The Nightmare Dilemma (Arkwell Academy) (3 page)

I just stared at her for a moment. She stared back, her mouth dropping open as if I had taken her by surprise rather than the other way around.

I stood up, narrowing my eyes at her. “Where the hell have you been?”

Right away I knew I’d struck the wrong tone as Selene’s surprised expression turned stormy. Never mind that my harsh tone stemmed from fear rather than anger. She put a hand on her narrow waist and flung her black hair over her shoulder. “What’s it to you?”

I gaped. “What do you mean? You were gone. You snuck out in the middle of the night. Without me.”

Selene’s nostrils flared. “It might come as a surprise, Dusty, but my life doesn’t end and begin with
you
.”

I took an involuntary step back. She might as well have slapped me. Selene never acted like this. Not toward me.

She bit her lip, a stricken expression crossing her face. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap. It’s just … I didn’t think you’d be awake.”

I crossed my arms, her apology having little effect on my tumultuous emotions. Anger and hurt were stubborn that way, quick to come and long to leave.

When I didn’t answer, Selene unzipped her coat and flung it over the nearby sofa. “So why are you awake?”

I fought back the automatic instinct to answer her. We were best friends. We shared everything—or so I thought. I opened my mouth to demand she tell me what she’d been doing first, but I closed it at once, certain she would refuse. I didn’t think I could handle that kind of rejection right now.

I shook my head. “No reason.” I turned and headed back into the bedroom, switching off the light as I went.

Then I lay down and closed my eyes, all the things I’d needed to talk about like caged, restless animals inside of me, pacing back and forth, pawing at the door. It took me a long, long time to finally fall asleep.

*   *   *

The nightmare was my own, the same one I’d been having for weeks now. I stood on the top of a tall stone tower. Wind buffeted my body, ripping my hair from its ponytail. The force of it pushed me backward until my back hit the hard edge of the parapet. Pain arced down my spine. I lurched forward, struggling against the wind as a terrible, all-consuming need drove me forward. Ahead, a stone square block sat dead center of the tower. I had to reach the plinth.

I didn’t know why I needed to get there, and I didn’t care. The need was too great for thought. My life depended on it. The world depended on it. At first, nothing happened as I moved my arms and legs. It was as if a cruel puppeteer held me back with invisible strings attached to my body.

Then finally, slowly, I began to make forward progress. Each step was like trying to swim through wet concrete. By the end of it, I crawled on my hands and knees. But that was okay. I needed to be on the ground. I needed to read the word etched into the side of the plinth. I pulled myself up to a kneeling position before it. If I could have stood, the plinth would’ve reached my knees, but now its top was level with my eyes. The wind continued its assault on my body. Tears streamed from my eyes as I forced them open against it.

I stared at the letters, but I couldn’t make them out. The impressions were too faint. I stretched my hands toward them. If I tried hard enough, I might be able to read it like Braille. The plinth felt as hard and rough as uncut diamonds beneath my fingers. An idea rose up in my mind: if I could break through that hard surface, then I could read the letters. I began to scratch at it, a frenzy coming over me.

Scratch, scratch, scratch.
My nails broke off one by one. My fingertips began to bleed. I balled my hands into fists, scraping away with my knuckles, oblivious to the pain. My skin ripped to shreds, but still I persisted. A part of me, the part of my brain that remained tethered to the waking world, even in dreams, knew that I should stop. That this was madness. Even worse, that it wasn’t real.

But I couldn’t stop. The part of me that existed only in dreams knew I had to read those letters. That part held sway here.

I would succeed or die trying.

3

The Will Guard

I woke exhausted the next morning, but was glad to be awake. Glad the dream was over. I slapped the wooden lever on the side of the alarm next to my bed, engaging the snooze spell. The alarm clocks at Arkwell were standard-issue and one of the few fully magical instruments on campus. The school administrators didn’t want students blaming tardiness on the animation effect. Shame, I could’ve used such a handy excuse this morning.

Sighing, I rolled onto my back. I raised my hands and squinted at them, my eyes stinging from lack of sleep. I half expected my hands to be covered in sores from a night spent clawing at a stone plinth, but they looked as normal as ever.

