The Nightmare Charade Page 2

  Bollinger swallowed, the veins in her neck working. “Yes,” she finally said. “You may go.”

  “Thank you.” I moved past her without another word and without looking back. The farther away I drew from her, the spirit or power or whatever it was that made Bellanax something more than a sword, settled back into a state of dormancy. Which was exactly where I preferred it.

  The longer I walked, distancing myself from the run-in, the more the woman’s reaction bothered me. I could understand her resentment, but not her hate. She acted like I was an ax murderer on death row, one who’d chopped up her family into little pieces. It wasn’t fair. I didn’t—the thought stopped dead in my mind as I remembered the attack on Lyonshold. We’d kept the island from sinking, but there had been casualties. One of them had even been a friend of mine. Was it really my fault? Was I responsible for breaking The Will and thereby allowing evildoers the chance to do their bad deeds?

  There was no answer. Even Bellanax, who often offered opinions on such things, remained quiet.

  A new kind of nervousness came over me that not even the anticipation of seeing Eli could shake. At least that was until I actually arrived outside his door. Standing before it, my heart gave a hard lurch inside my chest and then seemed to stop beating all together for a second. I didn’t know if I should knock or just go on in. Normally, I did the latter, but nothing felt normal right now.

  I stood there for several moments, thinking it over. Unconsciously, I touched my fingers to the silver band, twisting it around and around on my wrist as I tried to muster my courage—knock or enter, knock or enter.

  At the sound of a noise coming down the corridor, I reached for the door handle, found it unlocked, and pushed my way inside.

  Familiar surroundings greeted me. Except for the larger size and bathroom, Eli’s new dorm looked the same as the old one. Expensive stereo equipment and other electronics lined one whole wall, most of it belonging to Lance Rathbone whose dad was a magi senator with all the requisite income included. Band posters and several pieces of sports memorabilia decorated the rest of the walls in and around the two desk units and sofa. I was happy to see that Lance hadn’t put up his girls-in-bikinis posters again. I had a feeling I could thank Selene for that one.

  All of this I took in with one quick, forgotten glance before my eyes fell on the boy sitting in the chair farthest from the door. Eli’s eyes were fixed on me in a penetrating stare, as if he wasn’t quite sure who he was seeing. I stared back, my heart beating somewhere near my throat. The hummingbirds still filled my belly, but they seemed to have doubled in size and number.

  Eli looked mostly the same as I remembered—only better, because he was here and he was real. His black hair, usually longer, was cut military short, and his skin was tanned to a golden bronze. The lights were turned down low, but even still I could clearly see the blue of his eyes, pale and startling in their color.

  Say something! But my voice had gotten lost. And I didn’t know what to say. “Hi” seemed inadequate. I had no idea what Eli was thinking, feeling. All the doubt from earlier came crashing back down on me. Here I’d thought his invite tonight was for us to rekindle the first faint sparks we’d left burning weeks ago. But maybe instead he was just going to tell me he’d moved on, found someone else. Or even worse, that he’d decided to believe the curse again, the way he had when he first learned about it last year.

  Finally, I mustered my courage and opened my mouth to speak. But then a smile broke across Eli’s face. The effect was like sunlight bursting through a wall of storm clouds, sudden, undeniable proof of hope and possibilities and change.

  He stood up, his presence seeming to fill the whole room. I’d forgotten how tall he was, how physically imposing. He’d put on muscle over the last few weeks, the evidence clear in the bulging, sinewy shapes visible beneath his well-worn T-shirt. He made me feel small and vulnerable, but also completely safe and protected.

  “Dusty,” he said, his voice deep and husky. The sound set my pulse to racing.

  Two steps later and he stood before me, peering down as he raised his hands to my face, cradling the sides of my jaw, the tips of his fingers slipping into my hair.

  And then his lips closed over mine. The world turned sideways for a moment, but in the next it settled into place. Into rightness. I kissed him back, wrapping my hands around his waist and holding on. There was no curse. No reason to worry. We were made for this.

