. “I told you to learn to control your subconscious. I’d had such high hopes for you. I thought you were ready to move on to real magic, but I can see I was mistaken. You are completely out of control. This is how people get hurt.”
I swallowed. “I’m sorry. I—”
He shushed me again. “Have you even been trying? Have you been following the exercises in the book? Or did you suddenly take it upon yourself to decide you were done? You probably assumed you didn’t need more practice.”
“No. I have been doing my homework every—”
“I’m not done.” He loomed over me, forcing me to step back. “You claim to want to help your students. You claim you wish to help Derrick, but you won’t even take the steps necessary to ensure you don’t lose control. What if you had accidentally pulled a child into one of those dreams? You would traumatize him or her, perhaps even trap them. But you would say it was an accident, so it wouldn’t be your fault.” He took a deep breath, nostrils flaring.
I plunged forward before he could stop me again. “It wasn’t an accident. I didn’t lose control. I meant to call you into my dream. I’m sorry I interrupted your sleep.”
His brow furrowed more deeply. He turned away, plopped himself in his comfy plastic chair, and made himself more comfortable. “Explain.” He gestured to the metal chair across from his desk.
Reluctantly I sat. Cold metal leeched through my clothes. “I was having a nightmare. It’s a reoccurring dream. Only, it’s changed since Julian’s death. This dream now includes him . . . just like when I sit in the chair.” I fidgeted, untwisting my leggings so the stripes weren’t bunched up at my knees. “I can do most of the exercises in the lucid-dreaming book, but I can’t figure out how to stop this dream, or make the outcome any different.”
He steepled his fingers, waiting in silence.
I scuffed my red shoe against grit on the stone floor. “I couldn’t control the dream, so I tried to call to you to ask you for help. I know you said you don’t believe there’s a ghost haunting me, but I thought if you were there, you would see him and know what to do to exorcise him or something. You pretty much know how to fix everything.”
He stared at the empty birdcage beside his desk, rubbing his chin as if lost in thought. I wondered where his crow was.
It was a long moment before he spoke, his tone even and neutral. “It wasn’t an accident, then? You figured out how to pull me into your dream on purpose?”
I wasn’t sure if this was the calm before the storm, and he was about to explode, or his temper had calmed. In any case, I didn’t think there was anything I could say that would make any difference, so I told the truth.
“Yes,” I said. “It was intentional.”
He stared off into the distance again. I crossed my right leg over my left knee and buckled my black Mary Jane shoe.
He tapped his wand against his desk absentmindedly. “Why do you think you were able to tell the difference between reality in the dream your subconscious came up with tonight, but you still have difficulty in the chair?”
“I don’t know. I’m not even sure how the chair works.” I glanced down at the metal frame. “It isn’t the same as dreaming, is it?”
“No, but it is very similar. Once you’re induced into an alpha state, your body falls asleep, and you slip into a theta or delta wave. From there, the chair enhances your fears and exploits your weaknesses. If you can reach a gamma stage while sleeping, you may be reaching an altered state. This is where precognition, astral projection, and other psychic states occur. In theory, anyway.”
“This all sounds very scientific.”
He touched a finger to his lips. “Not too loud, or the Fae might hear you and insist on my removal.” From the arched eyebrow and wry smile, I took that to be a joke.
He waved a hand at the chair. “You have never reached the deepest sleep states in my office. If you had, I suspect you would be able to work through some of your affinity issues with greater ease. I wonder why you aren’t able to achieve a gamma stage while in here. . . .”
“Oh really?” That made me laugh. “You want to know why I think I can’t relax enough to get into a gamma state in your office while you’re watching me?”
He stood up abruptly, strode to the wall, and waved his wand in the air. An oval window appeared, displaying shelves of books through the hole in space. The edges of the oval wavered and blurred like a mirage. He tucked his hands under the edge of the window, lifting it higher. The wooden shelves of magical books reminded me of those in the library. I watched in fascination as he perused the titles. This was the kind of magic I wanted to learn.
He selected one, skimmed the pages, and harrumphed. He slid the book back onto the shelf and seated himself. “I believe I’ve discovered why.”
Now that the distraction of magic was gone, my train of thought came back to me. “I bet it’s because the chair is uncomfortable. My bed isn’t.”
“I suppose you’ll ask me for pillows, a foot rest, and a warm blanket next.”
I smiled hopefully.
