Afterward, Deverell and I did not discuss what we’d seen. I started to tell him about Corvus, but he raised a hand, silencing me.
“Lady Elaine has made it clear that the Magi Senate does not want you to discuss anything connected to the sword with anyone,” he said.
I frowned as I absentmindedly reapplied the glamour to Bellanax and slid the silver band onto my wrist. “Why not? You already know everything. Or almost everything.”
“I was given the impression it was for my own safety.” He offered me an apologetic smile.
“Yeah, I guess that’s for the best,” I said, although it was halfhearted. With so much going on, it would’ve been nice to have an adult to talk to about all of this—one who wasn’t threatening me with visions of the future. Then again, it wasn’t as if I could tell him my suspicions about Corvus. I didn’t think he would freak out—he’d always been the poster boy of cool, like when he caught me sneaking into the boy’s locker room last year—but he would have to wonder how I knew about Corvus’s scar in the first place. And short of a potentially disturbing lie about witnessing teacher nakedness, I doubted I could tell him without implicating Paul.
Paul. I needed to talk to him right now. We needed to figure out when it would be safe to go to Corvus’s house. I said good-bye to Deverell; then, stepping through the door, I pulled out my cell phone.
“Dusty.”
The voice made me jump, and I turned to see Eli leaning against one of the lockers. He wore his gym clothes, his hair dark with sweat and his face flushed. Despite his casual stance, I figured he must have raced here from gladiator practice, his breathing still labored.
“Hey,” I said, shouldering my bag. I braced, waiting for him to make the next move.
His hesitation was obvious, even if it lasted only a second before he came forward and crushed me against him. The feelings and images of Lady Elaine’s vision reared inside my head, and along with them an urge to push him away. I sucked in a breath, my body shaking. But then I buried the panic deep down inside me. I clung to the realness of him, the feel of his arms around my body, even the smell of his sweat.
Sinking into him, I felt the dizziness retreat.
“How’d it go with Deverell?” Eli pulled back from the hug, but he kept his hands on my waist, as if afraid to break direct physical contact.
“Good. Better than good.” I paused, catching sight of a Will Guard who had just stepped into the hallway.
Eli glanced behind him then turned back to me. “Come on. Let’s talk in here.” He led me to the nearest door and into an empty classroom. He left the door open, but paused long enough to peer out into the hallway. I imagined he was giving the Will Guard a look that stated—leave us alone. I could only hope the man would listen.
A moment later, Eli was next to me again. “Spill.”
I plunged into the story, telling him everything Bellanax had shown me. “They had the Borromean brand, Eli,” I said, coming to the end. “Just like Corvus, and now I’ve got to find a way to get to his house. At first I thought we might just be looking for the knife, but now…” I stared at Eli, my eyes wide. “What if … what if that’s where he’s keeping them? Like in the basement or something.”
Eli ran his tongue over his bottom lip. “I guess it’s possible. But either way we need to check it out. We’ve got to find a time for you to go when we know he won’t be home.”
“Easy, I’ll ditch tomorrow. We know he’s in class all day.”
“No good.” Eli’s expression turned stern. “The moment anybody notices that you’re missing from class there will be wide-scale panic.”
“Crap. This is so impossible.” I smacked my fist against my palm.
Eli put his hands on my shoulders, rubbing my arms. “It’ll be okay. We’ll figure something out.”
Peering up at him, I said, “How?”
He thought about it for a couple of seconds. “I’ll con him into revealing his schedule. Shouldn’t be too hard. I can use the ouroboros and the Iwatoke as a lead in. He is a history teacher. Who knows, maybe I’ll even learn something helpful on the way.”
This would’ve sounded like a thin plan from anyone else besides Eli. I had full faith in his ability. He knew how to steer a conversation and he practically oozed charm. “Okay. Can we do it tomorrow?”
“Yes, but I’ll do it by myself. It’s easier to work a conversation one on one,” Eli said. “And I’ve got the better time for it. Corvus has a free period right after my class. I’ll hang back.”
I gritted my teeth. I didn’t like not being involved, but then again, I couldn’t be sure that I would be able to keep my cool around Corvus. Not with all my suspicions about him. “All right. I just hope we get lucky and he spills something.”
“If he doesn’t, I’ll find a way to peek at his day planner.” Eli smiled. “One way or another, you’ll be heading to check him out soon. I promise.”
