Eli faced me. We were standing close enough I had to lean my head back to look up at him.
“Look, Dusty, I know you’re inclined to think the best of Paul, and I know you think I’m inclined to always think the worst, but you’ve got to believe me when I say you need to be careful about him.”
I closed my eyes, just long enough to compose myself. I didn’t want to sound defensive. “Why do you think so? This time, I mean.”
Eli bit his lip, released it again. “It’s just, how can we be sure that Paul wasn’t involved in what happened to Titus?”
A laugh burst from my chest. “That’s absurd.”
“Is it?” Eli leaned back, increasing the distance between our gazes. Then he leaned forward and took hold of my shoulders. “Think about it, Dusty. Paul was there, on the basement ward, same time as Titus—by his own admission. And we both know that he had reason to kill his uncle. More than anybody else, after all those years of abuse.”
I flinched. The motivation was certainly true, scarily so. I closed my eyes and shook the feeling off. Motive or not that didn’t make him the killer. I met Eli’s gaze. “Paul was locked up. You saw those cells. How could he have gotten out to do it? We know he’s not a Nightmare.”
“No, he’s a siren,” Eli shot back at once, as if he’d had this volley prepared ahead of time. “What if one of the guards took interest? What if one of them was a woman? One willing to leave his cell unlocked for him.”
Right away I remembered some of the names in Valentine’s files. There had definitely been female names on the list. And similar to a Nightmare’s power, the siren’s ability to mesmerize couldn’t be completely blocked by anti-magic spells.
I jerked my gaze away from Eli, staring at some random spot on the floor. I didn’t want to believe it. I wasn’t sure I could believe it, but I knew I couldn’t discount it either. Not this time.
I turned back to Eli. “Look, I promise I’ll be careful. I won’t take anything he says at face value. I’m not going to get tricked this time. But—” I raised my hand to his lips, silencing a protest. “I’ve got to do whatever I can to help my mom. And if Paul is responsible for Titus’s death, then spending this time with him will give me a chance to investigate him, too.”
My stomach twisted at the idea. Not because I was opposed to spying on him, but because if it turned out to be true, then that meant Paul’s offer to help had been about misdirection from the beginning. Just an attempt to keep the guilt from shining on him.
To the detriment of my mother.
I clenched my teeth and breathed in deep. Exhaling, I said, “I know you’re worried, but he won’t get the upper hand with me ever again.” I raised my left arm, showing him Bellanax.
Eli exhaled, and I sensed the fight ease in him. “I am worried, Dusty. About a lot of things.” He hesitated and glanced at the Will Guard. The man had moved closer, but was still out of hearing range. Eli turned back to me. “But you’re right. This is about your mother and we’ve got to do what’s best for her.”
I leaned up on my tippy toes and kissed him. “Thank you.”
His answering kiss was just a little bit cold, like the shift toward night at the end of an early summer day.
It left me chilled for hours afterward. So did his warnings about Paul. When I texted Paul last night, agreeing to his plan, he told me to volunteer to help out at the Menagerie after class. I wasn’t wild about the idea. Ms. Miller had mentioned volunteer opportunities once or twice in class, but so far those opportunities seemed to consist of shoveling troll manure or removing the cobwebs in the jackalope cages. Fun times.
Fortunately, when I reported for volunteer duty, Ms. Miller sent me to one of the classrooms to clean the dry-erase boards.
“That’s all?” I said, arching one eyebrow.
Ms. Miller didn’t look up from the sprite she held clutched in one hand. In the other she was preparing to clip its wings with a pair of surgical shears. The sprite was humanoid but with a feline face, sharp pointed teeth like thumbtacks, currently bared in protest at Ms. Miller. Its tiny body was shifting colors, yellow to green to pink to purple. I swallowed a surge of pity for the little creature. I wanted to ask why Ms. Miller was clipping its wings, but I didn’t have time for the twenty-minute lecture that would probably accompany the answer.
Finally, Ms. Miller glanced up. “Yes. You have to prove your reliability with simple tasks before you are allowed the responsibility of handling any living creatures, plant or animal, in the Menagerie.”
