The Nightmare Charade

by Mindee Arnett

  I stumbled at this news, shock turning me clumsy. “How … why … why would they do that?”

  Lady Elaine’s expression turned grave. “To keep the magickind supporting the Allies from using its power.”

  Several swearwords went through my mind. Why did the poor tree have to pay for some stupid war? “I didn’t think magickind took sides in ordinary wars.”

  “Magic or ordinary, we’re all people. And people always pick sides,” Lady Elaine said. “We can’t help what’s in our nature.”

  We walked along in silence for a couple of minutes, both of us lost in our own thoughts and worries. I kept picturing the Great Oak, sadness squeezing my chest at the knowledge that it had been destroyed. It was such a waste. So wrong. The Great Oak sounded like the opposite of the Death’s Heart—its counterbalancing force. I wondered if another would ever appear. Trees were born, weren’t they? It could happen again.

  I turned my head toward Lady Elaine. “Are there other places like the Great Oak still around?”

  A cool wind blew across the deserted campus toward us, and Lady Elaine quickened her pace, pulling her coat tighter around her body. “Not many, I’m afraid. Most of them have been lost, destroyed, or have gone dry.”

  “Gone dry?” I hugged myself, wishing I’d thought to bring a jacket.

  “Yes. Many of those places are like wells. They store magic, but not necessarily forever. Sometimes they break and the magic seeps out. But more often they go dry. They get used up by magickind and become no more than ordinary objects.”

  I squeezed my hands into fists, hating the reality of this, even though it was something I saw happening all the time—and not just from magickind. Ordinaries were twice as bad. When I was little there’d been a wood behind my house, but it had been torn down last year to make room for a housing development. They hadn’t been magical trees, but it hardly mattered. Especially considering all the empty houses there were around town. Why build new when the old were still good?

  With an effort, I pushed the depressing subject away and refocused. “What where some of the other places?”

  “Oh, there were healing springs. Mystical caves.”

  Her words struck a chord inside me. “And all of them are about restoring health and life?”

  “Yes, more or less.”

  My head spun, the memories Bellanax had shared taking on a deeper meeting. So many of the places where Marrow had been resurrected were magical like the Great Oak was magical—restorative, healing places. Holy places, in the most fundamental sense. There was the Temple of Athena, the pyramids. It seemed that Marrow had been using these things to help speed up his resurrection from the beginning. I supposed that confirmed that he was behind the Death’s Heart theft. Or more accurately, someone working for him was behind it, one of his many followers.

  It has to be Corvus.… Or at least he was involved somehow—the Borromean brand proved it.

  But how to fish for information about him without rousing suspicions? “The last thing the sword showed us,” I said, taking a peek at Lady Elaine to gauge how well she was listening, “was a group of men getting ready to attack Marrow. I’m pretty sure it was right before Nimue locked him in a dream. But what was weird about it was that four of the men were Nightmares.”

  I deliberately stopped speaking, hoping she would offer some insight, but she just kept walking, her gaze focused ahead.

  “And even more strange,” I continued, “was that all the men were branded with Borromean rings on their chests.” I indicated the area, pressing a finger to my breastbone. “Right here. Have you ever seen anything like that?”

  Lady Elaine considered the question. “I’m familiar with the Borromean rings, of course, but I don’t know of any brands like you’re describing.”

  I frowned at her in surprise. I didn’t think she was lying, but why didn’t she know about Corvus? Maybe Valentine was keeping secrets. Don’t trust anyone, my mom’s warning came back to me.

  We walked on in silence. With the conversation at an apparent end, my mind soon began to wander. Memories of Lady Elaine’s vision came pressing in, digging, clawing at me.

  It only worsened when we arrived at Eli’s dorm. He was already asleep on the sofa, on his back, just like in the vision. Seeing him that way, I was afraid even to touch him. It was an automatic fear, like being afraid of a growling animal or a fire burning out of control.

  “Go on.” Lady Elaine prodded me forward when I just stood there frozen.

