The Nightmare Charade (6 page)

As I originally thought, the person was female and definitely dead. Her skin was a molten blend of sallow and gray. It sagged over sunken, hollow cheeks. Two silver coins, of a currency I didn't recognize, were set deep inside her eye sockets. The eyes themselves were completely sunken in, hapless victims of gravity and decay.

It was a gruesome visage. Even still, the person's state of death didn't shock me. It wasn't the source of the scream clawing its way up my constricted throat. No. The source of my terror resided in the familiarity of the person lying there. A familiarity that could only be described as
intimate
.

This corpse, this dead thing.

Was me.

 

4

Nondisclosure

I left the dream a short time later, only to discover that leaving was a mistake, no matter how badly I wanted to escape the vision of my dead body lying there. Eli didn't wake up with me, not even after I gave him a hard shake.

At once I understood why. I turned to find Bollinger kicked back in the desk chair, her eyes half-lidded. “Do you mind taking off the sleeping spell now?”

Bollinger jerked upright. “What?” She glanced around, the look of surprise on her face quickly settling into her usual scowl. “Yes, I mind. The session is over. Let's get you back to your dorm.”

“What?” I put my hands on my hips, if only to still the trembling in my limbs. “But Eli and I always discuss things afterward.”

Bollinger shook her head. Several strands of mouse-brown hair had worked their way out of the ponytail. “My instructions don't include giving you time to chat afterward. Let's go.” She motioned to the door.

Too shaken and defeated to argue, I headed for it. I tried to steal another glance at Eli as I stepped into the hallway, but Bollinger was already swinging the door closed. I glared, hating the finality of that shut door, the certainty that this was how it was going to be—my time with Eli always restricted, always delayed.

I turned around, thoughts roiling in my head. There was so much to process, so much I wanted to discuss.
Needed
to discuss. Eli had reminded me just before I left the dream that they were symbolic, not literal. He wasn't wrong, but I'd gotten the feeling he was trying to convince himself of this truth as much as me.

Symbolic, yes, but I didn't know how many ways you could interpret my dead body in a dream. The dragon—the ouroboros—might have dozens of interpretations. But not me.

To my relief, Bollinger didn't loiter outside my dorm when we arrived. In fact, she didn't even bother coming down the hallway. She just shooed me along like an indecisive house cat and disappeared around the corner the moment I got the door open.

I stepped in, unsurprised to find the place dark and quiet. Of course, Selene would be asleep already. Classes started tomorrow, and it was well past midnight. Still, I was disappointed, enough that I debated waking her for several moments. But with the nondisclosure agreement, I didn't know if I could even talk to her about the dream.

Besides, I needed to write my dream journal before turning in. Only I desperately didn't want to. The presence of my dead body was so weird and scary. Even worse was the worry of how Lady Elaine and the rest might interpret it. They would likely see it as a sign that I was in mortal peril. I could end up with a twenty-four-seven Will Guard chaperone instead of just Bollinger. The idea made my stomach knot.

Sighing, I sank onto the chair beside my desk. My eTab sat in its cradle in front of me. Aside from the rune marks etched around the outside, which were designed to help ward off the animation effect, it looked like an ordinary electronic tablet. I pulled it off the cradle and switched it on, the debate still raging in my head. I was torn between what I ought to do and what I wanted to do, what was right and what was desirable. Why did it always seem like these two things always had to be fundamentally opposed? Why couldn't the universe line up properly so that what I wanted could also be what was right? Like ice cream being good for you. Or French fries. Or sunbathing. What a happy, wonderful world that would be.

Gritting my teeth, I switched the eTab on and navigated to the dream journal app. Then without taking time to fret over it, I began to summarize the dream. When I reached the part about the corpse, I wrote:
I didn't recognize the person
. Guilt made me feel queasy, but I told myself it was all right, that this was just self-preservation. Heck, it was just simple privacy. It was
my
dead body after all. And that made it feel like a secret that shouldn't be shared, my own personal nondisclosure agreement.

Besides, I told myself after I'd saved the journal and sent it off, if my being the dead person was significant, then there would surely be other signs to come along. Often, Eli's most important dreams were repetitive.