I should’ve been relieved but I wasn’t. I felt empty on the inside, my body hollowed out, as the need to know what those letters spelled lingered like the hangover of some powerful drug. I lay there for a couple of minutes, picturing the faint imprint of letters on the plinth. Maybe my waking mind would have better luck discerning them.

When my alarm went off again, I gave up and got out of bed. Typically, Selene was still asleep. As a siren, she didn’t need to spend as much time getting ready in the morning. Her alarm would go off in twenty minutes, and she would roll out of bed with her dark hair looking perfect and shiny and her skin aglow. She had to bathe as regularly as anybody, of course, but she didn’t have to worry about hair dryers and flatirons, and she hadn’t worn makeup regularly since her turn toward tomboy-hood. She didn’t even wear it to hide the long thin scar running down the side of her face from where she’d been attacked by Marrow’s familiar, the black phoenix. Not that she needed to. If anything, the scar gave her a wild, fierce look that only enhanced her beauty.

I gathered my things as quietly as I could then headed for the shower. But when I returned a half hour later, Selene was still in bed. I poked my head through the door. “You getting up?”

Selene rolled over, turning toward the wall. “Sleeping in,” she mumbled. She sounded as exhausted as I felt. I supposed it made sense, considering she’d been out half the night. I considered confronting her about it right then, but I already had one tough discussion to accomplish today. Just how I was going to broach the subject with Eli, I didn’t know.

I headed down to the cafeteria still trying to figure it out. I approached the table I usually sat at with Selene and Eli, but he wasn’t there. I scanned the room for him, but the chaos of people and activity made it difficult to see much.

Mealtimes at Arkwell had become even more interesting since The Will broke. Paper airplanes flew complicated loop-de-loops in between the tables, obeying the magical commands of their makers as they delivered notes or dive-bombed unsuspecting victims. A girl across the way was manipulating the water in her goblet to make it flow upward in an inverted waterfall. The boy sitting behind her juggled a half-dozen glowing magical orbs that changed color every time he touched them.

Two tables over, a crystal goblet half full of some white liquid drew my attention as it hovered above the heads of several unsuspecting students. I watched it tip sideways right over Nick Jacobi. Milk—at least I hoped it was milk and not some dangerous potion—splashed downward. Nick raised his hand a split second before the liquid hit him, freezing it with a spell. Everyone at the table applauded his quick thinking. Nick started laughing at the boy across from him who had been controlling the goblet.

No sooner had Nick vanished the milk with a second spell than a saltshaker appeared above him and dumped its contents into his hair. This time several other people laughed as Nick leaped to his feet and tossed his head, flinging salt.

Stifling a smile, I glanced at the next table over, fully expecting to see Lance Rathbone behind the saltshaker. Lance was a wizard and Arkwell’s resident trickster. Only he wasn’t at his usual table either.
What, is this Sophomore Skip Day and nobody told me?
The real culprit, I saw, was a dryad by the name of Oliver Cork.

I glanced past Oliver, continuing my search for Eli. No luck.

He couldn’t have done it without magic
, I reminded myself.

I went through the breakfast line and sat down at our table alone. Still no Eli. Where was he?

As if the thought had been an incantation, I spotted Eli coming through the massive wooden double doors of the cafeteria. He looked the same as any other day in his faded jeans and a dark, long-sleeved tee with a band logo on the front. But going by the huge yawn he tried to hide behind a raised fist, I guessed he hadn’t slept well. All my speculation ceased as Eli’s eyes alighted on me and a wide, cocksure grin slid across his handsome face. My stomach did a little flip at the sight of it, and a funny, achy feeling went through my knees. Good thing I was sitting down. If any ordinary had a diluted strain of siren blood, it had to be Eli Booker. Forget Bob Dylan.

As he walked toward me, I tried to recall all the openings I’d considered for asking him what he’d been doing last night around 11:45. But I abandoned the endeavor by the time he reached me. The whole thing was absurd. Even if Eli
could
do magic, he wouldn’t hurt Britney. That sort of thing just wasn’t in his nature. He would more likely beat the crap out of whoever had attacked her.

“Hey,” Eli said, sliding into the bench opposite me.

“Hey.”

He reached across the table and snagged a piece of bacon off my plate and popped it into his mouth. “Where’s Selene?” he asked a couple of chews later.

