The Nightmare Affair (4 page)

“I thought The Will stopped stuff like that from happening?”

“First time in who knows how long.”

“I heard that her body was found by that Nightmare girl. You know, Dusty, or whatever.”

Great, so my participation in last night’s events had made it into the rumor mill, too. I didn’t bother correcting the boy even though he was sitting just one table over from me. He’d probably just ignore me anyway. I wasn’t exactly popular at Arkwell, more like the unintentional loner. I’d tried making friends, but most people acted like I was mentally deficient or something. Magically deficient, more likely. Most weren’t outright mean, but it seemed I would be the new girl forever.

My luck from the night before finally went bust in English class. Typical of Monday mornings, our teacher, Miss Norton, was hungover. She was a squat fairy with curly, auburn hair and a broad face. Today her large eyes looked red and puffy behind her wire rim glasses. I suspected she might have done some crying last night along with the usual drinking and I tried not to think what about.

School gossip claimed Miss Norton had a serious Coke addiction. And by Coke, I mean the sugary, caffeinated beverage. Fairies were immune to the effects of drugs and alcohol, but they had a serious sugar weakness. This meant sugar was a banned substance at Arkwell. The vending machines contained only diet, caffeine-free sodas and sugar-free candy and snacks, most of which tasted like cardboard. There were mornings I would kill to get my hands on a Mountain Dew and a powdered doughnut.

“All right, kids,” said Miss Norton after the bell rang. “Let’s form the talking circle.”

Relieved chatter broke out at her announcement, mixed with the scrape of chair legs against the stone floor as we pushed our desks around until they were lined up in some vague circular fashion. I ended up with my back facing the wide, arched windows and my gaze pointed toward the dry erase board in the front of the room. Arkwell might look like a large medieval town on the outside, but the insides were full of modern classroom amenities.

Miss Norton clapped her hands, and the noise quieted down. Then she produced the “talking stick,” pulling it out of one of the huge pockets of the flowery housedress she wore. The stick was roughly the size of a school ruler and as crooked as an arthritic finger. Its surface was made of some kind of pale wood, smooth like glass, and whenever I held it, it seemed to radiate warmth.

“Given the tragic events of last night,” said Miss Norton, “I think instead of discussing the reading assignment, we should take this time to share our thoughts and feelings about what happened.”

Now the class gave a collective groan, myself included. Actually, I was probably the loudest. What was the deal? The talking circle was normally an excuse for Miss Norton to get out of teaching. The free-form, rambling discussions, usually more goofing off than serious introspection, gave her time to nurse her hangover headache. I couldn’t understand why she was making today’s topic about our feelings over Rosemary’s death. Maybe she wanted to make sure everybody left her class feeling as miserable as she did. Wouldn’t surprise me. Fairies were a vindictive lot.

I felt an elbow in my side and glanced at its owner. My roommate, Selene, was looking at me with a worried expression, the same one that had been there ever since I told her about what happened while we were getting ready this morning.

“You don’t have to talk, you know,” she said. “When the stick gets to you, just pass it on.”

I smiled weakly back at her, appreciating the suggestion but doubting its chances of success.

Miss Norton lifted the talking stick into the air. “Who would like to go first?”

No one answered, and I held my breath, hoping Norton would see how reluctant we were and return the discussion to
Macbeth
and the prejudicial vilifying of witches during the seventeenth century.

Katarina Marcel raised her hand. “I’ll go.”

I braced for the worst as Katarina’s icy gaze flashed on me for a second. She had hated me ever since I turned her into that snake. The spell had lasted less than a minute before the teacher turned her back, but not in time to prevent Katarina from falling victim to snake instinct and swallowing a couple of the earthworms we’d been using for spell practice. Nobody believed me when I said it was an accident, especially not Katarina. Didn’t help when I suggested maybe she was part shape-shifter and had discovered her true form at last.

Yeah, not my smartest moment, given her popular status. Since then Katarina never passed on an opportunity to expose me to public humiliation. To make matters worse, she and Rosemary had been friends.