Holding back a reply, I headed to the classroom she’d indicated. I sent Paul a text on the way with just the room number. I didn’t have the encoder with me and hoped he would understand by the number alone.
It seemed he did—or maybe he’d known my assignment ahead of time—because he was waiting in the classroom when I arrived. He was wearing his creepy bearded-man disguise, but I was starting to get used to it. When he smiled at me, I could see Paul behind those stranger’s eyes.
“Hey, thanks for coming.”
“No, thank you,” I said, my answering smile already fragile. So much risk he was taking to help me. Why? I pushed the question to the back of my mind—for now. I needed to learn this shape-change stuff.
“Come on,” he said. “We need to go somewhere private for this.”
“Okay.” I managed to sound normal, but my insides were shaking. Going anywhere private with Paul would’ve made me nervous even before Eli had pointed out the darker possibilities of his sudden reappearance in my life.
We headed out of the classroom, made a left and then another left, toward the rear of the building. When we arrived at the back door, Paul pushed it open and motioned me through. I stepped out onto a narrow walkway running between the administration building and the outer wall of the Menagerie.
Paul joined me a moment later, pulling the door shut behind him. “We shouldn’t be seen back here. Hardly anybody comes this way.” He started walking, heading deeper into the Menagerie. I followed silently behind him. Although he hadn’t told me to stay quiet, there was a clandestine feel to our journey up and down the narrow alleys. Whenever he heard someone nearby, he would stop and wait, making sure the coast was clear before moving on.
Finally, we arrived at a long rectangular building with a low, flat ceiling. The place looked abandoned. It leaned to one side as if it had aspirations toward falling over. A large sign posted over the door read:
WARNING
KEEP OUT
RISK OF DEATH AND DISMEMBERMENT
“What is this place?” I asked as Paul stepped up to the door and slid a key, one of at least a dozen he had on a large chain, into the lock.
He smiled. “Just ignore the signs.”
I bit my lip. Ignoring the signs never turned out well in my experience. “But what is it?”
Paul pushed the door open and stepped inside. I hesitated on the threshold, breathing in the strange smell of the place, a mix of ash and rotten egg. Vaguely, the words of the oath Ms. Miller had made us take our first day in the Menagerie passed through my mind, something about not opening any locked areas.
“Come on,” Paul said. “Before we get caught. This place is off limits.”
“No kidding,” I muttered as I followed him in. He shut the door behind me and turned the lock. Inside, the building was one giant room, completely bare of everything except the dirt and leaf litter on the concrete floor. To the left, the floor sloped downward, leading into the tunnels.
Paul reached up and removed his shape-change necklace, his bearded-man persona disappearing. He folded the stiff chain and tucked it into his pocket. “This way,” he said, turning toward the tunnel. A lantern hung on the wall next to the tunnel’s entrance, and Paul picked it up and whispered a fire incantation. Flames appeared inside the glass frame, casting an impressive amount of light given its size. Holding it out in front of him, he proceeded into the tunnel.
“Where are we going?” I said hurrying after him and half-s
tumbling over my own feet. “What is this place, Paul?”
He glanced over his shoulder, a mischievous smile twisting his lips. “Why are you so wor—” The smile fell away. He stopped and faced me, his eyes level with mine thanks to his lower vantage point. “It’s Eli, isn’t it?”
I blinked at him, rocking back on my heels to compensate for the sloping floor. “What are you talking about?”
Paul motioned toward me. “You, acting like I’m an ax murderer luring you away to my favorite chopping block.”
I made a face. “That’s not funny.”
“It is Eli, right?” Paul lowered the lantern as if it were suddenly too heavy to lift. It dangled from his fingers, bumping against his jeans. “I know he’s not happy about this, assuming you even told him.”
“Of course I told him,” I said, my voice dangerously close to a hiss.
“Oh, yeah? What did he have to say about it?”