* * *
With all the excitement of the night before and today, I didn’t linger with Eli after dinner, but went straight up to my dorm, planning for an early turn-in. At least, that’s what I told the little voice in my head nagging me about it.
To my surprise, Selene came up with me.
“For the record,” she said as she plopped down on her desk chair, “I hate this nondisclosure thing.”
I crossed my eyes for a second. “Ugh, I hate it, too. It sucks not being able to tell you things.”
Selene huffed, folding her arms over her chest. “No kidding.” She started kicking her leg back and forth. “So, if we can’t talk about your secret mission, why don’t you tell me what’s going on with you and Eli?”
I winced, hating the question, even though her asking it was inevitable. Selene was far too perceptive about people and feelings to have missed the tension between Eli and me tonight. Still, no one could blame me for wanting to avoid the painful subject for as long as possible.
“I’ll tell you about Eli if you tell me what you and Lance were arguing about earlier.” I’d spotted them having a heated discussion in the cafeteria hallway after school, but the moment they saw me coming, they both put on their play-nice faces.
Anger flashed across Selene’s features. “It was about his horrible father, what else.”
I swore on her behalf and then started to pick at the fraying end of my shirtsleeve. “What’d he do this time?”
“Nothing,” Selene said. “Not yet anyway. But he’s threatening to do all sorts of things. Lance wants to just blow him off and keep right on like nothing’s wrong.”
“What do you want to do?” I said, looking up from the thread that had now doubled in length.
Selene glanced away, a faint blush rising to her cheeks. “I want to break up.”
“What?” Shock heightened my voice.
“I mean, I want us to pretend to break up, but keep on seeing each other in secret.”
I stared at her, at a loss for words.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that,” Selene said, finally meeting my gaze. “I know it sounds cowardly, but you’ve no idea how bad it was last time. Lance started off just ignoring it, but his dad wore him down in the end.”
“No, I get it. I really do.” I offered her a commiserating smile. “But … um … don’t you think you ought to have a little faith in him?”
Selene shot me a look like I’d said something crazy. “You think I should have faith in Lance?”
I made a face. It did sound crazy, given our history. “I’ve decided he can be an okay guy. Besides, he’s absolutely nuts about you. Anybody can see that.”
She blushed, but waved the comment off. “It’s time for you to tell me about Eli.”
I took a deep breath to steady myself, and then I spilled on everything I’d seen in Lady Elaine’s vision. It was just as awful talking about it as it had been witnessing it—no sense of getting it off my shoulders when I finished.
“That’s horrible,” Selene said. Her eyes were huge with shock.
I bit my lip. “Yeah, but do you think it’s real? Are curses like that real?”
“Some of them,” Selene said, her tone far too diplomatic for my comfort.
Fighting back tears, I dropped my gaze to my frayed shirtsleeve once more. “Do you know of any way to break a curse?” I tried to say it jokingly, but it came out pathetic instead.
Selene sighed. “Short of killing the person who cast it, the only way I’ve heard of is self-sacrifice.”
“You mean like dying in the place of someone else?”
She nodded. “But the only trouble with that solution is you end up dead. Which is no solution at all.”
I didn’t reply, the three visions playing through my mind once again. One of us is going to die either way.
If the curse is true.
* * *
Eli didn’t manage to find out Corvus’s schedule the next day.
“But I will tomorrow,” he reassured me when we met up after practice. “Corvus had somewhere to be and left in a hurry, but not before I got him to agree to meet with me after classes tomorrow.”
“You’re skipping practice?”
“Sure.”
“But aren’t tryouts this Saturday?”
He shrugged. “Missing one won’t make a difference at this point, and it’s a small price to pay if it means saving your mom.”
I kissed him then, but I hated the waiting, hated feeling idle when there was so much on the line.
Not that Eli was the only thing I was waiting on. The last I heard from Paul, he still wasn’t quite done with my ID. I had no idea what was taking so long, but I knew better than to ask. It would involve some technical explanation that would make little sense to my technology-challenged brain.
But at least Eli and I had a dream-session that night. With Bollinger sacked, it seemed Lady Elaine would be taking her place as my dream-session escort.
“Temporarily,” she said when she greeted me at the door. She waved me out into the hallway. “How are things going with Deverell?”
I glanced sideways at her as we walked along, debating what to share. My mom’s warning about not trusting the people around Lady Elaine had come back to me in full force recently. “He didn’t tell you?”