Miss Norton let go of the talking stick. It levitated in the air for a second then flew across the circle into Katarina’s outstretched hand. Most of my classmates believed that Miss Norton used her magic to make the stick fly around like that, but I always doubted it. The stick sometimes gave me the impression that it was alive, or at least that it could hear and react on its own.

Katarina took a shaky breath. “I just can’t imagine it. I mean, how can Rosemary be dead? Why would someone hurt her?” Katarina’s voice grew thick with emotion, and her eyes glistened with unshed tears. I knew her well enough to be suspicious of such a theatrical display of grief, even if the feeling behind it was genuine. Katarina was a siren, which meant that the ability to manipulate people’s emotions came as easy to her as breathing. Across the room, Miss Norton was eating up Katarina’s words like they were M&M’s. She might start sobbing any second.

Katarina looked at me again. “And I just can’t imagine how anyone could have seen something like that and
not
be devastated. Only the most terrible, heartless person could be so uncaring.”

All of the other students looked at me, and my face went red. Everybody knew I’d been there. What they didn’t know was that I
had
cried. Into my pillow, in private. I fought the urge to defend myself, to not play into her game. I bit down on my tongue hard enough it hurt. I
would
stay quiet for once in my life.

A loud voice came over the PA system: “Destiny Everhart, please report to the main office at once.”

The red in my face drained away. A few students snickered, and a couple said, “Ohhhhhhh.”

I scowled at the worst of the noisemakers. “What, are we in second grade still?” I stood, feeling faint.

“Well,” said Katarina, her voice mocking. “You
are
less than a year old, magically speaking. So it’s only appropriate we treat you like a child.”

I rolled my eyes. “Aw, did you come up with that all by yourself? Aren’t you clever.”

Katarina’s expression turned smug. She brushed her long, velvety brown hair over her shoulder. All the boys present let out a collective sigh. That was the problem with sirens. They were so physically beautiful they could get away with anything. That beauty was a key part of their manipulative, seductive magic.

“Yes, I am,” Katarina said. “But you forgot to add beautiful, talented. Oh, and
not
magically deficient.”

Only a siren could say something that conceited and not be ridiculed. I searched for a scathing reply, but nothing good came to me. Trouble was, she hadn’t said anything that wasn’t true.

Selene snorted, coming to my rescue. “You forgot the part about how you’re a stuck-up twit, too. Wouldn’t want to forget that.”

Even more of our classmates
ohhhh
ed this time, shifting their stares from me to Katarina. That was Selene’s doing. She was a siren as well and just as good at manipulation. She was as beautiful as Katarina, too, but spent most of her time trying to hide it. Her hair was silky black like wet ink and her eyes the color of amethysts, but she dressed like a tomboy in baseball caps, baggy T-shirts, and no makeup. The tomboy persona was a recent development, a form of social protest against the objectification of sirens.

Katarina’s eyes narrowed to pinpricks as she glared at Selene. She opened her mouth to say something back, but Miss Norton, who’d been busy rubbing her temples and pretending not to hear, finally decided to play teacher.

She smacked her desk with the palm of her hand, drawing everyone’s attention. “That’s enough, girls.” Miss Norton fixed her gaze on me. Her pointy ears made her look like a hissing cat. “Dusty, go to the office.”

I cast Selene a grateful glance as I shoved my battered copy of the
Collected Works of William Shakespeare
into my backpack. She winked back at me. Then I strode from the room, my heart pounding from the confrontation with Katarina. You’d think I’d be used to it by now.

Fear replaced anger as I reached the main office in Jefferson Tower. I had a sinking feeling I was finally going to get in trouble for last night. Or worse, find out what it all meant. The secretary gave me a friendly smile that I immediately found suspicious.

She paged Dr. Hendershaw, and a moment later I entered the head principal’s office. Hendershaw was sitting behind her desk, typing away on a keyboard with her eyes fixed on the monitor. The keyboard made odd sound effects reminiscent of the Three Stooges as she struck the keys, but Hendershaw didn’t pay it any mind. A lot of inanimate objects on campus tended to become a little wonky after a while from a phenomenon known as animation. It was a side effect of being exposed to both magic and the electromagnetic fields generated by electricity. Any object could be affected given enough exposure, but electronics were doomed from the start.