  Nothing could be more right.

  2

  Animus Mortem

  The smell of him filled my nose—soap and cologne and something earthen like dew-drenched woods at dawn. I breathed him in. His hands fell away from my face, coming to rest on the jut of my hips. His fingers slid beneath the hem of my shirt, his warm skin shooting electric chills over my body.

  His lips moved off mine and he kissed a line over my jaw and down my neck. “Dusty,” he breathed, his warm breath sending even more chills through me. “God, how I’ve missed you.”

  “Me, too,” I said. With my eyes closed, his kisses became the only thing in the world, all my senses focused on the sensation. “For a second I thought you’d changed your mind.”

  “What?” Eli pulled back, and I looked up to find him staring down at me, his mouth slightly open and his eyebrows drawn together. “I will never change my mind about how I feel about you.”

  Don’t say never, a voice whispered in my head. For a second I wasn’t sure if it was my own thought or someone else’s. The silver band on my wrist was noticeably warm against my skin.

  “You’re the girl of my dreams,” Eli said, his expression softening. “All of them. Every night.”

  Something about the way he spoke told me he meant this quite literally. Worry started to creep in. Dreams were powerful, dangerous things. My presence in his could mean anything—good or bad.

  But then Eli bent his head toward me, and the doubt vanished as his lips touched mine once more.

  Neither of us noticed the door opening. We didn’t hear the footsteps until it was too late.

  “Unless you want a month’s worth of detention,” a familiar voice said from behind us, “I suggest you desist right this moment.”

  I froze in Eli’s arms even as his body stiffened. Then we both wrenched apart and spun toward the intruders. There were four in all, three I recognized and one stranger. The speaker was Principal Hendershaw, a short, plump woman with Coke-bottle glasses and a prickly temperament. Next to her stood frail, bony Lady Elaine, chief advisor to the Magi Senate. Dwarfing them both was Sheriff Brackenberry, who barked a laugh at our discomfort.

  “What are you doing here?” Eli said with a surprising amount of hostility in his voice considering we’d been caught making out in his dorm room. After hours. By the principal. Not to mention the head of the local magickind police force.

  “We are here for the same reason anyone would call upon dream-seers,” said the fourth member of the party. The stranger stepped forward, bringing his face into full view. He was a tall, thin man of indeterminate age. Blond hair so pale it looked white hung in untidy waves tucked behind his ears. Or maybe it was white, a true reflection of his actual age, with his smooth-skinned face the deception. He carried a dark green folder tucked beneath his arm, which he now pulled out and flipped open. “For help with averting a crisis.” He dropped the folder on the table next to Eli.

  A tremor went through me. Another crisis? Already? I didn’t want to hear it. All I wanted was for these people to leave so we could get back to the kissing and making up for lost time.

  Eli put his hands on his hips, but the irreverence was absent in his tone. “What crisis and who are you?”

  “This is Detective Valentine,” Sheriff Brackenberry said. “Of the D.I.M.S.: The Department of Intelligence for Magickind Secrecy.”

  An involuntary smile crested my lips. “Dims?” I said. “Like dim-witted? Was that on purpose?” Darn it, Dusty, I inwardly cursed. Open mouth, insert foot.

 
But to my surprise, Detective Valentine acknowledged the remark with a wry smile. “You’re not the first to make that connection, I’m afraid.” His gaze shifted from me to Eli. “Are we free to speak privately? Where is your roommate?”

  “In there.” Eli motioned toward the doorway into the bedroom section of the suite. “He should have his headphones on with the music turned up loud.”

  This news made my skin warm. Eli had been looking forward to our reunion enough to make sure Lance gave us some privacy. Ugh, these people. Go away already.

  “Would you mind taking care of the roommate, Sheriff?” Valentine said.

  “Now wait a second—” Eli began.

  Valentine cut him off with a raised hand. “He’ll be fine. Just a sleeping spell. Everything we say from this moment forward is classified. Is that understood?”