“You are far too comfortable in that chair as it is. According to documentation on the history of that chair, it wasn’t that the user needed to merely be cold and vulnerable to use it. Traditionally the student also sat in the chair nude.”
“That’s icky. Were these students minors?” I asked.
“This school wasn’t always for youth,” Thatch said.
I shook my head. “I’m keeping my clothes on.” His explanation of the chair made me think about all the naked butt germs I was sitting on from people crapping their lack of pants in fear.
“I wasn’t asking you to sit unclothed in my of
fice.” He looked me up and down with the kind of scorn that told me there wasn’t much to see anyway. “I’m simply stating that’s why you aren’t being fully induced. Not enough of you is in contact with the chair. For that reason, your dreams might prove to be more productive.”
I sighed in relief.
He leaned back in his chair, staring off into the distance. “Dream magic. . . . That’s a useful skill you’ve developed.”
Some of his crabbiness had lifted now that he knew I’d purposefully called him into my dream. Maybe I’d done something right for once.
He steepled his fingers again. “Tell me about the exercises you’ve been practicing.”
“I’ve been doing the meditations and keeping a dream journal. One of them is to keep lists of things I observe in the real world and then make lists of what I remember from the dream world to make me more observant of details.”
He nodded. “Good. How many dreams do you record a night?”
“Two or three.”
“Every night?” He tilted his head to the side, his expression doubtful.
I hated it when he looked at me like I was a liar. Especially when I was telling him the truth for once. “Yes.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “You don’t cheat and skip some nights?”
“I skipped once last month.”
He nodded with approval. “Will you allow me to examine your dream journal?”
My face flushed with heat. “It’s kind of personal.”
“I’m guessing you keep it in your room unlocked with Vega around. Chances are your personal life isn’t as secret as you imagine. Where is it?”
I hesitated. Did I really want him to know about all my weird, kinky sex dreams? This was going to be humiliating. On the other hand, he was interested in my problems and acting like a real mentor more than he’d ever done before. I didn’t want that to stop. I liked the idea that we were becoming friends and he was treating me like an adult.
“The book is in the nightstand in the drawer,” I said. “I can go run up and—”
“Sit.” He shook his head sternly. “You are not wandering about the school unchaperoned at night. You’d probably walk into the wrong wing and accidentally fall out that crumbling tower. Or worse yet, find yourself in the secret crypts of the school where the principal claims to have hidden those blasted answer keys.”
He waved his wand over the desk as he spoke, tracing a rectangular shape before him. He opened the top drawer of his desk, pulling out two books. Upon first glance, I thought one was the lucid-dreaming book and the other my dream journal.
He said, “You should call me into your dream the next time it reoccurs. We can decipher the meaning and try to understand what your subconscious mind is saying. It might prove to be more instructive than using the chair to—Bloody hell!”
He dropped the books on his desk as if he’d been burned. He leapt back, knocking his chair over in a clatter. He stared at the book that had been underneath my dream journal. “Where did you get this book?”
That’s when I saw it wasn’t the book on lucid dreaming. It was my mother’s diary.
That was impossible. I had burned it. I’d seen it go up in flames.
Thatch spoke slowly, drawing out his words with precision. “What are you doing with this book?”
I had thought I’d avoided provoking Thatch’s ire tonight. Now I could see I hadn’t escaped that fate.
CHAPTER FIVE
Caught Red-Handed
I stared in horror. There had to be a logical explanation for this. Either I was dreaming—which I suspected wasn’t the case—or magic was at work. The diary had repaired itself out of the ashes of my fire, rising like a phoenix.
“Where. Did. You. Get. This?” Thatch repeated more slowly.
I cleared my throat. “I don’t know how that got there. I thought I burned it.”
“You admit it, then. You stole this book from Jeb?” His eyes turned hard.
“No. I didn’t steal it.” I slumped in my seat, already feeling like a guilty child. “I found it on the table in the cafeteria while cleaning up for the Halloween party.”
“It was an All Hallows’ Eve party,” he said tersely. “Can you read the runes on the cover?”
“Runes?” I asked.
“Yes, the fancy little letters in another language.”
I leaned forward. I’d forgotten about the runes. I hadn’t paid much attention to what they were since I couldn’t read them. They weren’t Old High German, Gaelic, Latin, or any of the other languages I’d studied.
I shook my head. “What does it say?” I reached out my hand, yearning for that book, the answer to so many of my problems, but he smacked my hand with his twisted black wand.
I jerked my hand back.
