I focused on changing the dream, trying to imagine the glass box my mother had used on Bethany, but I was too panicked to concentrate.
Something blocked out the moonlight above me, and I covered my head with my arms. Air swept across my body, followed by a hot sear of pain as the phoenix’s talons sliced my right arm from shoulder to wrist.
I screamed. The pain was so real. It was impossible. This couldn’t be a dream. Not with pain like that. Blood soaked my hair. What would happen if I died in here?
“Dusty!” Eli shouted, drawing nearer. “Grab my hand!”
I pushed myself up and dashed toward him. We collided like opponents in a football game. The dream world exploded around me in a shower of light and pain, but I welcomed it as my consciousness rejoined my body where it belonged.
I leaped backward off Eli, landing on my feet, ready to keep running if the phoenix had managed to follow us out somehow. I looked around at the dorm room, convinced it was here. But we were alone, and I breathed a sigh of relief.
Eli’s eyes flicked open, and he looked at me with a stunned expression. “Well,” he said in a dry, sarcastic voice. “That was fun.”
I couldn’t help it; I started laughing. The reaction was involuntary and borderline hysterical. “We should try it again sometime,” I said between guffaws.
Eli’s expression hardened. “I don’t think so, Dusty.”
I wiped away a stray tear, finally getting control of myself. “Why not?”
He stood and came over, taking hold of my wrist with one hand. “Look at your arm.”
I glanced down. The sleeve on my right arm was torn. The skin beneath glowed red from three long wicked scratches.
They were the exact width of a bird’s talons.
19
Exchange
I woke late the next day and contemplated blowing off classes. My head ached, and my arm was throbbing, despite the makeshift bandage Eli had made for me. Worst of all, I felt like I hadn’t slept a wink. When I left Eli’s last night even my bones were tired. I barely made it back to my dorm room and had passed out without entering a dream journal.
Crap.
I sat up, moaned once, then did a double take when I saw the time.
Crap, crap, crap.
I jumped out of bed and raced into the living quarters.
“Where’s the fire?” said Selene. She was already dressed and ready, looking perfectly refreshed.
I scowled. “I didn’t do my dream journal. And why didn’t you wake me up?”
“I did, but you must’ve gone back to sleep. We had a conversation and everything. Mostly surly grunts on your part. Don’t you remember?”
No, I didn’t remember, but that wasn’t surprising—Selene had told me on more than one occasion that I talked in my sleep. I switched on the eTab, opened a dream journal, and started typing. Two words into it, I decided to do some serious editing. For one thing, I didn’t have time to put in all the details. For another, there was no telling how Lady Elaine would react if she knew I’d been physically hurt in a dream. She might not insist I stop dream-walking with Eli, but I wasn’t willing to take that chance. After seeing what happened to Rosemary, I wanted to find her killer now more than ever.
Two killers, I thought, remembering the shadow men. So Eli had been right in his hunch. And they were both men. Maybe my mother wasn’t involved after all.
You can’t be sure, a dark, cynical voice said in my head. The first was likely male, but you didn’t see either of them. Not even their voices were distinctly male.
That was true, but I chose to ignore it. The impression had been male.
Ten minutes later, I followed Selene down to the cafeteria. Silence descended when I walked in, as everyone turned to look at me. It was the first time they’d seen me since I attacked Coach Fritz. The silence was even worse than my first day here. Then the stares had been mostly curious. Today it was open animosity.
“Come on,” Selene said over her shoulder. “Ignore them.”
I trudged after her, doing my best to keep my head up. I glanced at Eli’s table. To my surprise, he smiled at me. It seemed our newfound friendship held even in a public arena. I smiled back, grateful for the support, although I couldn’t help but notice how tired and pale he looked this morning, as if he hadn’t slept in weeks. I’d noticed him looking drained after one of our dream-sessions before, but never this bad. Beside Eli, Katarina glowered at me, but she was easy to ignore.
The day went from bad to worse. Everywhere I turned, people were whispering about me in voices loud enough to overhear. I caught snippets like “She tried to kill Coach Fritz.…” and “I heard she found Mr. Ankil. Maybe his death wasn’t an accident.…” and “You can’t trust a Nightmare.…”
Selene regularly defended me, of course, and I’d even caught Eli telling off a senior boy for saying stuff about me. The guy stood nearly a foot shorter than Eli and looked terrified. I appreciated their help, but it failed to keep those words from doing damage. Barely an hour into the day, I felt as if my spirit had been flayed alive.
I did my best to ignore the comments, and focused on figuring out the clues in last night’s dream. I’d learned some important things. The sword was somewhere on campus. Assuming, of course, that the conversation between Rosemary and the shadow man had been literal and not symbolic—as I suspected it was. Actually, I’d begun to think the entire dream had been literal. There was no denying the welts on my arm were real. Maybe that meant the black phoenix was real, too, a shape-changer or something.