  I gulped, sensing the man’s seriousness. The D.I.M.S. might be a dumb acronym, but that didn’t mean their duty wasn’t important. The agency’s title made it sound like a combination of the FBI and the CIA.

  Eli and I both nodded, not that Valentine had been waiting for our consent. He’d already pulled out two pieces of thick paper from the folder and set them side-by-side on the table. Words in shiny black ink filled it from margin to margin.

  Looking up, Valentine said, “Thank you for escorting us, Dr. Hendershaw, but if you wouldn’t mind stepping out…”

  Looking like she’d just swallowed something large and sour, Hendershaw harrumphed. “Very well. I’ll wait in the hall.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” said Lady Elaine. “I will discuss the new situation with Eli and Dusty when we’re finished.”

  New situation? Dread began to do a slow march inside my head.

  Hendershaw made as if to argue, but then she flashed a quick, acidic smile my way and disappeared through the door.

  “What new situation?” I said.

  “Lady Elaine, if you could please seal the room,” said Valentine.

  Lady Elaine locked the door. Then she held out her hand, the arm attached to it a thin spindly thing like the leg of a fawn. She began to mutter an incantation, and a tingle of magic filled the air. I didn’t know the name of the spell, but I’d seen it used once before. It would soundproof the room, preventing anyone outside from listening in.

  “Now, Dusty, Eli,” said Valentine. “You two will please sign one of these nondisclosure agreements.”

  He said it like we had an option of declining, but I knew better. I ran my tongue over my teeth while warning bells sounded inside my head. If he were an ordinary government official, of the human variety, I would’ve considered a nondisclosure agreement something normal, albeit serious. But this was the magickind government and that meant the potential for weird and inexplicable.

  “What exactly are we signing?” I paused, eyeing the paper. “And how?” I wasn’t about to offer up any blood.

  “You’ll sign with this.” Detective Valentine held out his hand and a sleek gold pen with a razor sharp tip appeared across his palm.

  I accepted the pen, but only reluctantly. “What will happen when we sign?”

  “Nothing too serious,” Valentine said, his expression innocuous. “Your signature will activate a binding spell, which will prevent you from discussing the matter at hand with anyone who has not also signed the nondisclosure.”

  “What if we try anyway?”

  “Your tongue will seal itself to the roof of your mouth until you change your mind.”

  Beside me, Eli made a sarcastic sound that could’ve been mistaken for a laugh. “That sounds like fun.” He stepped closer to me, his arm pressing against mine. Heat radiated between our bodies.

  “Go on and sign it, Destiny,” Lady Elaine said, and I winced at the use of my real name. Nope, there wasn’t any getting out of this. Real first name meant business. I might not believe in the dream-seer curse, but I definitely believed in the we-are-now-pawns-of-the-government aspect of the job.

  Sighing, I set the tip of the pen to the paper and scribbled my name on the line at the bottom of the page: Destiny Everhart. The letters glowed ruby red for a second, and the prickle of magic spread down my fingertips, over my hand, and up my arm. The glow on my name disappeared a moment later, leaving nothing behind but black ink.

  Eli did the same with his piece of paper and handed the pen back to Valentine. It dematerialized as quickly and soundlessly as it had appeared. I stared at the man, wondering what kind of magickind he was. I didn’t see a wand or other magical instrument, and there were no telltale points on his ears to indicate fairykind or some other naturekind. Not that the lack was proof one way or another. All the kinds sometimes used glamour to hide their true appearances.

  “I apologize for the late hour and all the protocol,” Valentine said, shifting his gaze between Eli and me. “But the situation couldn’t wait any longer and the veil of secrecy is absolutely necessary.” He exhaled, and I couldn’t tell if the gesture was genuine or theatrical. Like his age, everything about him seemed mutable. “We need your help in recovering a lost artifact.”

  “Lost, as in stolen?” Eli said.

  “I’m afraid so,” replied Valentine. “This is not the kind of object capable of vanishing on its own, although that would’ve been a preferable scenario by far.”

  “Um, does that happen often?” I said.