“She’s … sleeping in.”

A single dark eyebrow rose on Eli’s face. “Yeah? That doesn’t sound like her.”

I dropped my gaze from his face. “She, um, didn’t sleep well, I don’t think.”

“That makes two of us.” Eli yawned again.

It was the perfect opening, so I started to ask him why, when a loud bang stopped me. I jumped, my heart rate going from resting to overdrive in a split second. My eyes searched for the source of the noise.

Nick Jacobi had knocked over the bench he’d been sitting on. He and Oliver Cook stood across from each other, both shouting and with hands raised in a defensive position. Magic hummed in the air between them like a live wire. The two looked fit to kill. It seemed their little magical roughhousing had gotten out of hand. Neither was playing games now.

Nick’s glamour had slid off him, revealing his true form beneath—black, scaly skin, a single stubby horn on his forehead, and eyes that glowed red. He was an Ira demon, a rage demon, the kind that fed off the anger of others. Consequently, Iras had hot, dangerous tempers themselves.

Oliver, too, was looking more his natural self, his body thinner and taller, oddly treelike, and far less intimidating than Nick.

“This is bad,” I said.

Across from me, Eli had already stood and was heading for the demon and dryad.

I moved to stop him. “Don’t!” Without magic he would get crushed.

Too late, Eli had grasped Nick’s arm and pulled him around before he could attack Oliver. A howl of rage exploded outward from Nick. He shoved Eli in the chest with both hands and Eli flew back, crashing into the upturned bench.

Nick’s rage remained focused on Eli. He charged toward him, ready to strike again. I jumped up, my mind racing for the right spell to stop the demon, but panic made it hard to think.

I raised my hand. “Alexo.” The shield spell burst out from my fingertips in a streak of purple light. But before it could form over Eli, it
vanished
. But that was impossible. Stuff like that only happened when The Will was in place.

I opened my mouth to cast the spell again, but before I could, Nick froze mid-attack. His body was jerked into the air as if hoisted by an invisible pulley.

I gaped up at him as he struggled against whatever unseen bonds held him.

Eli got to his feet and stepped over to me. “You all right?” He touched my arm, sending tingles over my skin.

I huffed. “Oh, right. Worry about me, because
I’m
the one that just got tossed like a football by a pissed off—”

I broke off when I saw four strange men entering the cafeteria. They looked as if they’d gotten lost on their way to a Renaissance festival. They wore waist-length red robes like some kind of tunic over black pants. Sweat broke out on my skin, and all my muscles contracted from a sudden spurt of terror at their appearance—bloodred on black, just like Marrow had worn.

“Who the hell are they?” Eli moved closer to me as if he intended to shield me with his body.

The men marched farther into the cafeteria, silence spreading out before them. I looked around for a teacher or staff member, someone who could tell me whether or not it was time to make a run for it, but I didn’t see anybody.

The nearest man headed right for us. He carried a wizard’s staff that he held before him, pointed directly at Nick’s floating body.

A few feet from Nick, the man came to a stop. He looked like a retired prizefighter with his massive square jaw and squashed nose. His shoulders seemed wider than his arms were long. The scowl he leveled first at Nick then at Eli, and finally at me, made the hairs on my arms and neck stand up.

“That’s enough rule breaking for one morning.” The man made a downward slash with his staff, and Nick crashed to the ground with a loud thud. He let out a groan then scrambled to his feet. His black, scaly skin and horn vanished as his glamour slipped back into place.

“Who are you?” Eli demanded, placing his hands on his hips.

A low murmur echoed around us. I wanted to disappear into the cracks in the stone floor. I didn’t know who this guy was, but one thing was for sure—he wasn’t somebody you should challenge unless you could back it up. In the ordinary world, Eli was badass enough to take on anybody, but this was the magical world.

A wide, toothy grin stretched across the man’s face. “Me? Why, I’m the Captain of the Will Guard.”

Will Guard, like Will-Workers.
Well, at least I could dismiss my original fear that these guys were Marrow supporters come to take over the school. The gold insignia on the left breast of the man’s tunic bore the Magi Senate crest of the tree, wand, and flame, symbolizing the three sects of magickind: naturekind, witchkind, and darkkind.