The Nightmare Charade (2 page)

Speaking from experience?
I wanted to ask but didn't. I already knew the answer. Returning my cell to my pocket, I headed out the door. I made it five steps, debated whether or not I should brush my teeth again, then forced myself to walk down the hallway to the staircase.

The only drawback to the upperclassman dorms was the longer trek. I trotted down the last two flights of stairs, battling with nerves the whole way. I slowed as I reached the foyer. Two magically animated suits of armor stood guard at the door—Frank and Igor, or so I'd dubbed them freshman year. At the sound of my approach, they turned their faces toward me, blank empty slots inside their helmets where their eyes should have been. Having them look at you like that was creepy on a good night, but in my current nervous state it was downright terrifying. I had no idea if they would let me pass.

Technically speaking, I didn't have permission to be out after hours tonight. But I was hoping Frank and Igor wouldn't know that. I was a Nightmare, after all, and they were used to my late-night schedule. Last year, I'd been allowed out of the dorm three nights a week to dream-feed with Eli. Well,
on
Eli, to be more specific. Even though I was half human I still had to dream-feed to fuel my magic.

“Hey, guys,” I said, giving a little wave. “Did you miss me?”

Blank stares.

“I'll take that as a yes.”

More blank stares.

“But listen, I'm on my way to a dream-feeding session. Okay if I pass?”

Blank stares to the nth power.

A weak feeling struck my knees and sweat broke out on the back of my neck. If they didn't let me through, I was going to have a meltdown. Nervous or not, I had my heart set on seeing Eli tonight. The skin on my wrist began to warm beneath the silver band I wore there, and it occurred to me I could always force my way through, with magic.

But a second later, they turned their sightless gazes away from me and pulled their spears fully upright. Taking that as a yes, I hurried past them.

Outside the warm day had turned to a cool night. A cloudless sky drenched in stars cast silver light over the campus. The buildings at Arkwell Academy came in an assortment of architectural styles, everything from Gothic to neoclassical to baroque. I never paid much attention to the variation before, but after nearly three months of sightseeing in Europe, I'd developed a keener eye—and vocabulary. Rather than look tacky, the effect of so many styles in one place was to make Arkwell feel like
every
place, the entire world situated in some two thousand acres.

I reached the bell tower at the center of campus without spotting anyone, but as I rounded the corner around Monmouth Tower, my heart lurched at the sight of one of the Will Guard walking down the path toward me. Crap. I didn't think these magickind versions of rent-a-cops would be back this year, not after so many of them had been in on the plan to sink Lyonshold. But it seemed I was wrong. This particular Will Guard wasn't one I'd seen before, but there was no mistaking the red tunic and black pants.

Deciding it was too late to go around, I raised my head, feigning confidence.

“What are you doing out at this hour?” the woman said, coming to a halt in front of me. I saw at once that she was witchkind; she carried a wand made of some dark wood in her right hand. The name Bollinger was embroidered in gold across the left breast of her tunic beneath the Magi Senate crest of the tree, wand, and flame.

“I'm on my way to a dream-feeding session,” I said, somehow managing to sound steady despite the tremble in my muscles. “I'm a Nightmare.”

Bollinger stared back at me, unblinking, face expressionless.

“Um.” I bit my lower lip. “You know, a Nightmare? I have to dream-feed? Late at night? While people are sleeping?” I hadn't meant every phrase to come out a question, but they had anyway.

The woman's lips twisted into a frown. “I know what a Nightmare is.”

That's a relief,
I thought, wise enough to keep it to myself. See, Selene was wrong; I could totally think before acting.

The woman's eyes narrowed on my face. “You're the one who broke The Will, aren't you?”

A chill snaked down my spine at the venom in her voice. Her dislike was clear as freshly Windexed glass. It wouldn't be the first time someone disliked me on principle. Nightmares often provoked that reaction in other magickind, thanks to our bloody, evil history, one so violent that there were hardly any more Nightmares around. But this time I had a feeling it was more personal.

