The Nightmare Charade

by Mindee Arnett

  Eli grunted. “That damn nondisclosure thing. What Dusty is trying to say is that given the reason Bethany has gone missing it makes her a victim, not a suspect.”

  Selene harrumphed. “I really wish you could tell us what this nondisclosure thing is all about.”

  Me, too, I thought, unable to say the words aloud.

  “Me, too,” Eli said.

  Lance waved us off. “I’m not talking about Bethany Grey.”

  “Then who?” Selene fixed a fierce stare on him.

  Shifting his weight from side to side, Lance said, “It’s Mr. Corvus.”

  I tried to laugh, couldn’t quite do it with my mouth closed, and managed a snorting sound instead like I was trying to breathe through water. Mr. Corvus? A Nightmare? No way.

  “I don’t know,” Eli said. “It’s hard to picture it.”

  “Why?” Selene said, her face alight with comprehension. “Because he’s male? Trust me, there are male Nightmares around. There has to be. You know, a little thing called survival of the species.”

  A suggestive grin flashed across Lance’s face. Wisely, he made it vanish before Selene noticed.

  “Yeah, okay.” Eli focused on Lance. “But why do you think Corvus is one? He’s never mentioned it in class.”

  No kidding, I thought, I would’ve remembered something like that.

  “His eyes glow in the dark,” Lance said.

  An awkward silence descended at this announcement. It was true that glow-in-the-dark eyes were the surest sign of a Nightmare, our signature as it were, but how on earth would Lance have ever seen it? It wasn’t like Corvus made a habit of turning the lights off to teach. And I knew from experience that Nightmares took measures to keep their glowing eyes hidden.

  Lance bared his teeth in a sarcastic smile. “It’s not as weird as it sounds, I promise. I snuck out the other night to put some hot sauce in the trash troll feed bins in the Menagerie—”

  Selene gaped. “Why on earth would you do that?”

  “Wanted to see what would happen to the little bastards. One of them bit my shoe the other day in bio and nearly escaped with a toe.” He shrugged. “I figured they might stop being so inclined to bite if they got a taste of something hot.”

  I snorted. “That has got to be the worst prank you’ve ever come up with.” A half second later, I realized the nondisclosure spell had let go of its hold on my tongue. “Thank goodness,” I said, patting my mouth.

  “Welcome back,” Eli said.

  Lance grinned in my direction. “I might have better success with my pranks if you got back in the game.”

  “Come on, you two,” Selene said. “Don’t get started.”

  Lance sniffed. “Fine. The point is, I saw Corvus walking outside the Menagerie. It was really dark, but I’m sure it was him.”

  “If it was dark, how could you tell?” I asked.

  “Are you kidding?” His lips twisted upward in a smirk. “There aren’t a lot of people on campus with only one eye. Try none.”

  “Oh.” As soon as he said it, I realized it made perfect sense. It was incontrovertible. Glowing eyes meant Nightmare. Glowing single eye meant Corvus.

  “Wow,” said Eli. “I can’t believe we never figured it out before now.”

  “Yeah, but do you really think he’s involved?” said Paul. “What motive would he have for killing my uncle?”

  “Who can say?” said Eli. “There might be any number of reasons.”

  “Especially if he’s connected to Marrow,” I added. I stood up, unable to stay still as thoughts tumbled through my mind. “Valentine and Lady Elaine seem to think that all of this might be related to Marrow. Both Titus’s murder and the thing that Eli and I aren’t allowed to talk about. And with Marrow involved, Corvus might have any number of reasons for killing Titus. Maybe it was a cover-up. Remember how we thought Corvus was involved with the attack on Lyonshold?”

  “That’s right,” Eli said. He looked on the verge of pacing. “Me and Dusty were snooping through Corvus’s office when Titus kidnapped us. Titus said he’d bugged our dream-session, but maybe that was a lie. Maybe Corvus knew we’d broken in and tipped him off.”

  I nodded, scrambling to recall all the details. It hadn’t been all that long ago, a little over three months, but so much had happened after Titus captured us. “We suspected Corvus because there were ravens in Eli’s dreams,” I said, thinking aloud.

