The Nightmare Dilemma (Arkwell Academy) (2 page)

I grimaced at this news. Ms. Hardwick was the school janitor and resident hag. Definitely not the kind of person I wanted to meet inside a dream. Especially one other than Eli’s. With any luck, she hadn’t been involved, although I wouldn’t put it past her.

“There was no apparent sign of a struggle,” Brackenberry went on. “But Britney was lying half in, half out of the water, which suggests she might’ve been trying to flee her attacker. It appears Ms. Hardwick arrived only minutes afterward, but she didn’t see anyone else.” Brackenberry’s tone turned scornful. “Is that enough information for you?”

I gulped. “I think I can make do with it.”

“Well, go on then.” He shooed at me.

I bit my lip. “Would you, um, mind leaving again?” Dream-feeding was kind of personal, and the last thing I wanted was a male audience.

If I’d been a bowl of ice cream I might have melted on the spot from the hot intensity of his stare. I glanced at Lady Elaine, hoping for some support, but she looked as impatient as the sheriff.

Resigning myself to the inevitable, I walked around to the side of the bed. I was just about to climb onto it and resume the proper Nightmare position, when I remembered a mere touch would do. I closed my eyes and reached my hands toward Britney’s forehead.

“What are you doing?” Lady Elaine said.

I looked over my shoulder. “Checking her temperature.”

She stomped her foot. “Not like that. This is too important, Dusty. You need to be in the traditional position to get the deepest connection to her dreams.”

It was my turn to scowl as I climbed onto the bed. I hadn’t dream-fed on anyone besides Eli in a long while. And feeding on a girl, especially one my age, just felt weird. There was nothing sexual about dream-feeding, but the pose was a bit on the lewd side.

I swung one foot over Britney’s middle. Then I squatted down onto her chest, doing my best to keep as much weight off her as I could. I wasn’t that heavy, but Britney was smaller than me, and I didn’t want to hurt her.

As always, the moment I was in place, instinct took over. Britney was dreaming, all right. The stuff of those dreams, the fictus, made something deep inside me burn with a terrible thirst. A thirst for magic.

Closing my eyes, I stretched my hands toward her temple. When my skin touched hers, I felt my consciousness slip from my body and slide down, down, down into the world of Britney’s dream.

A swirl of colors—a chaotic mixture of blues, purples, and greens—enveloped me like some kind of living light, warm and pulsating with energy. It lasted a long time before the chaos settled, and I found myself in a dark, damp cave. A single torch hung nearby, its light making the wet walls around it glisten and reflecting in the water from the canal that ran parallel to the walkway I stood on. To my left and right, the canal and walkway disappeared into the blackness of a long tunnel. Across from me, the canal widened into a small, circular pool, one of the many alcoves in Arkwell’s tunnel system.

The clarity of my surroundings surprised me. Most dreams, aside from Eli’s, were confused, disorienting things, usually in black-and-white, but this place was so real for a moment I thought I’d been transported here in the waking world.

The illusion broke almost at once. The walls began to lean inward, as if the tunnel were being drawn in on itself. The natural orange glow of the torch turned a molten red. And the water began to bubble and spurt in a rapid boil.

A scream rang out even louder than the raging water. I looked down to see Britney’s head break the surface of the alcove’s pool. I’d never seen her in her natural mermaid form, but I knew her skin should be pale, almost translucent, not the angry red color it was now. Blisters popped up on her skin. She was being cooked alive.

No, this wasn’t real. This wasn’t even a dream.

It was a nightmare.

My first instinct was to change the dream, manipulate the setting to somewhere safe and calm, but I resisted. Observe and report, Lady Elaine had said.

It was hard, especially as Britney swam toward the edge of the pool, struggling to pull herself out of the water. I wanted to help her, but I couldn’t, not here. Any physical contact with my dream-subject and I would be kicked out.

I closed my eyes, unable to watch any longer. I was about to cover my ears when everything went silent. I opened my eyes again, relieved to see the scene had shifted on its own. The tunnel had given way to a strange, small room with bright, colorful walls. I felt oddly weightless, and as strands of my red hair swam into my vision, I realized I was under water. As soon as I thought it, I became aware of the wetness and a sudden need to breathe.