If it happens again, I'll tell them
.

But even as I thought it, I knew it was a hollow promise.

*   *   *

Predictably, my dreams were bad that night, and I woke the next morning feeling as if I hadn't slept at all. Most of the dreams—when they hadn't featured images of my corpse—had been about Eli. Over and over he told me he didn't want to see me anymore. Just like that. Cold, heartless, and absolute. Then he'd turned away from me and walked right into the waiting, open arms of his ex-girlfriend, Katarina Marcel.

I woke with my heart stuttering in my chest, the hurt of his betrayal refusing to fade even as I lay there awake, eyes closed and wishing those false dream-feelings away. Problem was, they felt so real. As if the dream was some kind of repressed memory.
Or maybe a future one.

I shook my head. Only Eli's dreams predict the future. Not mine. Except even as I thought it, the silver band on my wrist began to warm, as if to remind me of the recurring dream I'd had about Bellanax last year, months before I'd actually bonded with the sword.

I raised the band to my face, glaring down at the inanimate object. “You shut up.”

The sound of a snort startled me. “Huh?” Selene said from the other bed. “What did you say?”

I hid my arm under the covers. “Nothing. Sorry to wake you.”

Selene waved a hand at me and rolled over, burying her face in her pillow once more. I got out of bed, trying to ignore my envy that Selene was a siren and therefore able to sleep in an extra half hour because she didn't need to spend a lot of time on hair and makeup. My only consolation was that I didn't have to go far to get to the bathroom anymore. Oh, the perks of being a junior.

I showered quickly, but took awhile getting dressed. This was the first day of school, after all, and no matter how many times I'd done this, no matter how well I knew all of my classmates, I still had the jitters. I hadn't seen most of these people since before the attack on Lyonshold. I'd spent the last few weeks of sophomore year in a coma. Most everyone knew about the part I played in stopping the island from sinking, but as Bollinger proved, I couldn't be certain of a warm welcome.

Thank goodness I would have Eli with me all day. That was one of the best parts of being a dream-seer pair—we'd had matching school schedules last year.

With my thoughts on Eli, eagerness overtook the jitters and I hurried down to the cafeteria. We wouldn't have any privacy for a lot of kissing there, but at least we would be able to talk. We had so much catching up to do. I didn't even know what Eli had been up to over the summer break. Once he realized I didn't have access to my phone, he hadn't bothered sending e-mails.

No, when I finally got my phone back—and charged the months'-long dead battery—the only e-mails waiting for me had been from Paul Kirkwood, my ex-boyfriend. More than a dozen filled my in-box, most with subjects like
I'm sorry
or
Explanations
or
Where are you?

I still hadn't read them. Even thinking about them made me anxious. My feelings for Paul weren't of the romantic variety, not anymore, but I wasn't emotionally prepared to deal with him. Especially not after his latest, possibly duplicitous, actions at the end of last year. He'd been one of Marrow's supporters when we'd first met, and even though I believed he'd had a change of heart, I couldn't be sure. Thank goodness he was in hiding somewhere. Avoidance was always the easiest tactic.

The cafeteria didn't sound very busy as I approached, the noise nominal instead of the full-on roar it would become at high breakfast. But before I walked in, I paused just outside the doorway to read the posted sign:

WELCOME BACK, UPPERCLASSMEN!

REMEMBER, STARTING TOMORROW YOU WILL NEED YOUR CASTERCARD® IN THE CAFETERIA

I shook my head, recalling the little tidbit about the cards in the welcome back letter. Junior and senior magickind had to start learning about how ordinaries lived, including responsible use of credit cards. Lucky me, I'd learned that lesson early on thanks to my impulse-buyer mother. It was simple—do whatever Mom wouldn't.

I continued on into the large hall, only to come to another halt, this time to deal with the wave of disorientation that had come over me. I'd never been inside the upperclassmen's cafeteria before. It had a similar layout to the underclassmen's, a bunch of tables and chairs scattered in a roughly rectangular pattern. But the lunch line here was completely different. It looked more like a food court in a mall. A row of vendors lined the back wall. I scanned the various names, unable to keep from grinning at all the riffs on ordinary food joints.