I opened my mouth and closed it again, gritting my teeth. Paul waited a few seconds, the silence a painful pressure as I searched for a response, one that didn’t involve accusing him of killing his uncle.
“Let me guess,” Paul continued. “He thinks I’m involved, doesn’t he?”
I stared at him, unable to think of a reply.
“Yeah, I thought so.” Paul pressed his lips together. Anger glistened in his eyes, which were colorless in the dim cave-like hallway around us, the darkness broken only by the flickering lantern light.
“Don’t be silly,” I said, a hollow clang in my words. “I mean, yeah, he was mad, but did you really expect anything else from him?”
“Not at all.” Paul exhaled then drew in a breath deep enough that I saw his chest expand. “But I also know you’re covering for him.” He waved off my protest. “It’s all right. I don’t blame you or him. Not given my history.” The timid smile that rose to his face was painful to see.
“I … I’m sorry, Paul.” I dropped my gaze to the floor, unable to bear his expression a moment longer. I wanted to say something better, but I couldn’t think of anything.
“Do you believe in redemption?”
I raised my eyes to find Paul wasn’t looking at me, but had bent his neck to the side, his gaze focused down the tunnel somewhere.
“I don’t know.” Once more they were hollow words, a hollow answer.
Paul turned back to me, his expression closer to normal, that brokenness I saw in him a moment ago covered by a hard veneer. “All I can do is give you my word that I didn’t kill my uncle. I was locked up in that cell with no way out of it for almost three weeks. That makes twice in my life I’ve been a prisoner inside the Rush. It was the worst thing I’ve ever endured. And I have no intention of ever ending up back there again.”
I stared at him, weighing this answer in my mind. I knew he could still be lying, but then the vivid memory of the Rush’s cellblocks rose in my mind. I saw those upright coffin cells, the rust stains on the wall, and the oppressive darkness, the kind made worse by the knowledge of light existing outside of it, like that glass corridor leading to the prison, so warm and beautiful. Even at night it would glow a little with moon and starlight.
I slowly nodded. “I believe you.”
The hardness in his expression broke into relief. “Let’s get going. We’ve got lots to do and only a little time. I’ve got to be at the front gates by five or my watchdogs will get suspicious and come looking for me.”
I followed after him, too leery of this underground journey to want to walk beside him. There were more signs down here warning people to stay out or risk being, “impaled, crushed, or incinerated.”
The sloping tunnel ended in stairs that circled downward in a dizzying spiral. It was impossible to tell how far down it went, but within seconds I was convinced we would be on it forever. The stone was crumbling around us, bits of gravel and dirt showering down with every step. Even our breath seemed to dislodge it.
“Seriously, Paul, where are we going?” Just as I said it the stairs came to an end, and Paul and I stepped out into a vast cavern, one so tall the lantern stood little chance of illuminating the ceiling. A thousand years of dirt and scree covered the floor.
Paul held the lantern aloft and turned in a circle, as if offering me a view of the place. “No one will discover us down here. It’s not as structurally sound as it used to be, but we should be all right for what we’re doing.”
I didn’t like the word should but decided not to press. “It looks really old and not manmade. Not this part.”
“That’s because this is a dragon’s nest.”
I spun to face him. “A what?”
He grinned. “I knew you’d like it. Once upon a time, a female dragon lived in here and laid her eggs. See.” He scooted his foot against the ground, and I heard a faint tinkling.
I looked down to see what I thought had been scree was actually shells. Or mostly shells. There was plenty of scree and other bits of rock and debris mixed in with it. “Wow. This is amazing. So there really are dragons at Arkwell.”
“Well, yeah, I told you that, but they’re not like the ones that used to live in these caves.”
“How so?”
“The dragons that lived here died out a long time ago. Or I guess you could say they evolved into extinction.”
Puzzled, I cocked my head. “How are the dragons different now?”
“Size mostly. And viciousness. Our modern dragons are a lot smaller, the size of elephants. But these”—he motioned toward the ceiling—“were the size of dinosaurs.”