  “More than you would guess.” Valentine pointed at Eli and then me. “I need you two to focus your dream-seer skills on finding both the object and who took it.”

  “Sounds simple enough.” Eli folded his arms over his chest, muscles flexing in ways that made me want to forget everything else going on. If I wasn’t careful, I would find myself caught up in a random moment of dazedness again, as surely as if Eli were part siren instead of fully human boy. But then my eye caught sight of the leather band on his wrist, and I remembered that wasn’t precisely true, not anymore. Yes, Eli was human but he was still magical. He was a Conductor, able to channel the magic contained in the wand hidden beneath the glamoured bracelet. Not that he was hiding his wand like I hid Bellanax. Most people glamoured their wands. Made for easy carrying and access.

  “I’m afraid it’s anything but simple,” said Lady Elaine. “The object in question is—”

  “Dangerous?” Eli offered, cocking an eyebrow.

  “They wouldn’t need us for mostly harmless,” I muttered.

  “Very dangerous.” Valentine ran his thumb over the top of his lip. “And deadly.” He turned his attention to the folder, pulling out a blank piece of photograph paper this time. At least it looked blank at first, but as he set it on the table, black inky tendrils began to appear, writhing like smoke across the shiny, slick surface. A moment later, the ink resolved into a full color photograph of a table with a single object resting atop it.

  Valentine reached toward the photo and then through it. His hand slipped into the paper, fingers and palm disappearing as if it were actually a bowl. He made a cupping gesture, and a moment later he pulled his hand back, carrying the object with him. As it left the photo the two-dimensional object became three.

  I stared at it, my mouth suddenly dry as if my tongue were made of cotton.

  It was a heart—a real heart, like the kind beating inside my chest. Only instead of red and pink and meaty, this one was charred black and looked as hard as stone.

  “This is the Animus Mortem, the Death’s Heart. Or, as it is sometimes called, the Soul-Stealer.” Valentine held the dead, decaying thing aloft. “What you’re looking at is just a photograph, of course, but the real thing is the most powerful object of black magic ever recorded by magickind.”

  Death’s Heart. Soul-Stealer. I didn’t like the sound of it. Or the look.

  A wary expression colored Eli’s face. “Is it a real heart?”

  “According to legend, yes,” said Valentine. “But no one now alive can say for sure. Here, hold it in your hand, study it so you may recognize its symbolic presence in your dreams.” He held th
e heart out to Eli. Eli hesitated only a second then took it. He turned the thing over, holding it upside down and sideways as he examined every inch.

  Swallowing my dread, I asked, “What does it do?”

  “It makes corporal animation possible.”

  I frowned at Valentine, Eli doing the same beside me. Both of the words registered in my mind; animation was the particular effect of magic and electromagnetic fields on inanimate objects. Given enough exposure, it brought them to life, like Frank and Igor. And I knew corporal meant body or physical. But I wasn’t sure what the two of them together meant.

  Eli held the heart out toward Valentine. “Are you saying this thing raises the dead? Like a zombie-maker?”

  I would’ve laughed at the idea, but Valentine motioned for Eli to hand the heart to me. I took it, biting my tongue in an attempt to still the squeamish sensation wriggling through my stomach. The thing was surprisingly heavy, tugging my hand toward the ground. The hard exterior felt like wet bone, cold and slippery. At once I wanted to let go of it, but I steeled my courage. If Eli was brave enough to hold it, then I needed to be, too.

  “I suppose zombie-maker is an apt name,” Valentine said. “But it’s a little more nefarious than ordinary horror movies would make it seem.”

  I glanced at Valentine, relieved for an excuse not to look at the gruesome thing clutched in my fingers. “Have you seen any of those movies lately?”

  “I enjoy them immensely.” Valentine reached for the Death’s Heart, and I handed it over, grateful to be rid of it. “But they still do not reflect the evil of this object. It’s known as the Soul-Stealer because that is precisely what it does. In order to return the dead to life—a semblance of life, that is—it drains the soul, the anima of someone still living.”