The Nightmare Dilemma (Arkwell Academy) (25 page)

“So long as you’re working to fix it, then I’m good,” he said. Thank goodness for that. I had enough to worry about without adding Eli’s concern over me being haunted by some unknown ghost into the mix.

As if in contrast to my bleak mood, the weather outside had taken a pleasant turn toward nice. All during sixth-period alchemy, everybody else in the class and I kept taking long, longing looks out the window at the bright sunshine. We suffered through gym afterward and then Selene, Eli, and I made a mad dash for the commons.

So did the rest of Arkwell. The place was packed with students. One group was attempting to pass a Frisbee back and forth with only moderate success—magickind tended to struggle with hand-eye coordination—while another group was kicking a soccer ball with even worse results.

But most of the students were lounging in the sunshine, sleeves rolled back and faces turned toward the sun. The grass was too wet to sit on, so people were squatted on the cobblestone paths or on the low stone walls separating the pathways from the grassy areas. Eli, Selene, and I found a place to sit on the latter.

Nobody felt much like talking. Selene pulled out a book to read while Eli leafed through the pages of his case notebook. I closed my eyes and leaned my head back, letting my thoughts wander as the sunshine lit up the thin skin of my eyelids.

But a few minutes later, the sound of an approaching noise pulled me out of my happy place. I slowly opened my eyes and peered around, blinking to clear the spots from my vision.

“What the hell is that?” Eli said from my right.

A moment later I saw a group of people in brown cloaks walking down the main pathway toward the center of the commons. The hoods on the cloaks covered their faces, but as they drew nearer I realized they were chanting.

Selene tensed beside me, and she covered her mouth with her hand.

“What is it?” I said, glancing at her a second before returning my attention to the newcomers. They were filling up the center of the commons now, more than twenty of them at least. The lounging students were giving way to them as if repelled by those strange words. But I didn’t think it was an incantation. The words lacked the characteristic under-hum of magic. Yet there
was
magic nearby. I could feel the faint prickle of it on my skin.

“
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
,” Selene murmured in time with the brown cloaked figures.

I turned my head, gaping at her. “How do you know that?”

“It’s Latin.”

Latin
, I thought. Selene would know. She’d been studying the language for the last two years.

“What does it mean?” Eli said, standing up. Nearly everyone else was doing the same, all eyes fixed on the unfolding scene.

The cloaked figures had formed a circle in the middle of the commons, facing outward. In the center of the circle several of them carried a long glass case, like pallbearers. Inside the glass, lying on a blanket of flowers, was a person I had no trouble recognizing.

Britney Shell.

Except, it wasn’t. It was someone else pretending to be Britney. An odd blurring around the girl’s face gave it away, an indicator of an illusion spell. Putting an illusion spell on a living thing was upper-level magic. And these cloaked figures had done a subpar job of it.

As more and more people recognized the person in the glass case, I heard Britney’s name whispered over and over again. It seemed most people didn’t realize it was someone else in disguise.

“Is she dead?” they whispered.

“When? How did it happen?”

And all the while the brown cloaked figures chanted, “
Fiat justitia ruat caelum. Fiat justitia ruat caelum
.”

It slowly dawned on me that this was a protest, the magickind version of a sit-in. But the phrase they were chanting didn’t seem like a peaceful one. And displaying Britney—who most certainly was not dead—inside a glass coffin was nothing short of antagonistic.

Eli grabbed my wrist. “Come on. This is going to get ugly.”

I nodded, and as he started pulling me away, I grabbed hold of Selene and tugged her along, too. By the time we reached the nearest walkway leading away from the commons, the crowd had started to shout at the assembled group, the tension close to an explosion.

Then it happened. Someone in the crowd let fly a spell. I turned to watch as a jet of red light soared toward the brown cloaked figures and smashed into the case. It shattered, spraying glass everywhere, and the girl inside it screamed as she fell. For a second the scene seemed to freeze in place.

In the next, chaos erupted. The cloaked figures retaliated with a barrage of spells and other magic. Shouts of outrage and screams of pain filled the air. Eli was dragging me now.

“Let’s go,” he shouted over his shoulder. “This isn’t our fight.”