  I turned my gaze on her. You did this to me, I thought. I wanted to say it aloud, to hurl it at her like a curse. But I couldn’t. If I did, she would think she’d won, that she’d convinced me to turn my back on my feelings for Eli. She hadn’t. I wouldn’t. We would fight our way through this like we did everything else.

  Despite the quake in my stomach, I turned away from her, climbed on top of Eli, and entered his dreams.

  23

  Tryouts

  His dream quickly became a nightmare. Lady Elaine’s vision followed me into it. It was already there, waiting when I arrived. I was on the barge again, drifting along the dark still water. Voices shouted ahead of me, on the other side of the curtained platform. Stepping past it, I saw Eli standing across from another doppelgänger of me. He and the doppelgänger faced each other with wand and sword drawn. My other-self trembled with fear, tears on her cheeks; Eli trembled with fury. The look on his face made the real me want to start crying, too.

  “Eli,” I said, waving at him. “Eli! I’m over here. This is a dream, Eli. Snap out of it.” But he didn’t hear me, completely fixated on the fight.

  Unable to bear it a moment longer I closed my eyes and willed the dream to change. The dream-seer curse had no place here, no bearing. We had more important things to uncover. Corvus, I thought. The Death’s Heart, my mom, the Great Oak, Marrow. I willed the thoughts to translate into the dream, to manipulate into signs and symbols we could follow.

  But when I opened my eyes again, nothing had changed. Eli was still engaged in the fight with his dream version of me. My doppelgänger had lowered the sword, opening herself up for the attack.

  “Stop crying. Fight me. Fight me!” Eli’s voice seemed to shake the entire ship, the dream vibrating with his anger.

  “Eli!” I shouted. I walked over to him as close as I dared without getting ejected from the dream. But it did no good. He was lost to me, caught in the fever grip of the dream emotions.

  He raised his wand, pointed. “Peiran!” he screamed.

  The attack spell struck the other me in the chest, and she fell backward, landing hard. The sword skidded out of her hands. Eli went for it, but the moment he picked it up, the sword transformed into a knife. The blade was made of bone, slick and white and deadly sharp. He turned the knife over, holding it like a cleaver as he knelt over her prone body.

  “Eli, stop!”

  He plunged the knife down. It sank into the other Dusty’s chest hilt deep. My doppelgänger and I screamed at the same time. Terror, hurt, shock, it was a harmony of pain.

  The sound of it finally broke the dream’s hold over Eli. Or maybe it was the feel of hot sticky blood pooling over his fingers, or the sight of my doppelgänger’s face first turning pale and then blank as the life seeped out of her.

  “Dusty?” he said, his gaze confused as he peered from her to me. He stood up, wrenching the knife free.

  “It’s me,” I said. “I’m real. She’s just a dream thing.” I pointed to the doppelgänger, and then summoning all the magic and force of will I possessed, I vanished her from the dream. The only sign of what had happened was the blood still staining Eli’s fingers and the knife in his hand. Eli stared down at it for a moment.

  When he looked up, tears stood in his eyes. They weren’t falling, but they were there. They made him look broken, defeated. The sight hurt me worse than anything else so far.

  “I didn’t mean it, Dusty.” He shook his head as if trying to convince himself as much as me. “I
t was just the dream. It had me.”

  “I know.” I tried to smile but failed. “It’s not your fault. I was thinking about Lady Elaine’s vision when I entered the dream. I think I brought it in with me.”

  Eli’s mouth closed, his jaw clenching. A vein pulsed in his temple. “It’s not real. The curse isn’t real. This won’t ever happen.”

  I nodded, even though it sounded like he was trying as much to convince himself of this truth as to give me comfort.

  He dropped the knife then stepped closer to me. “I will never hurt you.”

  “I know,” I said again, my voice firm and steady. I believed him. He was real and he was here. Lady Elaine’s vision was just haze. We would see our way out of it together.

  I leaned toward him, wanting to kiss him, overwhelmed with the urge. I stopped myself just in time. We couldn’t do that here. And although I knew it was just a limitation of the dream, the separation cut deep. It cut right to the heart.