Britney floated a few feet away from me in her mermaid form, her long tail a strawberry pink color that matched her hair. I focused my imagination on copying her form, and a moment later my body had transformed into a mermaid and my panic subsided.

I looked around at what I guessed was her bedroom. No furniture decorated the place, unless you counted the gigantic sea anemone growing along one side of the room that looked big enough to sleep in. But there was something personal and bedroom-ish about the trinkets set on the floor-to-ceiling shelves built into the coral walls.

Before I could examine the items, an odd, garbled, shrieking sound drew my attention. It seemed to be coming from Britney, who had her back to me. I swam to the left to see around her. Another mermaid floated in a small opening into the room. She had the same strawberry pink-colored hair, and I guessed it was Britney’s mother. They were arguing. Loudly. But in mermench.

Even though I couldn’t understand them, there was no mistaking the animosity. Fury seemed to emanate from both, but when I cast a sideways glance at Britney, she looked frightened, too.

The scene changed once more, the colors melting and bleeding together before righting again. This time Britney and I stood in the middle of a forest full of dead, deteriorated trees like hundreds of brittle finger bones sticking up from the earth. A stream full of glowing green water ran sluggishly through the trees. Garbage lined its banks. A terrible chemical smell hung in the air, burning my nose. The stench of rotting fish blended in with it. Several animals moved among the trees, all of them looking as sick and listless as the water in the stream. A deer hobbled past me on three legs, scorch marks on its body.

The scene shifted again. We were back in the tunnel, but the water no longer boiled. This time Britney stood beside the alcove’s pool in her human form, her hair more blond than pink, her skin fair but not covered in translucent scales. A dark figure stood a few feet down the tunnel across from her, face hidden in shadows.

The residue
. I moved toward the figure, eager to see his face and leave this dream behind. But the scene shifted again, back to the underwater bedroom. The change was so abrupt, I fought back dizziness. Pinwheeling my arms through the water, I focused on Britney still caught up in the argument with her mother.

A moment later, we were back in the forest. But as with the tunnel scene, we were no longer alone. Britney was arguing with a guy, one whose face made my heartbeat double and all the air vanish from my lungs. Paul Foster Kirkwood, my ex-boyfriend. What was he doing in Britney’s dream? For a moment, I thought he must be her attacker, until I remembered that Paul was in jail, awaiting trial for his involvement with Marrow’s scheme to overthrow the magickind government.

I took a step toward him and realized it wasn’t Paul, not exactly, but close, as if Britney had seen the real Paul but her dreaming mind had forgotten the details.

The scene shifted again, back to the tunnel. After that, the changes started happening so quickly, my vision blurred as if I were riding an ultrafast merry-go-round. I tried to close my eyes, but couldn’t. I kept catching glimpses of the almost-Paul and Britney’s mother, even Britney herself, crying out in pain.

Finally, when I didn’t think I could stand it any longer, I reached out with my Nightmare magic and willed the dream to stop its chaotic swirl. At once, everything went still.

The scene before me was the strangest yet. It seemed to be a mash-up of the three scenes, blended into one. I stood in the tunnel again, but the walls were now made up of those spindly, dead trees. The canal water glowed the same sickly green of the stream. It wasn’t boiling. In fact it wasn’t moving at all, but looked as if it had been frozen in place.

Glancing around, I realized that everything was frozen, including Britney, who hung suspended mid-jump into the pool. A look of terror darkened her features. Behind her, I saw the shadowed figure again, frozen as well, but in an attack position, one arm stretched out in front of him as if he were hurling a knife at Britney’s back.

I took a step toward the figure, and pictured a flashlight in my hand. It appeared there at once. I switched it on and shone it at the person. He carried a wand, held out in front of him like a gun. I raised the light to his face and let out an involuntary gasp of alarm. It wasn’t Paul, as I’d expected. It wasn’t even Britney’s mother.

It was Eli Booker.

2

Dream a Little Dream

Dreams are symbolic, not literal. Dreams are symbolic, not literal
. I told myself this over and over as I walked back to my dorm room, escorted by a silent, lumbering werewolf policeman. It was a futile attempt to staunch the guilt bubbling up inside me with every step. I hadn’t told Lady Elaine about Eli. I just couldn’t. It seemed too much like a betrayal. Eli was my … friend? Partner?