He was right, and I knew it. Already I could see the flash of red as the Will Guard began to converge on the scene. They would subdue the crowd in moments, and I didn’t want to be in their line of fire.

Still, as we turned down a path, I took one final look back at the fight, my gaze drawn to two of the cloaked figures. Both of their hoods had fallen back in the struggle, revealing their faces. A shock of recognition went through me. With an effort, I ripped my gaze away and returned my attention to the path ahead.

We managed to escape the fight and the Will Guard, running all the way back to Riker Hall before coming to a stop.

I hunched down, recovering my wind. The adrenaline pumping through my system had my heart and lungs doing double-time. “I saw their faces,” I said between pants.

“Who?” Eli asked, wiping a trickle of sweat off his forehead.

“Oliver Cork and Melanie Remillard. They were wearing the brown cloaks.”

Eli froze in place, his hand still against his forehead as if in a salute. “But they’re both members of the—”

“Terra Tribe,” I finished for him. “Just like Britney.” I looked at Selene, grimacing. “What was that phrase they were chanting?”

“It was Latin, right?” said Eli.

“Yes.” Selene paused and drew a long breath. “
Fiat justitia ruat caelum,
” she recited. “Let justice be done, though the heavens should fall.”

23

Paul’s Secret

The fight on the commons was all anybody talked about during dinner that night. Every table I passed by people were telling some version or another of what went down. I didn’t bother to listen. School gossip rarely reflected reality. Not once did any of them mention the Terra Tribe. Given the secretive nature of the group, I had a feeling that most of the students didn’t know it existed, let alone that it had been behind the demonstration.

Not that it really mattered. All that did was what the Terra Tribe would do next. The Dream Team was determined to find out.

But first we had to deal with Paul.

We stayed in the cafeteria until ten minutes to seven, and then we headed out to Coleville. In the aftermath of the fight, and with twilight descending around us, campus was nearly deserted, the few people we did pass, subdued and unfriendly.

As we rounded the corner into Coleville’s main entrance, I shivered with a sudden sense of déjà vu at meeting Paul in this place where so much had happened before. Even without the history, Coleville was spooky with all the crypts and statues covered in ivy and the headstones with their crumbling edges and wind-worn names and dates.

When we arrived at the Kirkwood mausoleum, a giant stone structure with a facade as elaborately engraved as an ancient Roman temple, there was no sign of Paul.

“I knew it,” Eli said, leaning against a gravestone.

“He’ll be here.” I glanced at the shadows moving around us as a breeze rustled the trees and bushes.

“I am here,” a voice called from somewhere near the mausoleum.

I squinted at the doorway. In the dim light and deep overhang, it was a big black hole. But a distinctive shape moved out from the shadows, slowly transforming into Paul.

“We talk in here.” He waved us forward.

I wrinkled my nose, my stomach churning at the idea of entering the mausoleum. Unlike the crypt we’d broken into last year during our investigation of Mr. Culpepper, I was certain this one actually contained dead bodies. I’d done enough dwelling on dead people for one day, thank you very much.

But I didn’t have much choice as Selene strode forward and disappeared into the open doorway with no hesitation at all. I moved to follow her, but Eli stepped in front of me, ensuring I entered last. I rolled my eyes at his backside. Like that would help if Paul had some deadly trap waiting for us. I noticed that Eli didn’t even bother to draw his wand.

Damp, musty air moved over me as I stepped in. It held an odd, slightly sweet stench that made the back of my throat burn as I took my first full breath. The taste of dead people.

Great
.

A single lit torch hung from a holder beside the door, casting weak, flickering light into the burial vault. More than a dozen stone tombs sat in ordered fashion across the floor. They were as elaborately engraved as the outside of the mausoleum. It seemed the Kirkwoods didn’t care much for stark simplicity. Other tombs were stacked inside deep shelves running from the floor to ceiling along the perimeter of the vault.

As soon as we were all inside, Paul pulled the door closed, the ancient wood groaning in protest. Then he faced us. The light from the torch cast long shadows across his face, giving him a sinister look.

“What’s this all about, Kirkwood,” Eli said at once.