  * * *

  Things were tense at breakfast the next morning, the dream and vision lingering in both our minds. Eli and I sat side by side, our bodies touching casually here and there, but our inner selves remained distant. I hated it, wishing I could do something to make it better. But only time would help—and getting things back to normal. As soon as we find my mom, we’ll be okay, I told myself over and over again.

  The waiting became more tortuous than ever. I spent every spare moment going over the police files without turning up anything. The day crawled by, seconds imitating minutes, minutes imitating hours. When my session with Deverell finally started, I could barely concentrate, not knowing if Eli could be talking to Corvus right this moment.

  Afterward, I rushed out of the psionics classroom, expecting to see Eli waiting for me in the hallway. My heart sank when he wasn’t there. I dug my phone out of my back pocket, hurrying off toward Mr. Corvus’s classroom.

  Where are— I started to type, then froze as I heard Eli calling for me.

  I spun around and saw him coming down the hall from the opposite direction. I frowned, wondering why he was approaching from there, but my curiosity vanished at the broad smile stretching across his face.

  “You did it?” I said, my voice breathless with hope.

  He answered me with a hug, lifting me off my feet. “Sunday morning,” he said, setting me back down. “Mr. Corvus attends a ten o’clock yoga session every Sunday. You should have a little over an hour to get in and out before he comes back.”

  “Yoga?” I said, laughing.

  Eli grinned. “Now, now, don’t make fun. There’s no reason why men can’t enjoy that sort of thing.”

  “Yeah but most men aren’t Mr. Corvus,” I said, imagining our imperialistic teacher in upward-facing dog or horse pose. It painted an amusing picture. Still, most of my humor was an overspill of delight at this news. I reached up and kissed him. “Thank you.”

  “What can I say? Anything for you.”

  His words heated my whole body, and for a moment, not even Lady Elaine’s vision could bring me down.

  * * *

  I texted Paul the news about Corvus the moment we sat down in the cafeteria. It took a while as I had to carefully translate each word into the code.

  Corvus will be out of the house on Sunday morning from 10:00 to 11:00. We need to go then. Will the ID be ready?

  Paul’s answering text came back a few minutes later. It was short and I decoded it quickly:

  With any luck.

  “What does that mean?” Eli asked, reading over my shoulder.

  “No idea.” I blew out a breath. I wanted to ask for more details, but the coding process was arduous, and as before, I doubted I would understand much of the explanation.

  “Remind me to give you the moonwort key and a lockpick kit,” Eli said. “You’ll need it if Paul manages to pull off his part in time.”

  “He has to,” I said. I couldn’t bear the thought of waiting another week. Paul had to come through. Everything depended on it.

  * * *

  Friday came and went much like the day before. I checked my phone over and over again for a message from Paul. I hadn’t spotted him during biology, and I was starting to worry that he was avoiding me.

  But finally, less than an hour before my dream-session with Eli, his text came in.

  We’re ready.

  I could barely contain my excitement, but I did my best to hide it when Lady Elaine arrived. I didn’t want her suspicious of my sudden change in attitude. But as we walked along, each step I took felt light and springy, my hope higher than it had been in ages. Just one more day, and then I would finally get to do something to help my mom. And at least a good portion of tomorrow would be taken up by gladiator tryouts.

  Lady Elaine and I spoke only briefly on the way to Eli’s dorm. There was little to talk about. In the last two days there’d been no news on my mother, other than that the search for her continued. I didn’t place any stock in them finding her, not with Bethany having been missing for so long.

  There were no new signs in the dream either. Actually, as dreams went, this one was pretty tame. No doppelgängers showed up, and the dream was supple enough that I was able to shape the landscape to show us the clearing with the Great Oak. Marrow was there and so was Nimue, but the men with the Borromean brands didn’t make an appearance. I was disappointed. If only we had some way of connecting the dreams to Corvus. Then the magickind police would have to search his home. But try as I might it didn’t make a difference.

  When the dream ended, Eli remained asleep, still under Lady Elaine’s spell. I didn’t bother asking her to take it off. There wasn’t any point with her there. Besides, he had gladiator tryouts in the morning and needed the sleep.

