When my alarm went off again, I gave up and got out of bed. Typically, Selene was still asleep. As a siren, she didn’t need to spend as much time getting ready in the morning. Her alarm would go off in twenty minutes, and she would roll out of bed with her dark hair looking perfect and shiny and her skin aglow. She had to bathe as regularly as anybody, of course, but she didn’t have to worry about hair dryers and flatirons, and she hadn’t worn makeup regularly since her turn toward tomboy-hood. She didn’t even wear it to hide the long thin scar running down the side of her face from where she’d been attacked by Marrow’s familiar, the black phoenix. Not that she needed to. If anything, the scar gave her a wild, fierce look that only enhanced her beauty.
I gathered my things as quietly as I could then headed for the shower. But when I returned a half hour later, Selene was still in bed. I poked my head through the door. “You getting up?”
Selene rolled over, turning toward the wall. “Sleeping in,” she mumbled. She sounded as exhausted as I felt. I supposed it made sense, considering she’d been out half the night. I considered confronting her about it right then, but I already had one tough discussion to accomplish today. Just how I was going to broach the subject with Eli, I didn’t know.
I headed down to the cafeteria still trying to figure it out. I approached the table I usually sat at with Selene and Eli, but he wasn’t there. I scanned the room for him, but the chaos of people and activity made it difficult to see much.
Mealtimes at Arkwell had become even more interesting since The Will broke. Paper airplanes flew complicated loop-de-loops in between the tables, obeying the magical commands of their makers as they delivered notes or dive-bombed unsuspecting victims. A girl across the way was manipulating the water in her goblet to make it flow upward in an inverted waterfall. The boy sitting behind her juggled a half-dozen glowing magical orbs that changed color every time he touched them.
Two tables over, a crystal goblet half full of some white liquid drew my attention as it hovered above the heads of several unsuspecting students. I watched it tip sideways right over Nick Jacobi. Milk—at least I hoped it was milk and not some dangerous potion—splashed downward. Nick raised his hand a split second before the liquid hit him, freezing it with a spell. Everyone at the table applauded his quick thinking. Nick started laughing at the boy across from him who had been controlling the goblet.
No sooner had Nick vanished the milk with a second spell than a saltshaker appeared above him and dumped its contents into his hair. This time several other people laughed as Nick leaped to his feet and tossed his head, flinging salt.
Stifling a smile, I glanced at the next table over, fully expecting to see Lance Rathbone behind the saltshaker. Lance was a wizard and Arkwell’s resident trickster. Only he wasn’t at his usual table either. What, is this Sophomore Skip Day and nobody told me? The real culprit, I saw, was a dryad by the name of Oliver Cork.
I glanced past Oliver, continuing my search for Eli. No luck.
He couldn’t have done it without magic, I reminded myself.
I went through the breakfast line and sat down at our table alone. Still no Eli. Where was he?
As if the thought had been an incantation, I spotted Eli coming through the massive wooden double doors of the cafeteria. He looked the same as any other day in his faded jeans and a dark, long-sleeved tee with a band logo on the front. But going by the huge yawn he tried to hide behind a raised fist, I guessed he hadn’t slept well. All my speculation ceased as Eli’s eyes alighted on me and a wide, cocksure grin slid across his handsome face. My stomach did a little flip at the sight of it, and a funny, achy feeling went through my knees. Good thing I was sitting down. If any ordinary had a diluted strain of siren blood, it had to be Eli Booker. Forget Bob Dylan.
As he walked toward me, I tried to recall all the openings I’d considered for asking him what he’d been doing last night around 11:45. But I abandoned the endeavor by the time he reached me. The whole thing was absurd. Even if Eli could do magic, he wouldn’t hurt Britney. That sort of thing just wasn’t in his nature. He would more likely beat the crap out of whoever had attacked her.
“Hey,” Eli said, sliding into the bench opposite me.
“Hey.”
He reached across the table and snagged a piece of bacon off my plate and popped it into his mouth. “Where’s Selene?” he asked a couple of chews later.
“She’s … sleeping in.”
A single dark eyebrow rose on Eli’s face. “Yeah? That doesn’t sound like her.”
I dropped my gaze from his face. “She, um, didn’t sleep well, I don’t think.”
“That makes two of us.” Eli yawned again.
It was the perfect opening, so I started to ask him why, when a loud bang stopped me. I jumped, my heart rate going from resting to overdrive in a split second. My eyes searched for the source of the noise.
Nick Jacobi had knocked over the bench he’d been sitting on. He and Oliver Cook stood across from each other, both shouting and with hands raised in a defensive position. Magic hummed in the air between them like a live wire. The two looked fit to kill. It seemed their little magical roughhousing had gotten out of hand. Neither was playing games now.
Nick’s glamour had slid off him, revealing his true form beneath—black, scaly skin, a single stubby horn on his forehead, and eyes that glowed red. He was an Ira demon, a rage demon, the kind that fed off the anger of others. Consequently, Iras had hot, dangerous tempers themselves.