The shakiness in my muscles changed to tension—not from nerves but anticipation, like an athlete moments before the start of a competition. The skin around my left wrist began to warm again beneath the silver band, the sensation all too familiar. On the outside it looked like a thick bracelet, but on the inside, hidden beneath a glamour, it wasn't anything so benign. I reached for the band instinctively, twisting it around on my wrist. It was hot to the touch.

“Technically, I didn't break it. I just made it possible for it to be broken.” Speaking had been a mistake. A lie would've been better, but it was hard to think with the tension coursing through me, the burning in my wrist. When that happened all I wanted to do was disengage the glamour on the bracelet and reveal the sword hidden beneath it.

Not just any sword, but Bellanax, the sword of legend, sword of power. Ancient and infinitely magical, it had been known by many names over the centuries, including Excalibur and, most recently, The Will sword. Yes, this object around my wrist was what had made The Will possible. It was the power source for the spell that had once controlled and policed all magic use.

But I couldn't reveal Bellanax, no matter how much I wanted to. Few people knew I had possession of the sword, and I needed to keep it that way—if I wanted to stay alive.

Resisting the urge to break the glamour, I focused on the woman in front of me.

Her frown had become a snarl. “I don't care about technicalities. What I care about is having my job reduced to this.” She waved her hand through the air as if to indicate the entire expanse of Arkwell.

I wanted to sympathize, I really did—it had to be rough to go from some cushy desk job to foot patrolling a school full of teenagers—but with Bellanax's presence pressing so hard on me at the moment, sympathy was in short supply. The sword wanted to be seen—and used.

“I'm sorry,” I said, an alien coolness creeping into my voice. “It's been tough all over.”

“You have no idea,” Bollinger snapped. Her teeth were startlingly white in the moonlight, the incisors uneven points. She wore her mouse-brown hair in a ponytail at the nape of her neck.

I took a deep breath, let it out, then drew another. “May I go to my session?” Now my voice had a note of daring in it—as in “you don't dare tell me no.” I didn't mean for it to come out that way, but it couldn't be helped. When Bellanax decided to make trouble, all bets were off. The last time it had acted out, Mom and I were eating in a seafood bar in Inverness, Scotland, and I overheard the men at the table next to us claiming that if the Loch Ness monster was real it had to be some long-lost dinosaur. Bellanax had taken offense at the notion, and tried to get me to correct them—the Loch Ness was a wyvern not a dinosaur. It had taken all my energy to resist. The sword was a numen vessel, housing the spirit of a long-dead magickind, and that meant it had a mind and will of its own.

Bollinger swallowed, the veins in her neck working. “Yes,” she finally said. “You may go.”

“Thank you.” I moved past her without another word and without looking back. The farther away I drew from her, the spirit or power or whatever it was that made Bellanax something more than a sword, settled back into a state of dormancy. Which was exactly where I preferred it.

The longer I walked, distancing myself from the run-in, the more the woman's reaction bothered me. I could understand her resentment, but not her hate. She acted like I was an ax murderer on death row, one who'd chopped up her family into little pieces. It wasn't fair.
I didn't
—the thought stopped dead in my mind as I remembered the attack on Lyonshold. We'd kept the island from sinking, but there had been casualties. One of them had even been a friend of mine. Was it really my fault? Was I responsible for breaking The Will and thereby allowing evildoers the chance to do their bad deeds?

There was no answer. Even Bellanax, who often offered opinions on such things, remained quiet.

A new kind of nervousness came over me that not even the anticipation of seeing Eli could shake. At least that was until I actually arrived outside his door. Standing before it, my heart gave a hard lurch inside my chest and then seemed to stop beating all together for a second. I didn't know if I should knock or just go on in. Normally, I did the latter, but nothing felt normal right now.

I stood there for several moments, thinking it over. Unconsciously, I touched my fingers to the silver band, twisting it around and around on my wrist as I tried to muster my courage—knock or enter, knock or enter.

At the sound of a noise coming down the corridor, I reached for the door handle, found it unlocked, and pushed my way inside.

