“Yep.”
Selene shuddered. “That’s horrible. Who knows what we might be forced to do.”
Silence descended around us as we considered the frightening prospect.
Selene exhaled loudly. “Well, at least we know there’s still one person holding the Keeper spell together.”
I frowned. “How do you figure?”
“The senate always does things by threes at a minimum. And since Rosemary was naturekind and Ankil witchkind—”
“—the third must be darkkind,” I said, making the connection.
“Right.”
“But why?” said Eli.
“Because that’s the way it’s done,” Selene answered. “The senate is divided into three parties, one for each kind. There’s a lot of distrust between the kinds, enough that it’s a sure bet if a fairy and a psychic were a part of the spell, a darkkind was, too. They would insist on keeping things equal.”
“Makes sense,” said Eli. “But can we be sure there are only three?”
“We can’t. There could be more, but there are at least three,” said Selene.
Eli looked at her, his expression hard. “Then someone else is going to die, too.” He turned that gaze on me. “Unless we stop it.”
Nobody spoke. I kept picturing Mr. Ankil with his big, flamboyant personality. The way he always acted like one of the students. He was so cool and so young.
And now he was gone.
Selene broke the silence first. “You’re right. We’ve got to do something.”
I shook my head, images of Mr. Ankil’s death in my mind and that terrible smell thick in my nose.
“Come on, Dusty,” said Eli. “You and I can do this. We’ve got the dreams to help, and I know loads about detective stuff. We’ve got to try.”
I thought about my mother’s insistence that I stay out of it, but I hadn’t actually promised her. Still, we were just a couple of kids up against something huge and terrible, a person clever enough to lure Mr. Ankil down into the tunnels right beneath the senate’s nose.
But Eli was right. If I didn’t try, the guilt would be unbearable. I had to. We had to. Together. With my friends.
It was the best thought I’d had in days.
16
Task Force
We met in one of the computer rooms in the basement of the library later that night. Room 013. Pretty much everybody avoided the place—it was rumored to be haunted. But ghosts weren’t the problem so much as a really rampant case of animation. The entire room seemed affected by it, even the furniture. The computers had particularly vile personalities, the kind that would wait until you’d gotten halfway through writing that essay without saving it before deciding to shut off.
Only the most desperate sought refuge here, but Eli insisted we needed a base of operations where we could work without interruption. The dorm Selene and I shared would’ve been ideal, but no boys were allowed. So room 013 it was.
Eli was in full take-charge mode by the time Selene and I arrived. He was sitting at the teacher’s station in front of the computer that was linked into the overhead projection screen he’d switched on. The screen depicted one of his suspect graphs. I pulled out the one I’d started from my backpack and handed it to him.
“Okay,” he said, examining it. “Fill us in on how you got this far.” His focus on this whole investigation thing was a bit scary, but also encouraging in the way it built my confidence about our chances of success. Eli was like a professional.
I launched into a summary about everything that had happened since Melanie gave me Rosemary’s diary. Well, almost everything. The stuff about Nightmares, and what we were capable of, I kept to myself.
“So where do we go from here?” said Selene, sitting down on top of one of the desks. The chair beside the desk squeaked its wheels in protest and then rammed into her dangling legs. “Ouch.” She yanked her knees up before it hit her again.
“Think you might want to sit on the chair instead,” I said, trying not to laugh.
Selene scowled at me and stood. The chair, which had been rolling back and forth like a bull getting ready to charge, stopped and swung its seat toward her, inviting her to sit. She did so, looking doubtful.
“Right,” said Eli. “From here we identify all the possible suspects, then try to eliminate them one by one.”
He indicated the suspect graph where he’d added my entries of F and Culpepper. Frank Rizzo was already on his graph along with a few others, but Eli had put lines through most of them and the word alibi in the Opportunity column.
“Dusty,” he said, “you say you were following someone in one of those long-beaked masks. Let’s start there. The person might’ve been involved or witnessed something.”
“If they saw something, wouldn’t they have told the cops already?” said Selene.
Eli shook his head. “Not if they’re afraid. Lots of witnesses don’t come forward if they think it’s dangerous.”
“Oh, that makes sense.” Selene sounded impressed by Eli’s knowledge.
He went on. “Who do we know was wearing one of those?”
“Culpepper was,” said Selene, “but he’s already on the list.”
Eli nodded and typed a note next to the line with Culpepper’s name. “It just means he’s still a likely candidate. I saw Coach Fritz wearing one, too.” He added the coach’s name, although it took him three tries to do it. The computer kept deleting the letters as soon as he entered them. “Okay, who else?”