Hendershaw motioned for me to sit without looking up. I did so, trying hard not to fidget, and failing. The principal was a short, plump witch with toady eyes behind her Coke-bottle glasses. Unfortunately, I was pretty certain she was a member of the “judge me by my mother” party. Rumor had it Hendershaw had been the alchemy teacher when my mom was a student here, the one who’d given her the bad grade. Whenever I saw Hendershaw, she kept her gaze locked on me as if I were a hellhound she thought might bite her the moment she wasn’t looking.

She finished typing and addressed me at last. “Do you know why I’ve called you down here?”

“I’ve been elected class president?”

Hendershaw’s eyes flashed dangerously. “You’re
here
because the Magi Senate has decided to make a change in your magical status.”

“Come again?”

“You’re no longer going to be required to dream-feed every other week.”

“I’m being cut off?”

“Of course not. You will now be required to feed
more
often.”

“What? Why?”

Hendershaw took off her glasses for a moment and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “We’ll get to that. First let me caution you about the risk you’ll be undertaking. Since the ratification of The Will Act, there has been a tight restriction on the amount of magic a person is allowed to channel, hence the limitation to your dream-feeding.”

I cut her off, impatient to get to the point. “Yeah, I learned that in orientation. It’s also why witches like you are only permitted to own two magical instruments at once.”

She glowered at me, but not before her eyes flicked to the fountain pen sitting in a holder next to her keyboard. Must be her wand in disguise.

“Yes, well, I’m glad to hear you listened so well
then,
” said Hendershaw. “Let’s see if you can do so again
now
. Shall we?” Her expression dared me to respond.

I kept my mouth shut.

Hendershaw continued. “As I was saying, the restrictions are even greater for underage magickind. Everything is always so much more exaggerated to a child. The smallest slight from a peer seems like the end of the world. Before The Will it wasn’t uncommon for serious injury to occur on a weekly basis, sometimes even death. But you children are so much safer now.”

I gritted my teeth, in actual pain from the effort of holding back a wiseass remark. I didn’t appreciate being referred to as a child.

“Now, however, the senate has decided to increase the frequency of your dream-feeding to three times per week.”

I sat up, my stomach lurching. “Seriously? Why so much?” Sitting on sleeping strangers once every two weeks was bad enough. The last thing I wanted was to do it more often. Unlike a lot of my peers, I didn’t give a crap about making my magic more powerful. I had a hard enough time handling what I already had, thank you very much.

“Because,” said Hendershaw, “Lady Elaine believes you are a dream-seer.”

“A what?”

“Dream-see-
er
,” a raspy voice enunciated from behind me.

I jumped even as I recognized that unpleasant sound from the night before. I turned to see Lady Elaine standing in the doorway. She looked the same as she had yesterday, old and skeletal. She seemed to favor dark, snug-fitting clothes, but the purse slung over her shoulder was bright pink and as big as a pillowcase.

“You have the ability to see the future through
dreams,
” she said.

“Ah, Lady Elaine, so glad you made it.” Hendershaw stood up and motioned the other woman to take her seat. Lady Elaine came forward and assumed the position behind the principal’s desk.

I sat and stared, feeling as if I’d swallowed a jar full of spiders, hundreds of little hairy legs scurrying around in my tummy.

“Now, young lady,” said the oracle, “the gift of dream-seeing is very rare, and very
important
. You should feel honored.”

“Oh, I’m thrilled.” I felt like throwing up. “But how can you be sure I’m a … a dream-seer?”

“The signs are unmistakable. The moment The Will spell detected your magic failing, there was little doubt it could be from anything else.” Lady Elaine set her massive purse on the table, bumping the pen holder.

“Yes,” said Hendershaw, rescuing the pen—most definitely her wand—before it fell to the floor. She spoke in a hurried tone that gave me the impression she was trying hard not to be excluded. “However, the ability only works with the appropriate partner. In your case, Elijah Booker.”

I grabbed the arms of my chair to keep from falling out of it. My eyes darted between the two women as I prayed one of them would smile and admit this was some cruel joke. They looked back at me with matching serious expressions.