The Nightmare Charade (14 page)

I felt Bellanax stirring. It didn't like the dog comparison. I couldn't blame it. It was nothing at all like a pet. It was more a wild animal, feral and predatory.

“It's a sword,” I said. “What could it possibly want from me?” I had an image of taking Bellanax for a walk, or maybe using it to chop wood so it could feel useful. Then again it was a sword. Would it be satisfied being used for something other than fighting? After all, what was a weapon's purpose but to be used to attack and defend?

“It might want any number of things,” Deverell said. He had looked sleepy before but now he appeared wide awake, eager in the way of a scholar faced with a new discovery. “But don't worry. I doubt it will want anything you will be unwilling to give. Clearly, the first thing we can assume is that it wants to be free of the glamour, at least occasionally.”

“How do you know?” I asked, even though I had no doubt this was true. It made perfect sense.

“Because the glamour came off on its own,” Lady Elaine said. “And that's highly unusual. Although thankfully it didn't happen until after we moved you to the infirmary so no one saw.”

“That's a relief,” I said, puffing out my cheeks.

“How often do you take the glamour off?” Deverell asked.

“Never,” I said. “I mean, it's a sword, and it once belonged to the Red Warlock. I don't want anybody knowing I have it who doesn't have to.”

“Yes, that's wise,” Deverell said. “But I think moving forward you should take the glamour off each night. The sword needs time to be what it truly is.”

Nodding, I said, “I think I can manage it.”

“Good.” Deverell folded his arms over his chest. “We should also schedule some additional psionics lessons, same as we did last year. You need to develop your rapport with the sword. You must learn how to communicate with it, and most important how to make sure that it is not able to seize control of you again unless you want it to.”

“Want it to?” I said, incredulous.

“Well, you might have need to save the world again, right?” Deverell winked. I smiled, feeling better about the idea, but then he added, “I think we should plan on an hour every day after school to start. I have room in my schedule to accommodate it. Then as you progress we can consider cutting it back some.”

An extra hour each day? My heart sank. I was already so busy. How was I ever going to find time to work on my mother's case? And what about homework and Eli? Finding the Death's Heart?

I took a deep breath, my chest tight with growing despair. I knew there was no dodging this one. It was too important. I had attacked Katarina with the asunder curse. No, I had attacked the stupid knife, but still, what if the spell had been off? What if it had hit her directly?

She might be dead now.

And I would be a killer.

 

10

Stranger with Your Face

I spent the night in the infirmary.

“The nurse will discharge you in the morning,” Lady Elaine said as she and Deverell prepared to leave. “You will be expected to get to class on time.”

I nodded, wondering just how late it was. “What about my dream-session with Eli?”

“Canceled,” Lady Elaine said. “Obviously.”

“Can we make it up tomorrow?”

She clucked her tongue. “Let's wait for the Friday session. You've had a stressful week. No reason to add to it.”

“Okay,” I said, even as my heart sank low in my chest. I had a feeling that concern over my stressful week wasn't as big a worry for Lady Elaine as allowing Eli and I the extra time together. I hoped I was wrong, but she had seemed to flinch when I said his name just now.

But my spirits rose a second later when I spotted my cell lying on top of the rolling tray table shoved in the far corner. I said a quick good-bye, eager for them to leave.

Finally, Deverell switched the lights off and closed the door behind him and Lady Elaine. I waited a couple of seconds to make sure no one doubled back and to allow my eyes time to adjust to the dim glow cast by the small emergency light next to the door. I slid from the bed, grabbed my phone off the tray, and then climbed back under the covers, being careful not to bump into Bellanax.

As I suspected, my phone was off. I hoped that the nurses had done it rather than the phone turning itself off by choice. This was a new phone, shiny and fast, but there was no telling how quickly it would succumb to the animation effect. My last cell, a temperamental ancient device that I had despised with the passion of a nuclear bomb, had been destroyed during the Lyonshold incident. It had nothing to do with the island sinking, and everything to do with Paul Kirkwood, who had rigged the phone to explode if anyone tried to access the hidden files he'd loaded onto it—files containing the names of secret Marrow supporters.

