Mindee Arnett - The Nightmare Dilemma

Yeah, there was a negative two percent chance that I would volunteer for such a thing. Still, I was looking forward to going as a regular spectator. I’d never been to Lyonshold. Since it was hidden on a magical island somewhere in the middle of Lake Erie, students only visited during holidays and celebrations. Or capital trials, I supposed, thinking about Paul.

Next Dr. Hendershaw went into a detailed, and wholly unnecessary, introduction of the Will Guard. Then she delivered even more bad news when she informed us that not only was the Guard authorized to use magic on us, they could also hand out detentions.

Awesome.

Afterward, Eli and I headed to first period.

“So I wonder who attacked Britney,” Eli said as we walked along.

“No idea.”

Eli glanced down at me. He was so tall my head barely reached his shoulder. “You know that the Dream Team is going to have to investigate this, right?”

I scrunched up my nose, a little embarrassed by the current name of our amateur detective agency. But Eli had picked it and that made me love it a little bit, too. “Aren’t we supposed to wait until we get hired before investigating?”

He snorted. “Eventually. But until we get established, we’re mainly pro bono.”

“Hey,” I said, my brain making a sudden and completely unrelated connection. “Why wasn’t Lance at breakfast?”

Eli looked puzzled but said, “I think he’s sick. I had to turn off his alarm because he slept through it. When I woke him up he was really out of it so I just let him go back to sleep.”

“Huh.” I chewed on my bottom lip, thinking it over. “You don’t think he was out after curfew, do you?”

Eli shrugged. “Probably. I didn’t see him at all last night. I had dinner with my dad off campus and didn’t get back to the dorm until late. He wasn’t there.”

We arrived at the classroom and took our usual seats toward the back. “Didn’t that seem a little weird to you?”

Eli set his bag on the floor, chuckling. “This is Lance we’re talking about. He sneaks out all the time to set up his pranks.”

“Oh, right.” I scowled at the memory of one of Lance’s pranks that had been directed at me. A few hours before my restroom-cleaning detention with Ms. Hardwick last semester, Lance had stopped up every toilet and sink in the first-floor bathroom of the administration building. I still needed to pay him back for that.

“Why are you so concerned about Lance this morning?” Eli paused, frowning. Then he rolled his eyes. “Please don’t tell me you think he attacked Britney, because that’s absurd.”

I scoffed. “Shouldn’t we consider everyone a suspect until proven innocent?”

In truth, I hadn’t been thinking about Britney at all, but Selene. The idea that the two of them were out together might be far-fetched, but it wasn’t outside the realm of possibilities. Selene and Lance had dated for a while freshman year, and over the past few months they’d been developing a strange love-hate relationship, not exactly friends but not quite enemies either. Lance had been pretty upset about Selene getting hurt during our fight with Marrow, although he never admitted it outright. I only knew from Eli. Selene refused to believe it entirely. But there was no denying that every time the two of them were together the air seemed to crackle. Maybe they’d finally given in.

That would explain Selene’s reluctance to tell me. I’d be ashamed of a midnight rendezvous with Lance Rathbone, too. Sure, he was good-looking, but he was also a bona fide jackass with a capital J .

“Yeah, well,” Eli began, but he broke off as a girl with long brown hair entered the room. His ex, Katarina Marcel.

Actually everybody in the classroom went silent at Katarina’s arrival. She was a siren, same as Selene; only she didn’t go around trying to downplay her beauty. Just the opposite. Today she wore a tight, sage green top that laced up the front and a pair of skinny jeans. She looked like she’d just stepped off the runway at a fashion show. Her beauty was so mesmerizing, even I had a hard time not staring at her.

It helped when she leveled a nasty, hate-filled look at me. The look lasted only a second before she turned her gaze on Eli, a stunning smile rising to her lips.

I heard Eli’s quick indrawn breath, and jealousy stung my insides. Ever since Eli had broken it off with Katarina, she’d been doing her best to get him back. Well, the best she could without truly invoking her siren magic. That was half the reason he’d broken up with her in the first place—he couldn’t be sure his attraction to her was genuine.

I sort of hoped the other half was his attraction to me, but so far he hadn’t given me any proof beyond that one kiss, which he’d never once mentioned.

Katarina strolled past our line of desks and sat down a few feet away. The smell of her perfume as she went by made me feel faint, in a dreamy, buzzed kind of way. Stupid sirens .

“All right, class,” our teacher Miss Norton said from the front of the room. “Let’s begin. Please open your books to page eighty-four.”

I pulled out my well-worn copy of The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus . The best thing I could say about the book was that it was light and easy to carry around.

“Now.” Miss Norton motioned to the dry-erase board where two lines from the play were written in her neat handwriting. “This quote is from act five, scene one, which all of you should’ve read overnight.” She began to recite, gesticulating wildly. “‘Her lips suck forth my soul: see, where it flies! Come, Helen, come give me my soul again.’”

Norton ceased her dramatic performance, pushed her wire-rim glasses back up her nose, and then surveyed the room. “Who would like to guess what magickind inspired Christopher Marlowe to describe Helen thusly?”

Silence met her question. A dozen possible answers occurred to me, but I wasn’t about to voice any of them to this group. The various kinds had been getting more and more sensitive to any comments about their nature that could be considered derisive.

Just last Thursday, passive, quiet Britney had dumped a beaker full of bloom-and-grow potion over Lance’s head after he referred to all naturekinds as tree-huggers during our alchemy class. Lucky for Lance, the potion wasn’t toxic, but it did make his face break out in tiny, green leaves, which soon covered his whole head until he resembled a walking, talking Chia Pet. Pretty funny, really, although a little overreactive on Britney’s part. Lance had said hundreds of worse things before.

Apparently, I wasn’t the only one aware of the dangers of voicing such opinions, as the silence stretched onward, nobody willing to raise a hand.

Miss Norton ran her gaze over the group again. I sank down lower in my chair, hoping her attention wouldn’t land on me. She appeared exceptionally bright-eyed and awake this morning. Her alleged Coke addiction (the drink, not the drug) seemed to be under control lately. As a fairy, Miss Norton was prone to the intoxicating effects of sugar.

“Anybody?” Norton said into our continued silence. She sighed and then opened the top drawer of her desk and pulled out her infamous talking stick. It looked like an exceptionally crooked wand, although I didn’t think it was. As a naturekind, Miss Norton had no need of a wand or any other magical instrument to wield her magic.

“All right. This is your last chance.” Norton made a sweeping gesture with the stick toward the room at large. “If I don’t get a volunteer, I’m going to have to choose someone.”

Come on, somebody speak up . I glanced expectantly at Katarina. She hardly ever let a chance of being the center of attention go by. But no such luck. Katarina had her eyes carefully focused on her book, although I caught her taking a quick peek at Eli.