I gaped, unable to imagine it. I’d once seen a life-sized replica of a blue whale hanging in an entranceway of a museum. It was so large it felt like a cheap gag. My mind couldn’t wrap itself around the idea that something that big could also be alive, that it could move and think on its own.
“Our modern dragons are also domesticated.” Paul scrunched up his nose. “Sorta. Anyway, come on, there’s a clearer spot over here.”
He led the way along the nearest wall until we reached a cluster of stalagmites standing up in a rough circle. Inside the circle the floor was clear of dragon shells. An old blanket and several pillows filled the space, along with a couple of additional lanterns.
“I brought some stuff down ahead of time to make this more comfortable,” Paul explained when I shot him a quizzical look at the item.
Stepping into the circle, Paul lit the lanterns with a wave of his hand. In the sudden burst of light, I noticed something odd on the nearby wall.
“What’s that?” I pointed. Caveman drawings covered the stone. At least, that was what they looked like at first glance. But I soon saw they were more complex, akin to Egyptian hieroglyphs.
“Pretty cool, huh?” Paul said. “There’s a lot of this prehistoric artwork in the dragon caves, even in the ones we’re still using. Ms. Miller told me they were made by a prehistoric Native American tribe of witchkinds. The Iwatoke, I think they were called.”
“The Iwatoke,” I repeated, struggling with the strange word.
“They worshiped dragons, apparently. So most of this is about that.” Paul stepped closer to the wall, letting the light expand over the surface. He pointed. “See over there, that’s the hatching and there’s the mating ritual, and so on.”
I gawked, in awe of the scene before me. It was the kind of thing that made me want to grow up to be an archeologist, to become the magickind version of Indiana Jones or Lara Croft, minus the guns and killing bad guys. “I would love to go exploring down here.”
“Oh, no you wouldn’t,” Paul said, turning to face me. “This is as safe as it gets. That tunnel over there is almost impassable.” He pointed at another sloping tunnel leading downward nearby. “Even I’m not brave enough to go down there.”
I considered walking over for a better look but then turned my gaze back to the wall. “Dangerous or not, it would be really—” The rest of my sentence got derailed as my eyes took in a familiar shape. The sight sent a chill slipping down my s
pine, every hair on my body standing up.
The drawing was of another dragon. This one lying in a perfect circle, its arms and wings drawn close to its serpentine body. The dragon’s mouth was open and it was swallowing its own tail.
It was the ouroboros. Right out of Eli’s dream.
17
Growing Pains
“What’s wrong, Dusty?”
Paul’s voice broke through my shock, and I turned to stare at him, my mind still whirling. I turned back, walking over to the wall. I had to stretch my hand over my head to reach the ouroboros drawing. I ran my fingers over the rough surface, tracing the twist of the dragon’s body.
“I don’t get it,” Paul said, hands on hips. “What’s the big deal? That symbol is all over the place down here.” He swung around and pointed at another spot on the wall. “Look, there’s another and another.” He pointed to two different areas on the wall, and I flinched at the sight of each ouroboros. Every inch of my skin was tingling.
I took a deep breath, trying to regain my composure before Paul became convinced I was having a psychotic break. “It’s Eli’s dream. We’ve seen this symbol.”
“Oh.” Paul’s eyebrows drew together. “So you think it has an extra meaning?”
I nodded. “It has to, only I don’t think it means quite what we thought it does.”
“Huh?”
I glanced at him, uncertain of how much to tell him. Eli’s suspicions about him kept pinging in the back of my mind, tiny warning bells calling for caution. “Well, it’s a symbol of rebirth and renewal, according to the Internet.” Even the e-net, the magickind version of the Internet, said the same, and not much else. I’d made several searches about it over the last few days.
“You think it represents Marrow then?” Paul said.
Once again, I flinched, inhaling a quick breath. It felt wrong to discuss this with Paul. The contents and meanings in Eli’s dreams were something I normally discussed with Eli, but so far we’d had little chance to talk. A lot of what we needed to talk about we couldn’t with the Will Guard always around.
The Nightmare Charade Page 18