Only, the phone never should've exploded the way it had. Not unless Paul had been lying to me about it all along. Suspecting he had lied was the biggest reason I'd been dodging his e-mails. But now, it was time to read them.

First though, I needed to text Eli. Once the phone turned on and found a signal, several waiting message alerts appeared on the screen. I read the ones from Selene but didn't reply. She would certainly be asleep. To Eli, I sent:

I'm okay. In the infirmary. Lots to talk about soon. I hate that I missed our session.

I pressed send, and then navigated to my e-mails. As before, more than a dozen unread messages waited in my in-box. I decided to start at the bottom and work my way up. But just as I clicked on the oldest message from Paul, my phone buzzed with an incoming text.

I'm coming to see you.

What???

I wrote back, frantically mistyping and relying on autocorrect.

Right now? You'll get in trouble.

I'll be okay. I want to see you. Just don't scream when I get there and leave the light off. What room?

Giddy, I slid from the bed again and crept to the door. I pushed it open slowly, my hands trembling with a potent mix of fear and excitement. The corridor outside was as dim as my room, but I could just make out the number over the door.

Room 12

I typed to Eli as I climbed into the bed once more.

Got it. See you soon.

Be careful.

I leaned back, resting my head on the pillow while my heart stuttered against my rib cage. Eli was coming here. It was a huge risk, but if he pulled it off we would finally have some alone time together. Warmth spread through me at the thought.

Anxious, I tried to focus on Paul's e-mails again, but it proved impossible. My eyes read the words, but the meaning got lost on the way to my brain. I was able to glean only the basics. He was sorry for what happened at Lyonshold, and he claimed not to be at fault for what happened with the phone. But he didn't offer any explanations about it either. His e-mails seemed vague and cagey. They read like someone afraid they might get intercepted. Could someone be monitoring e-mails? I knew such things happened in the ordinary world with all that homeland security stuff, but my phone was using Arkwell's wireless system. Could the magickind government be reading my e-mails? My text messages?

This last thought had me sitting up again in momentary panic. The magickind government was terrible with ordinary technologies. Paul, a computer genius good enough to be accepted at MIT, had proven that time and time again. But Detective Valentine was using DNA evidence against my mother. Perhaps things were changing.

With my mental state teetering between calm and freak-out, I set my phone on the bed beside Bellanax then forced myself to lie back and close my eyes. I doubted I would be able to sleep any, but pretending couldn't hurt. Yet somehow, I must've drifted off, because the next thing I knew I heard the door into my room open. I peered around, groggy and disoriented for a second, until my eyes fell on the figure walking toward the bed.

“You made it,” I said, reaching up.

“Hi, Dusty.”

I sucked in a breath, panic bringing me fully awake.
Not Eli.
I opened my mouth and started to scream just as a hand fell over my lips, strangling the noise.

“Shhh, please don't scream, Dusty. It's me. It's Paul.”

Thrashing now, I tried to pull out from his grip, but he was too strong. I felt Bellanax lying beside me, and I reached for the sword, ready to fight my way free.

Abruptly, the hand holding my mouth let go.

“Please don't scream. I'm sorry I scared you.” He held out his hand and a light appeared in his palm, a faint glowing orb, casting just enough for me to see his face.

“Paul?” I said, my breath coming in quick pants. The voice sounded close to his, but the man standing before me wasn't my ex-boyfriend. The nose was wrong, the shape of the forehead. And he wore a beard, long and scraggly. Recognition struck me. It was the creepy man from the Menagerie who'd stared at me that first day. He was still wearing the green work shirt.

“It's me, Dusty. Here, I'll prove it.” He set the orb on the bed, the little ball purely magical and not at risk of catching anything on fire. Then he reached up and unfastened the necklace he wore. It was strangely made, as rigid as a choker with irregularly shaped white beads braided into the hemp-like chain, but long enough that the large green gem at its center had been hidden beneath his shirt collar.

