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.