Instead of a Pizza Hut, there was a Pizza Tut. It had an Egyptian theme, including a pharaoh mascot chomping down on a big cheesy slice of pizza. Next to it sat a Taco Spell, this one with a wizard in traditional blue robes and a pointy hat holding up a taco that he'd just conjured using the wand in his hand.

Some of the others were less obvious riffs but no less amusing. There was a Fairy Garden that seemed to serve primarily soups and salads, and a Demon Burger that needed no description. My personal favorite was the Unicorn Skewer. It looked like it served pretty much everything so long as it came skewered on a fake unicorn horn.

Once I got over the distraction of the food court, I scanned the tables for Eli. I was almost convinced that he wasn't here yet when I spotted him at a table off to the right. He wasn't alone. A girl stood in front of him with her back to me.

I stared at the figure, recognizing the long blond hair and curvy shape all too easily. I'd just seen it in my dream, after all. Nervous, I headed for them. Why was Katarina talking to Eli? Had they seen each other over break? Was this the reason she'd made an appearance in my dream?

Stop being so paranoid, Dusty
. I grasped the silver band on my wrist, responding to the warming sensation there automatically. At once my doubt began to ease.

As I drew nearer the table, Eli's gaze shifted my direction. A bright, broad smile lit up his face. It made my insides turn mushy, but the feeling vanished a second later as Katarina glanced over her shoulder to investigate who was worthy of such a greeting.

When she spotted me, her eyes narrowed. So did her lips, which was saying something considering how fluffy and full they were. She turned back around at once, spoke some final word to Eli, and then sauntered off, catwalk style. I wanted to glare at her, but it was impossible. The sight of her had turned my brain momentarily fuzzy. Katarina was a siren, same as Selene.

Before I could shake the feeling off, Eli was beside me, his arms sliding around my waist. “Good morning,” he said, as he captured my mouth with his. As kisses go, it was pretty chaste, hardly more than a brush of lips, but in the middle of the cafeteria, surrounded by our peers, it felt risqu
é
.

Best. First Day. Ever.

“Good morning,” I whispered, but Eli stiffened and pulled back. A Will Guard was moving toward us from across the room. We broke apart and sat down across from each other. The Guard, a young man with colorless brown hair, seemed to consider the value of scolding us for a second. Then he decided it wasn't worth it and returned to his station next to the Taco Spell.

I grimaced and turned to Eli.

He reached across the table and took my hand, squeezing my fingers. “You all right?”

“A little tired, but okay.”

“Me, too.” He motioned toward his food tray. “Are you hungry? I got extra just in case.”

Glancing at the tray, I snorted a laugh. A mountain of food covered the entire surface, everything from scrambled eggs to gravy and biscuits to pieces of sausages wrapped in bacon and skewered on a golden unicorn horn. “Um, thanks,” I said. “But you know I'm just one person not three, right?” I reached over and pulled a sausage off the horn.

He patted his flat stomach. “Don't worry. It won't go to waste.”

I nodded my agreement to this statement, having seen proof of his ability to eat enough for three people.

“So,” I said, once I finished chewing, “what did Katarina want?”

“Nothing really.” He shrugged. “She just wanted to say hi, and … um … to thank me for being nice to her little brother.”

“Her little brother?” Outwardly, I sounded normal. Inwardly, my stomach was doing backflips and my vision had gone a little hazy around the edges. Great. Now I was being paranoid and jealous.

“Yeah, it's kind of embarrassing, but—” He hesitated, running a hand over his shaved head. “I sorta spent most of the summer at a camp for magickind. A kids' camp, that is. Kat's little brother was one of the campers.”

I felt my eyebrows first draw together and then rise up as if pulled by an invisible puppeteer.

A faint pinkish color filled Eli's cheeks. “Dr. Hendershaw suggested I go, to try to catch up on everything I've missed. You know, with the not being able to do magic until a couple of months ago.” He tapped a finger against his glamoured wand. It was a numen vessel, same as Bellanax, more powerful than a regular wand but not as much as the sword.