“Yeah?” Eli swung his chair around to face me.
I nodded, less than enthused by the idea of reliving the scene with Oliver Cork. But it was too late to stop now. I gave Eli the short version, leaving out the aftermath and how I’d gotten hit by the baseball bat inside the Gauntlet. I would go to my grave without telling him about that one. Fortunately, the story stung less than I thought it would, but it still left an unpleasant taste in my mouth.
By the end of it, Eli was scowling. “You’ve got to be kidding? Arkwell really allows that kind of stuff to go on?”
I wrinkled my nose. “Apparently. Selene says stuff like that has been happening for ages.”
Eli grunted and ran a hand through his hair. “No wonder I haven’t gotten a response to my request to join.”
I sat forward on the sofa. “Yeah, I’m sure that’s why I haven’t gotten one either. Talk about adding insult to injury.”
“For real.” Eli turned back to the computer and started clicking the mouse. “And it definitely paints the group in a different light.”
“You mean sinister?” I stood and walked over, coming to a stop behind his chair. He’d navigated to the Terra Tribe’s Spellbook page, but when he clicked on the friends’ list all he got was a message stating membership to the group was private and that his request to join was still pending.
Eli drummed his fingers on the desk. “What we need is someone who belongs to the group who’s willing to talk to us.”
“Yeah, but who?” I bit my lip. “Are you friends with Oliver on here? We might be able to find the members that way.”
Eli shook his head. “Nope. I’m not even friends with Britney. I don’t really friend people unless they ask me to. Too much hassle.”
I made a noncommittal “mmmm,” although the childish, prone-to-be-jealous part of me was secretly glad Britney hadn’t friended him.
“Actually, I think the only naturekind I’m friends with is Irene Stark,” Eli said, his fingers striking the keys as he entered a search.
I rolled my eyes at the back of his head. Britney would’ve been far preferable to Irene.
In seconds, Eli had pulled up Irene’s wall. He clicked on her info, and we both saw the Terra Tribe listed as one of her groups.
“Bingo,” Eli said.
I caught myself grinding my teeth and stopped. “What makes you think she’ll talk to you about it?”
“I don’t know if she will or not, but I’m going to give it a go.”
Perfect.
“Are Oliver’s friends hidden or can you see them?” I asked, bending toward the desk.
“No idea.” Eli searched for Oliver and clicked on the link.
We could see the list all right. And it was long. Half of the people I didn’t recognize, many of them adults. I suspected quite a few might be Arkwell graduates. There were a number of photos of people wearing jerseys from the various international magickind universities.
Eli scrolled slowly through the first hundred or so then started moving through the rest more quickly. I recognized a couple of people but none that I knew well enough to try and get them to spill the beans on the Terra Tribe’s inner secrets.
That was until a familiar face caught my eye.
“Wait a minute.” I touched Eli’s shoulder, hyperaware of how warm he was and how close. “Go back up.”
Eli did as I asked, and he stopped in the right place without any prompting from me. He knew exactly which person I’d recognized. He beamed up at me. “Perfect. You can get her to talk for sure. She owes you big time.”
I nodded. Melanie Remillard did owe me, a little anyway. She had asked me to discover her best friend’s murderer, a task that eventually led to the showdown with Marrow. Still, I wasn’t wild about the idea of asking her about the Terra Tribe. She seemed nice enough, but after the way Oliver had behaved, I wasn’t sure I could count on her to help. Nevertheless I said, “I’ll ask her about it as soon I can. I’ll get Selene to come with me. She knows Melanie better.”
“Sounds like a plan.” Eli tapped his wand ring against the desk. “She might not be willing to tell us much about the group, but she should at least be able to shed some light on Britney’s activities that night. And it’s not like we have any reason to believe there’s a connection between the Terra Tribe and what happened to her.”
“Good point.” I smiled, feeling better about the whole thing.
Eli stood up without warning, going from beneath my eye level to towering over me. I took a step back, my senses on overload. An odd expression crossed his face, and for a second, I allowed myself to believe it was disappointment that I had moved away.
“You ready?” I said.
In answer he turned and lay down on the sofa, his body covering the expanse of it with at least a foot of leg hanging off the end. “I will be soon.”
I leaned against the desk and waited for him to drift off. Then I climbed on top of him and into his dreams like I’d done so many times before.
But unlike all those dreams before, the world I emerged into was blurred and foggy like a picture out of focus. The ground beneath me seemed to be nothing but smoke and mist, and I experienced a moment of vertigo, feeling like I would fall right through it.
“Whoa,” I heard Eli say from somewhere to my left. “What’s going on?”
I turned my head, wishing there was something I could hold on to, to steady myself. A second later a tall-backed chair appeared in front of me. I reached for it, and the vertigo stopped.