Yeah, this was a waste of time. Nothing looked out of place. How could it? Aside from the water in the pool and the thin layer of slime on the floor, there was nothing here.
I stepped out of the alcove and walked to the place where Eli had stood in the dream. Here, her attacker had stood here. Most likely, anyway. I cast a fire spell and knelt down to examine the ground. The flames perched in the palm of my hand danced about, the shifting light more of a hindrance than a help. I focused on the spell, willing the fire brighter and steadier.
It didn’t make a difference. Once again, there wasn’t anything to see. The ground here was covered in the same, thin layer of slime and that was all. It wasn’t even dense enough to leave footprints. Sighing, I stood up and took a couple of steps farther into the tunnel itself, guessing that the attacker had come this way.
Then I saw it, a little piece of … something … lying very close to the wall. Trash, most likely. It was so small, at first I couldn’t believe I’d seen it at all. I stooped down and picked it up, praying I wouldn’t regret touching it. It looked like paper, but you never could tell with magickind. It could easily have been a piece of manticore eggshell, which wasn’t as poisonous as the creatures housed inside them, but which could still make you sick if you held it too long.
But it wasn’t trash or anything magical at all. I picked it up, pinching it between my fingers. It was a thin piece of plastic-covered cardboard. A pattern of red and white swirls marked one side of it, and on the other was a black letter J.
J
As in Joker.
It seemed Lance Rathbone had been down here after all.
13
The Guilty
“I swear I don’t remember anything,” Lance said as he paced the length of Room 013. It was the unofficial headquarters of the Dream Team, in the basement of the library. “I’ve tried, but I just can’t remember.”
“It’s okay, man. We believe you,” said Eli.
I glanced sideways at him, eyebrows raised. Fortunately, most of the swelling from my run-in with the baseball bat had gone down overnight, and the gesture didn’t hurt overly much. I didn’t believe Lance. Not yet anyway. The fact that I was even willing to believe him had mostly to do with Selene.
After I found the joker card, I still managed to track down Culpepper who gladly gave me a full box of Milky Way Midnight bars, as well as his cell number in case I ever needed it. Then I came back to the dorm and immediately showed the card to Selene. I was all prepared to e-mail Lady Elaine with the info, when Selene asked me to wait and hear Lance out first. Of all the times for the love part of their love/hate thing to kick in. But I’d agreed and spent a long, frustrating day in classes fretting about it. That was, when I wasn’t fretting about Paul. I’d only seen him from a distance once or twice, and I still had no idea how to go about getting close to him.
“I wouldn’t speak for all of us,” Selene said, distracting me from my musings about Paul.
“Yeah, same here,” I said.
Selene smiled at me, but it vanished a second later as the chair she was sitting on gave a little buck beneath her. “Cut it out, Buster,” she said, kicking the chair with one boot heel.
I stifled a grin. For some reason, the animation phenomenon was ten times stronger in Room 013 than anywhere else on campus. Enough so that one of the chairs had taken an unnatural liking to Selene. She’d fought off its attentions at first, but now she seemed to regard it as more of an unruly pet. She’d even given it a name.
Lance stopped his pacing and glared at me, ignoring Selene completely. “Why the hell would I attack Britney?”
“That’s easy. Because she dumped that bloom-and-grow potion on your head.”
Lance rolled his eyes. “Give me a break. My version of retaliation is a little more eye for an eye, as you should know firsthand.”
I grimaced, realizing he had a point. I had several unpleasant memories from our feud last semester. Thank goodness we’d called an unspoken truce after the stuff with Marrow.
“Besides,” Lance continued, “I already evened the score on that one. Put a little pennyroyal in her tea.”
I gaped at him. “Pennyroyal is poisonous.”
“Not to mermaids it’s not.” Lance bared his teeth in a huge grin. “Just makes ’em sweat. A lot.”
I grimaced, remembering clearly the day Britney had been sweating so much in our alchemy class that the air around us felt as humid as a tropical rain forest.
“Typical,” Selene said, folding her arms.
Lance pointed at her. “And you said I’d been cursed, so whoever attacked Britney must’ve attacked me, too.”
“Maybe,” said Selene. “But why were you down there in the first place?”
“The note, obviously,” said Eli, not looking up. He was standing over a table with his wand pointed at the joker card and its remnant, their torn edges aligned. “Diorthon,” he said, and a wisp of yellowish light puffed out from the tip of his wand.
I jumped up from my seat. “What are you doing? Don’t mend it. That’s our only proof he’s guilty.”
“Excuse me?” Lance said.
“Doesn’t matter anyway,” Eli said through gritted teeth. “It’s not working.” He gave the wand a flick, engaging the glamour. The piece of wood vanished and a thick gold ring appeared on his palm. He slipped it onto his index finger then faced me, his expression hard. “And he isn’t guilty of anything other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”