  “And he owned the Atlantean Chronicle,” added Eli. “He’s an historian. We never did figure out how Titus learned the spell to sink Lyonshold. Maybe Corvus told him.”

  “That’s possible,” Selene said, bobbing her head in agreement. “And he might not have known what Titus was planning when he handed over the information at first. But then after the attack, he could have decided to kill him to save his own neck.”

  I frowned. Was Corvus capable of something so cold and calculating as executing Titus Kirkwood to protect himself? The short answer was—maybe. It wasn’t that he was cruel or unkind. He didn’t even strike me as vindictive. No, the word that always seemed to come to my mind to describe him was imperialistic. Authoritarian. He ruled his classroom with absolute power, and that sense of dominancy permeated everything about him. He reminded me of a general in a war movie, the kind of man capable of making decisions that he knew would cost lives, but that he calculated would be worth it in the long run.

  What kind of a person can do that? I thought, sacrifice real lives like chess pieces? Only it happened all the time. Wars were fought among ordinaries across the world every day.

  Shaking off the shiver sliding down my spine, I glanced at Eli. “And the third reason we suspected him was because of that symbol. The one with the three rings all connected.”

  “Oh, yeah, I forgot.” Eli turned toward the dry-erase board and drew the symbol. When he finished, he stepped back, giving us all a clear view.

  I examined the symbol, a peculiar feeling going through me. Mostly, I suspected, it was because of all the bad memories that came with it. I glanced at Eli. “Didn’t you ask Corvus what it meant afterward?”

  He ran a hand over his buzzed head, nodding. “He called it the Borromean circle. Said it was an archaic magickind symbol of unity. Each ring represents a kind. One for witchkind, one for naturekind, and one for darkkind.” He pointed to each in turn.

  “So something less than diabolical, in other words,” Paul said.

  I nodded, but inside I wasn’t so sure.

  Only the blood of the twelve can undo the circle.

  The odd phrase came sailing at me from out of the blue. For a moment I couldn’t remember where I’d heard it, but then it came to me. It was the line Corvus had made me translate out of one of his ancient books as part of my detention with him last year. A depiction of the Borromean circles had been in that book, too. And while the symbolism of the Borromean circles might be positive, that sentence certainly wasn’t. It sounded like a way of breaking the circles, shattering that unity—perhaps in the same way Titus Kirkwood had hoped to start a new magickind war by sinking Lyonshold and making the naturekinds look responsible for it.

  “Well,” said Selene, “the symbol might not be evil, but that doesn’t mean Corvus wasn’t involved. Does anybody know if he was even at Lyonshold that day? I know I didn’t see him. He should’ve been there though. All the teachers were chaperoning.”

  Eli twisted the marker through his fingertips, his mouth hanging slightly open as he contemplated the possibility. “We won’t know anything for certain until we take a closer look at what he’s been up to. But I’ve got to guess that Valentine knows he’s a Nightmare and has gotten his alibi already.”

  I clucked my tongue in dismay. “He certainly gave me the impression that there was someone other than me, Bethany, and my mom running around here.”

  “Yes, and I would think he’d have to disclose his kind to school officials, at a minimum,” said Lance. We all turned to stare at him, surprised by his sudden contribution. It was
n’t that he was dumb, quite the opposite. Lance was absurdly clever—and devious—but he was also perpetually bored and disinterested. It was strange to hear him talk with such enthusiasm.

  “Yeah, they probably do,” Eli said, recovering first. “But I don’t think we should eliminate him as a possible suspect. Not yet. He’s our best lead so far.”

  “And he could’ve lied about his alibi,” Paul said.

  “What about the guilt test?” asked Selene.

  I scoffed. “Valentine suspected my mother from the beginning. I doubt he tried all that hard to read Corvus’s guilt.”

  “Or maybe Corvus is pathological and doesn’t have any guilt about committing murder,” Lance said. “He is a Night—” Lance cut himself off before finishing the sentence, but that didn’t stop Selene from standing up and punching him hard in the shoulder. Buster followed it up with a full frontal attack, whacking Lance in the knees with its seat.