  “Good luck, tomorrow,” I whispered to him before leaving. I probably wouldn’t see him before tryouts started. He would need to eat breakfast extra early to get there in time for the warm-up. I had plans to catch up on some sleep myself and then to spend some time wearing the shape-change necklace tomorrow. I needed to make sure the difference in size wouldn’t screw me up. With the ID, getting through the gate should be easy, but I didn’t want to raise suspicions with any weird behavior—like bumping my head on the car door.

  Selene was asleep when I got back to the dorm. There was no need to enter a dream-seer journal tonight—I’d given Lady Elaine the rundown on our walk back here—so I turned in as well. But sleep was a long, long time coming for me.

  * * *

  I woke late the next morning. For several seconds I lay there in bed, my mind groggy and blank. I’d been so deeply asleep that coming out of it was like trying to swim through jelly. I turned over, vaguely aware that Selene wasn’t in the bed opposite me. That was weird.

  Crap, gladiator tryouts. I glanced at the clock beside my bed, saw it was five minutes to ten, and had a momentary panic attack. I leaped out of bed, grabbed a fresh set of clothes, made a pit stop in the ladies’, and then booked it out of the dorm. The campus was as deserted this morning as it had been the night before. It seemed the entire school had turned out for gladiator tryouts. When I arrived at the gymnasium, there was standing room only.

  Disappointed, I scanned the bleachers. From down here, I wouldn’t be able to see a thing. Then I spotted a single, tiny seat four rows down from the top, close to the aisle. I headed for it, and soon realized the occupants of that row were freshmen.

  The one nearest the aisle was a girl clearly here by herself. The sliver of a space next to her was only inches in length, but it might as well have been a mile wide in the way it alienated her from the rest of her classmates. The girl had brown hair, a prominent nose, and round full cheeks. When she saw me coming, her eyes dropped and she seemed to fold in on herself. I could almost hear her thoughts—please don’t talk to me. Please don’t notice me. I’m not worth noticing. If you talk to me, I might die of embarrassment.

  I sighed, understanding that feeling all too well. I stopped one level below hers. Then summo
ning the biggest, friendliest smile I possessed, I said, “Hey, do you mind if I sit there?”

  The girl visibly paled then gave a single awkward jerk of her head.

  “Thanks,” I said, my voice overly bright. “You saved my neck. I overslept this morning.”

  “Oh, you’re welcome,” she squeaked.

  I beamed at her. “Yeah, some of my friends are trying out today and they would’ve killed me if I didn’t get here to see it.”

  “Uh-huh. That’s great.” Oh God, please stop talking to me, her expression said, but perversely this just made me want to talk more. I was close to babbling as I told her about Selene, Lance, and Eli, but I didn’t care. I wanted to coax her out of her misery. To my triumph, she finally started to relax a little and talk back.

  The tryouts started off with the individual evaluation. When the first contender, Nick Jacobi, finally took the field, the crowd whooped and clapped with anticipation. Nick was an Ira demon, the kind that feeds off rage. He put in a strong performance, blasting his way through a line of senior gladiators to capture the flag set at the top of the tallest structure at the opposite end of the court.

  Next up was Oliver Cork, a dryad. He fared less well, getting tagged out two minutes into the round. After him came Jarrod Ackles, Deanna’s twin brother. He got tagged out four feet from the flag. I didn’t know the next two boys, both of them seniors. Both lasted only a couple of minutes before being taken down.

  Then finally, it was Selene’s turn. She killed it—almost literally. Like Nick, she’d faced an entire line of senior gladiators. But unlike him, she took down everyone with a quick volley of spells. I screamed and leaped to my feet as she grabbed the flag and hoisted it up. Beside me, my new friend Veronica did the same. And when I moved in for a fist bump, she returned it with enough enthusiasm my knuckles stung afterward.

  We sat back down and I anxiously waited for Eli and Lance. Only, some twenty minutes later, the announcer said, “And that does it for the individual rounds. We will now move on to the team portion of our tryouts, featuring two-team capture the flag with a mix of senior and hopeful players.”