The moment he pulled it off, his face went blurry—the sight making my stomach roil—but then his features righted into something human again. The creepy bearded man became Paul Kirkwood.

I didn't know if I wanted to hug him or hit him. “You scared me to death, and I can't believe you've been at Arkwell all this time.”

“Sorry for the scare. I wasn't thinking. But what time?” Paul said, the hint of a grin on his lips. “School's only been back in session three days.”

I huffed. He was right, of course, but with everything going on it felt longer. Especially combined with how long it had been since I'd seen him last. “What are you doing here?” I said, finally overcoming my shock. Eli was on his way, and the last thing I wanted was for him to show up and find Paul standing over my bed.

“You never read my e-mails.” It came out an accusation draped in a matter-of-fact tone.

“How do you know that?”

Paul shrugged. “I put a read receipt on them.”

“Of course you did.” I folded my arms over my chest. I was fully dressed, but I felt naked with him in the room, vulnerable. But then I remembered that Bellanax was lying between us and that vulnerability vanished. “You're lucky I didn't stab you.” Too late I realized my blunder.

Paul arched an eyebrow. “So it's true. You have The Will sword.”

“What … what are you talking about?”

“Don't try to deny it.” He brushed back a strand of blond hair that had fallen into his eyes. He was wearing it long again, a ponytail at the base of his skull. “But when you've spent all summer being carted around by one magickind policemen after another, you hear rumors.”

My shock must've registered on my face. “Nobody is supposed to know I have it.”

“Don't worry. It was mostly guesswork on my part.” He smiled, reminding me in a very visceral way just how handsome he was. “And I had inside information going in.”

Like what?
I wanted to ask, but instead I cleared my throat. “Same old Paul. Always angling, aren't you?”

A hurt expression crossed his face, and I regretted my hasty words, no matter that they were true. “I didn't lie to you about the code on the cell phone, Dusty.”

“Then why did it explode? I saw your uncle put the code in correctly. There's no reason it should've self-destructed. Not unless you had a time limit for the thing to be secured again.” The words came out easy, practiced. Mostly because they were. I'd imagined saying this to him a hundred times before.

Paul sighed. “You're right. There was a timer on it.”

“Why did you lie about it?” I was furious that I'd let him trick me again.

“It wasn't an intentional lie. I just … forgot to tell you.”

“Ha.” I kicked the mattress with the heel of my foot. “Well, wasn't that convenient.”

Paul crossed his arms. I realized he was no longer wearing the green work shirt but a maroon tee with a MIT logo across the front. The clothes must've changed the same time as his face had. “It's true,” he said. “I realized I forgot to tell you right after we said good-bye that day. We were down in the tunnels, in our old spot, remember?”

Against my sincere desire not to, I felt myself blush. Some of the canals dead-ended into reservoirs. There was one such reservoir where Paul and I had always met when we were dating, a secret place where we could have time together in private, unobserved. Exactly the kind of place that Eli and I needed right about now.

Thoughts of Eli chased away my blush. “Of course, I remember. I was there.”

“Yeah.” Paul started to fidget with the collar of his shirt. “Well, it was a little distracting being down there with you again after … after … everything. You can understand that, right?”

I reluctantly nodded.

“And when I gave you the code you didn't try to open the data right then. If you had I would've remembered to tell you how to close it properly. And so—” He blew out a breath. “It's gone now, destroyed forever. I can't tell you how sorry I am about that.”

I stared at him for several long seconds. The light orb still glowed, but it was starting to flicker, casting dancing shadows over his face. Reluctantly, I decided he was being sincere. Believing the alternative—that he'd intentionally not told me about the timer—felt beyond my ability to deal with at the moment. Besides, what did it matter? Like he said, the data was gone, and I had so many other things to worry about now.