  Lance winced, and cupped his hand over his arm, as if trying to squeeze the hurt away. “Ouch. But yeah, I deserved that.” He cast a sheepish smile in my direction. “Sorry, Dusty. Old habits and all.” The words were light, but for once he said them straight, no joking or underlying derision.

  I clenched my teeth, uncertain how to react, whether to be angry or pleased. On the one hand, it wasn’t the first time I’d been faced with the stereotype that Nightmares were born evil. In truth, it was one I’d worried about from time to time myself. I was often haunted by the possibility that there was something fundamentally evil about my nature, especially whenever I screwed up and did something stupid. But on the other hand, Lance had apologized—sincerely. If he could change, well, that was a big enough miracle for me.

  “It’s all right,” I said, and for once I spoke to him straight, too—no snide or sarcasm in sight.

  Eli cleared his throat. I had a suspicion he was trying not to grin about the Disney-moment breakthrough Lance and I just had. “Anyway, so it looks like our first order of business is to investigate Corvus.”

  I nodded. “But we need to be extra careful this time.”

  “No argument there.” Eli wrote Corvus’s name on the board.

  I stared at it, a weight sinking through my chest and down into my stomach. Corvus was a Nightmare. Like me. Like my mother. Like Bethany. Four of us, the only four I’d ever met or knew anything about. And of those four, Bethany was a condemned criminal and my mother suspected of murder. As much as I was certain she hadn’t killed Titus, I couldn’t claim that she was entirely innocent either. My mom had skirted the line of the law, the line of rightness, her whole life.

  And then there was me. Most times I wanted to believe I was good, always inclined to do the right thing. But I’d attacked Katarina. Was that really just because of Bellanax? Or was it because of something in my nature?

  There was no answer, not even from the sword, which seemed to have gone cold and lifeless as it lay in its glamoured form around my wrist.

  Please let us be wrong, I thought, looking at Corvus’s name on the dry-erase board. Please let the guilty be anybody else except a Nightmare.

  13

  Cell Block B

  Bollinger came to get me for my dream session with Eli the following night. She pounded on the door hard enough to make the poster boards on the wall shake and threaten to fall off. I jumped up from my chair, startled by the noise. I must have dozed off. After a fruitless day trying to learn more about Corvus, I’d been researching Nightmares. But as I expected, there were very few ways to determine if a person was one.

  Bollinger pounded again. “Come on, Destiny Everhart. You’re going to be late.”

  “Hold on,” I shouted back, scrambling to reapply the glamour on Bellanax.

  “I would think,” Bollinger said as I opened the door, “that someone as into her boyfriend as you claim would be more eager to get there on time.”

  I folded my arms, Bellanax already going hot against my skin. With an effort, I held back a scathing reply.

  “Let’s go.” Bollinger headed down the hallway not bothering to make sure I was following. Not that I would’ve considered staying here even for a second. Bollinger or no, Eli was waiting.

  On the long walk over there, I made plans of what I would say and do—namely greeting him with a kiss the moment I stepped through the door. Forget Bollinger. She couldn’t stop us from kissing.

  Eagerly, I climbed up the stairs to Eli’s dorm. When she pushed the door open, I stepped forward, expecting her to wave me inside first, but she went in ahead of me. I had just long enough to spot Eli already stretched out on the sofa, when Bollinger waved her wand and said, “Hupno-drasi.”

  The spell struck him dead center in the chest. His eyes snapped closed, and he slumped against the sofa, his head lolling to one side.

  “Why did you do that?” Outrage pulsed so hard through me I started to shake. Bellanax became a hot iron against my wrist. The incantation of a curse rose in my mind. All I had to do was say it.

  No, I thought as much to Bellanax as to myself. Beads of sweat broke out on my temple at the struggle to keep the sword glamoured.

  “No time to waste,” Bollinger said, turning to sit down in the chair nearest the door. “I have duties waiting as soon as this is over. So please, get on with it.” She motioned toward Eli’s prone body.

  I forced my anger to calm. It wasn’t wise to bring that into the dream. High emotion on my part could skew the dream—and Eli and I had a lot to explore and discover tonight.