Familiar surroundings greeted me. Except for the larger size and bathroom, Eli's new dorm looked the same as the old one. Expensive stereo equipment and other electronics lined one whole wall, most of it belonging to Lance Rathbone whose dad was a magi senator with all the requisite income included. Band posters and several pieces of sports memorabilia decorated the rest of the walls in and around the two desk units and sofa. I was happy to see that Lance hadn't put up his girls-in-bikinis posters again. I had a feeling I could thank Selene for that one.

All of this I took in with one quick, forgotten glance before my eyes fell on the boy sitting in the chair farthest from the door. Eli's eyes were fixed on me in a penetrating stare, as if he wasn't quite sure who he was seeing. I stared back, my heart beating somewhere near my throat. The hummingbirds still filled my belly, but they seemed to have doubled in size and number.

Eli looked mostly the same as I remembered—only better, because he was here and he was real. His black hair, usually longer, was cut military short, and his skin was tanned to a golden bronze. The lights were turned down low, but even still I could clearly see the blue of his eyes, pale and startling in their color.

Say something!
But my voice had gotten lost. And I didn't know what to say. “Hi” seemed inadequate. I had no idea what Eli was thinking, feeling. All the doubt from earlier came crashing back down on me. Here I'd thought his invite tonight was for us to rekindle the first faint sparks we'd left burning weeks ago. But maybe instead he was just going to tell me he'd moved on, found someone else. Or even worse, that he'd decided to believe the curse again, the way he had when he first learned about it last year.

Finally, I mustered my courage and opened my mouth to speak. But then a smile broke across Eli's face. The effect was like sunlight bursting through a wall of storm clouds, sudden, undeniable proof of hope and possibilities and change.

He stood up, his presence seeming to fill the whole room. I'd forgotten how tall he was, how physically imposing. He'd put on muscle over the last few weeks, the evidence clear in the bulging, sinewy shapes visible beneath his well-worn T-shirt. He made me feel small and vulnerable, but also completely safe and protected.

“Dusty,” he said, his voice deep and husky. The sound set my pulse to racing.

Two steps later and he stood before me, peering down as he raised his hands to my face, cradling the sides of my jaw, the tips of his fingers slipping into my hair.

And then his lips closed over mine. The world turned sideways for a moment, but in the next it settled into place. Into
rightness
. I kissed him back, wrapping my hands around his waist and holding on. There was no curse. No reason to worry. We were made for this.

Nothing could be more right.

 

2

Animus Mortem

The smell of him filled my nose—soap and cologne and something earthen like dew-drenched woods at dawn. I breathed him in. His hands fell away from my face, coming to rest on the jut of my hips. His fingers slid beneath the hem of my shirt, his warm skin shooting electric chills over my body.

His lips moved off mine and he kissed a line over my jaw and down my neck. “Dusty,” he breathed, his warm breath sending even more chills through me. “God, how I've missed you.”

“Me, too,” I said. With my eyes closed, his kisses became the only thing in the world, all my senses focused on the sensation. “For a second I thought you'd changed your mind.”

“What?” Eli pulled back, and I looked up to find him staring down at me, his mouth slightly open and his eyebrows drawn together. “I will never change my mind about how I feel about you.”

Don't say never,
a voice whispered in my head. For a second I wasn't sure if it was my own thought or someone else's. The silver band on my wrist was noticeably warm against my skin.

“You're the girl of my dreams,” Eli said, his expression softening. “All of them. Every night.”

Something about the way he spoke told me he meant this quite literally. Worry started to creep in. Dreams were powerful, dangerous things. My presence in his could mean anything—good or bad.

But then Eli bent his head toward me, and the doubt vanished as his lips touched mine once more.

Neither of us noticed the door opening. We didn't hear the footsteps until it was too late.

“Unless you want a month's worth of detention,” a familiar voice said from behind us, “I suggest you desist right this moment.”

I froze in Eli's arms even as his body stiffened. Then we both wrenched apart and spun toward the intruders. There were four in all, three I recognized and one stranger. The speaker was Principal Hendershaw, a short, plump woman with Coke-bottle glasses and a prickly temperament. Next to her stood frail, bony Lady Elaine, chief advisor to the Magi Senate. Dwarfing them both was Sheriff Brackenberry, who barked a laugh at our discomfort.