Paul didn’t look at him, but kept his gaze fixed on me as if I were the only person present. “I know who attacked Britney Shell.”

Eli folded his arms across his chest, the gesture emphasizing the breadth of his shoulders. “So we guessed.”

Again, Paul ignored him.

Selene let out an annoyed sigh. She waved at Eli and then Paul. “Would you two like to just have it out right now and get it over with? Because I’m not going to sit here and watch you stomp around each other like a couple of gorillas. So either put up or shut up. Which will it be?”

I held back a smile, enjoying the way both boys squirmed at Selene’s scolding. When neither of them said anything, she sighed again. “Thank you.” Then she turned her gaze back to Paul. “So who was it?”

For the first time since I’d stepped inside the burial vault, Paul looked away from me. Then with absolute certainty in his voice, he said, “My uncle, Titus Kirkwood.”

Nobody spoke for several seconds. My first reaction was to believe him. I’d seen enough evidence in the past to know that at a minimum Magistrate Kirkwood was physically abusive. He’d once put his nephew in the hospital with a broken cheekbone and ankle after a punch to the face and a push down the stairs.

Except … Paul was the source of that evidence. Paul who had lied to me, who had been working with Marrow all along.

“Is that so,” Eli said. “Now, why would he?”

Paul took a deep breath, turning to Eli. “I’m not sure
why
. At least not yet.”

“Of course.” A smirk spread across Eli’s face.

Selene leveled her fiercest glare at him. “Drop the attitude. It’s not going to help us get anywhere.”

“Selene’s right.” I said.

I faced Paul, trying to make my expression as neutral as possible while inside me a private battle ensued. On the one hand, I knew not to trust him, that everything he said could be a lie, but on the other, my gut instinct—the same one that Mr. Deverell had been so insistent we follow—was telling me that Paul wasn’t lying this time. That he would never lie when it came to his uncle. He hated the man far too much for that. Even more, his uncle hated him. “Why do you think he’s behind it?”

Paul visibly relaxed. He turned, walked to the nearest tomb, and then hopped on top of it. “It’s probably best if I start at the beginning.”

“Novel idea,” Eli said. Then he too turned and climbed up onto one of the tombs. Selene and I exchanged a look. Neither of us would be jumping on
that
bandwagon.
Ew.

“It actually starts back on the night that you defeated Marrow,” Paul began. “Do you remember when we found Mr. Culpepper’s client files where he kept records of all purchases?”

“Yes,” Selene, Eli, and I said almost in unison. There’d been a file on my mother and more than half of the faculty at Arkwell in there.

Then I remembered. “There was a file on your uncle.”

Paul nodded. “Believe me, it was a shock to find out that someone as hard-nosed about rules and traditions as my uncle would purchase black market items from someone like Culpepper.”

“What was in it?” Selene asked.

Paul started to swing his legs back and forth as they dangled over the side of the tomb. “Not much. Made it easy for me to get through it all before Culpepper chased us out. The only significant item was a chain made from the scales of a Leviathan.”

“What’s that?” asked Eli.

“Leviathans were ancient sea monsters,” Selene answered before Paul could. “They’re nearly extinct now. Magickind used to hunt them down to make armor out of their scales. Leviathan scales are impervious to magical attack.”

“They made a lot of ancient weapons out of them, too,” Paul said.

A memory popped up in my mind. “You’re talking about the garrote that Marrow used to kill Rosemary, aren’t you?”

“Yes.” Paul dropped his gaze to the floor. I couldn’t tell for certain in the weak light, but I thought his face looked flushed. If this was an act, then he’d been taking classes.

Eli scoffed. “That’s ridiculous. You were there when Rosemary died.” He pointed at Paul. “So either you already knew your uncle purchased that chain or you’re making this up.”

A vein pulsed in Paul’s temple as he gritted his teeth. “I’m not lying. I had no idea where Marrow got that chain. That’s how he works. He always deals with his followers individually, never more than two or three at a time. It was the only way to safeguard his identify until he was ready to reveal himself as the Red Warlock. I knew about Bethany Grey, and she knew about me, but that was it. Everyone else was kept secret.”