  Taking a breath and letting it out slowly, I climbed on top of Eli. He was deeply asleep and already dreaming, his eyes shifting back and forth beneath his lids and the fictus coming off him like a sweet, irresistible scent. Still, I held off entering the dream long enough to lean forward and press my lips to his. It was a small intimacy, but it was better than nothing. Once inside the dream, we wouldn’t be able to touch at all.

  I closed my eyes, sloughed off my mortal body, and descended into the dream. As always, the world swirled around me in an explosion of color and sensations, a thrilling descent into a place of unknown possibilities. I could arrive anywhere, no landscape too farfetched or impossible to be made real by the power of the dream.

  But when the world finally formed around me, I found myself in a very familiar place—the school gymnasium. Well that’s just disappointing. I turned in a circle to take in the scene. Climbing structures and barricades, of the sort that we used regularly in phys ed for combative magic study, were scattered over the yellow wood floor from one wall of bleachers to the other. These same structures were also used in gladiator games.

  Which was exactly what was going on around me right now. More than a dozen boys roamed the floor, in between and over the structures. I didn’t recognize any of them, thanks to the protective gear they wore, including beetle-like black helmets. But nevertheless, I could tell they were all boys.

  “What’s the deal?” I said, hands on hips. Did this mean that there weren’t any girls trying out for the gladiator team? Or was Eli’s subconscious a playground for repressed sexism. I voted on the former and resolved to ask him about it once I found him among the chaos of flying spells.

  I launched myself into the air, employing my favorite dream-walking pastime—flying. In seconds I was near the ceiling, the game floor spread out before me like a giant chessboard, each player easily visible now. In seconds, I spotted Eli. He was in the far corner, crouched behind a short square structure. I couldn’t exactly say how I knew it was him, given the helmet. It might’ve been intuition, or perhaps he was just more physically present than the other players. This dream was his party, after all.

  I landed a few feet in front of him. “Hey,” I said. “Are you ready to get going?”

  He didn’t reply or even turn his helmeted head in my direction.

  “Eli,” I said again. “Earth to Eli!”

  Again, he ignored me. A second later, he darted around the corner of the structure and threw a dazing curse at an in
coming opponent. He passed so close to me that I leaped back, missing a collision by inches.

  I shouted his name for a third time. But once again, he ignored me. No, I realized, not ignoring me—he’s just too deep in the dream. It hadn’t happened in a long time—normally Eli was aware of my presence the moment I got here—but for whatever reason, his attention was completely captured by this dream.

  “I’m really sorry about this,” I said, and then I reached out with my Nightmare magic, caught him by the arms like a puppet on strings, and lifted him into the air.

  “What the hell?” He twisted around, his legs thrashing for a second. Then finally he turned toward me where I hovered in the air beside him. “Dusty?”

  “That’s right. Are you ready to get going or what?”

  He pulled off his helmet. “Crap, this is a dream, isn’t it?”

  I nodded and slowly lowered us both to the ground.

  “Sorry,” he said, a sheepish smile crossing his face. “I must’ve been distracted.”

  “No kidding.” I grinned and motioned to the gym. “Don’t you get enough of this every day already?”

  “What?” He winked. “It’s fun. And you know I can’t control the content of my dreams. That’s your job.”

  “Right you are. I guess I should get on it then. Where should we go first?”

  “Let’s try the police department,” Eli said. “You’ve been there often enough to re-create it, right? Maybe we’ll be able to get a look at the ward where Titus was killed.”

  “I’ll give it a go.”

  “Good, but do you mind giving me a wardrobe change first?” Eli said, motioning to his gladiator gear.

  I raised a suggestive eyebrow. “Would you prefer your birthday suit?”

  He grinned back at me and took a step nearer, our bodies only a few dangerous inches away from touching. “I’m game if you are.”

  A blush heated my skin, burning from the top of my hairline all the way down to my toes. For a second, I almost considered doing it, but no. It would be too great a tease. Besides, I wouldn’t be confident enough to show him my true naked body. In this dream world, I would be tempted to present a falsely perfect body—skin tanned and blemish-free, a stomach lean and flat, minus the little pouch just below my belly button.