He paged through the book, not answering. He flipped back to the first page again. It was a page with the words:
The Fae Fertility Paradox
by Alouette Loraline
After that was the one line I had written: Hello, my name is Clarissa Lawrence. Who are you?
Okay, so before I’d figured out the writing inside was invisible, I had thought maybe it would be like Tom Riddle’s diary. I probably shouldn’t have expected all the mysteries at the school would be solved as easily as in Harry Potter after my mother’s face had failed to be present under Pro Ro’s turban.
“You expect me to believe you found this?”
“No. I mean, yes. I mean, I didn’t steal it. I found it just how I told you.”
His eyes narrowed.
“I’m telling the truth.”
“It just magically appeared on a table,” he said. “For your convenience.”
“I don’t know about magically, but yes, I found it lying around like it wanted to be found.”
Except it hadn’t appeared without an explanation. Derrick had wanted me to find it. Or perhaps the Raven Queen had. After I had burned it, that note had come to me, telling me Derrick knew I could use the spell in the book to solve his curse. I thought I had lost it. Yet here it was again.
“Did it not once cross your puny brain you should bring this book to me?”
It had occurred to me he would want it, but it most definitely hadn’t made me want to hand it over to him.
“Do you know how dangerous this book is if it should fall into the wrong hands? Use some common sense for once in your life. This is exactly why I can’t trust you.” He flipped through the pages, making a grunt of disgust in the back of his throat.
“I don’t see what the problem is. It’s blank,” I said. Sort of. I no longer had Vega’s spell to remove the glamour that made the writing invisible.
“So you decided to deface it, thinking there must be nothing of value written on the pages?” He stared at something on the last page.
I thought he meant the two sentences I had written at the beginning, but then I saw the drawing. I stood up. Even from upside down, I could see it was incomplete. Someone had sketched a sea creature with a buxom woman held in its tentacles. Dark lines radiated from her open palm.
That wasn’t my drawing. If I didn’t know better, I would say it looked like one of Derrick’s. I didn’t remember the drawing when I’d found the book. Or when I’d burned it. Derrick had saved the book? For me to use?
“Can I have the book back?” I asked. I already knew the answer, but I had to try.
“No.”
“That was my mother’s book, and she’s dead. Shouldn’t her property be passed down to me? It’s the only thing I’ve ever owned that belonged to my mother.”
He closed the book and stood. “I’ll walk you back to your room.” He shoved it into the top drawer of his desk.
I could guess who would be up cracking the magic code and reading for the rest of the night.
Not me.
Somehow, I had to get that book back. The answer to Derrick’s fate was bound to that journal.
CHAPTER SIX
Making Deals with the Devil
&
nbsp; The following day, I placed an apple on the polished mahogany of Thatch’s desk as he scribbled a note in crimson ink on a student’s paper.
I couldn’t fix every problem in my life, but I had to start somewhere. Surviving the new semester trumped fighting against the evil Raven Court and saving people from curses. Those things I didn’t know what to do to solve. For art supplies, I had some ideas about what I needed to do.
Priscilla shifted in her cage and croaked out a protest like she was onto me. Now that I was closer, I saw a black cat sat curled up on Thatch’s lap, eyeing the “crow.” I’d never seen the cat before.
Thatch absentmindedly stroked the cat’s head. I couldn’t help wondering if that might be his other sister, but he’d said Odette was dead.
He didn’t glance up from the paper he was correcting. “If an apple is your way of thanking me for spending time helping you when I would rather have been sleeping last night, it is unnecessary. I was simply doing my job to ensure you don’t someday lose control and blow up the school. Though, if you were going to thank me, I should think more of those ugly cookies you made would be welcome.”
Note to self, make more cookies. “It’s not a thank-you present. I know you said not to thank Witchkin for things.” My guess was that his poor manners must have come from somewhere. Maybe it was from being an orphan. Then again, dealing with the Fae had probably encouraged him not to say thank you—or feel gratitude to anyone.
He turned the page of the paper he corrected and circled a paragraph with his quill. “If you aren’t thanking me, it’s because you want something. The answer is no.”
He was as bad as Vega. I had no doubt there would be a price too.
I crossed my arms. “I didn’t ask you for anything yet.”
“You don’t have to. I’m a Celestor. I’ve already divined the answer.”
He wasn’t a Celestor; he just passed as one. Not that I would speak of this out loud when the open door of his office led to his classroom, and students in afterschool detention sat doing homework.