Soul mate
.

No, we weren’t even together. But there was definitely something between us. It had been there since the night we defeated Marrow. Since the night he kissed me.

The policeman left me at the bottom of the stairs leading up to Riker Hall. I climbed them slowly, my mind full of the images from Britney’s dreams. Seeing Paul in there was almost as troublesome as seeing Eli. I couldn’t think of any reason why Britney would dream about Paul. As far as I knew, they’d never met. Paul was a senior, two grades above Britney and me. Sure, everybody knew who he was now because of all the press about his involvement with Marrow. But that didn’t seem a strong enough reason for his presence. He was more likely to haunt my nightmares than Britney’s.

Still, when I mentioned him, Lady Elaine had dismissed it. Paul was in jail. There was no way it could’ve been him. Then she pointed out that Britney wasn’t a dream-seer, which meant her dream was just a dream and nothing more.

When I emerged into the foyer, I gave a half-hearted wave to Frank and Igor, Riker Hall’s resident suits of armor and security guards. Frank bowed his head in my direction. The knights used to ignore my greetings, but lately they seemed to be developing more prominent personalities from the animation effect of magic and electricity. It wasn’t surprising, honestly. Since The Will broke, the amount of magic usage on campus had gone up a thousand percent.

I went faster up the three flights of steps to my floor, eager to talk to my roommate. Selene hadn’t woken up when the policemen knocked on our door an hour ago to fetch me down to the infirmary, but I would wake her now. I needed her to validate my reasons for not telling Lady Elaine the whole truth of Britney’s dream. The idea of Eli being the attacker was absurd. He couldn’t even do magic. He was an ordinary, just like my dad and all my old friends at my old ordinary high school. The only reason why he attended Arkwell now was because of the dream-seer stuff.

Feeling better already, I pushed open the door to my dorm and let it swing closed harder than normal. I glanced expectantly at the doorway from the living area into the bedroom, but nothing seemed to be moving in there.

Stifling yet more guilt at the idea of disturbing Selene’s sleep, I walked into the bedroom and approached her bed on the far wall, opposite mine. The light from the living area illuminated just enough that I could see Selene’s massive poster of a teenaged Bob Dylan hung over the foot of the bed. Even though Dylan was an ordinary, he was Selene’s favorite musician. She believed he possessed some diluted strain of siren blood. I doubted it, but Selene insisted no ordinary could be that good without some kind of magic. Me, I thought it was more a matter of opinion.

I stopped and looked down at the bed, my brain slowly processing what my eyes had been telling me for the last thirty seconds. Selene was gone. I touched the mattress, confirming it.

Where was she? It didn’t make sense. There was nowhere else for her to be but here. It was a Monday night and well past curfew. I thought back to those few seconds it had taken me to climb out of bed and answer the door when the werewolf policemen had come knocking. Had she been there then? I thought so, but I hadn’t actually checked. Come to think of it, it was a little weird that she hadn’t woken up, too. She was a light sleeper, normally.

I walked over to my nightstand and picked up my cell phone. As usual, it had taken the liberty of shutting itself off during the night, its surly personality a result of the animation effect. I pressed the on button and waited impatiently for it to boot up.

No messages. No missed calls.

I dialed Selene’s number and let it ring until her voice mail picked up. Then I texted her and waited for a response. Fifteen minutes later I was still waiting. I checked the desk and the nightstand to see if she’d left her cell phone but didn’t find it. A cursory glance at her shoes lined up neatly on the floor of her closet showed me her black boots were missing. Wherever she was, she’d gone deliberately. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have been too worried, but considering what had happened to Britney, I couldn’t help feeling a little concerned.

I sat down on my bed and sent Selene another text. It took me the better part of five minutes to type it, as my cell kept shutting off, making obnoxious twittering sounds as it did so. It was supposed to be a smartphone—oh, the irony.

I was just about to hurl the damn thing across the room, when the door into the dorm opened and a disheveled-looking Selene stepped inside. She was indeed wearing her black boots as well as camo jacket and matching camo ball cap and black pants. Her outfit wasn’t particularly suspicious—Selene had been rocking the tomboy look for more than a year now—but the telltale wetness on her hair told me she’d been outside.