“No. He’s under instructions not to discuss anything with anyone, including me.”
Deciding the risk was worth whatever insight she might be able to share, I said, “We tried psychometry on it yesterday and it worked.”
“That’s good. What did you find out?” She watched me sidelong, her expression anxious.
“Marrow’s worn the same face all his life … er … lives, I mean.”
Lady Elaine pursed her lips. “I can’t say I’m surprised to hear that. It explains why there are no recorded images of him. Even now the few photos we have of him from his time teaching here show only a blurred form where he should be.”
I shuddered, picturing it. It was like some kind of hybrid vampire thing, only with photographs instead of mirrors. Fitting, considering his immortal gig. “And the black phoenix, it wasn’t always black. It was all red and gold in the beginning.”
“Yes, but what about Marrow’s resurrection? How long did it take him to come back? How did he do it?”
By now we’d reached the foyer, and I offered my customary wave at Frank and Igor before answering. “Impossible to tell. The last time took him eleven months, but he had the help of the ‘Great Oak’ whatever that is.”
Lady Elaine came to a full stop and swung to face me. “The Great Oak is like…” She paused and glanced around, checking we were alone. She must’ve decided Frank and Igor didn’t count as she continued, “It’s like the Death’s Heart. It restores life.”
I inhaled, taken aback. The idea of a soul-sucking tree seemed too perverse to be true. I liked trees. They were big and old and alive. They shouldn’t be evil. “Restores life? Does it steal it in the same way?”
Lady Elaine started walking once more. “No. Its power came from within itself. It gave of its own life to restore it in others. And it couldn’t bring back the dead, but it could heal even the most mortal of wounds if the person was brought to it in time.”
“That’s more like it,” I muttered, falling into step beside her.
Lady Elaine nodded, more to herself than me. “If Marrow needed the Great Oak to restore himself to full life back then, maybe he needs the Death’s Heart to do the same now.”
A tremor went through my stomach. “It makes sense. Only I don’t think he needed it. From what I heard, it just helped him recover faster.”
“Or perhaps his regenerative power is weakening. You said it was the last time he went through it, yes?”
“Right…” I trailed off, thinking hard. “But why go to all the trouble using the Death’s Heart? Isn’t the Great Oak still out there? Does it still work?”
Lady Elaine’s nostrils flared. “It was destroyed during the Second World War. Magickind forces working with the Axis powers cut it down and burned it, roots and all.”
I stumbled at this news, shock turning me clumsy. “How … why … why would they do that?”
Lady Elaine’s expression turned grave. “To keep the magickind supporting the Allies from using its power.”
Several swearwords went through my mind. Why did the poor tree have to pay for some stupid war? “I didn’t think magickind took sides in ordinary wars.”
“Magic or ordinary, we’re all people. And people always pick sides,” Lady Elaine said. “We can’t help what’s in our nature.”
We walked along in silence for a couple of minutes, both of us lost in our own thoughts and worries. I kept picturing the Great Oak, sadness squeezing my chest at the knowledge that it had been destroyed. It was such a waste. So wrong. The Great Oak sounded like the opposite of the Death’s Heart—its counterbalancing force. I wondered if another would ever appear. Trees were born, weren’t they? It could happen again.
I turned my head toward Lady Elaine. “Are there other places like the Great Oak still around?”
A cool wind blew across the deserted campus toward us, and Lady Elaine quickened her pace, pulling her coat tighter around her body. “Not many, I’m afraid. Most of them have been lost, destroyed, or have gone dry.”
“Gone dry?” I hugged myself, wishing I’d thought to bring a jacket.
“Yes. Many of those places are like wells. They store magic, but not necessarily forever. Sometimes they break and the magic seeps out. But more often they go dry. They get used up by magickind and become no more than ordinary objects.”
I squeezed my hands into fists, hating the reality of this, even though it was something I saw happening all the time—and not just from magickind. Ordinaries were twice as bad. When I was little there’d been a wood behind my house, but it had been torn down last year to make room for a housing development. They hadn’t been magical trees, but it hardly mattered. Especially considering all the empty houses there were around town. Why build new when the old were still good?
With an effort, I pushed the depressing subject away and refocused. “What where some of the other places?”
“Oh, there were healing springs. Mystical caves.”
Her words struck a chord inside me. “And all of them are about restoring health and life?”
“Yes, more or less.”
My head spun, the memories Bellanax had shared taking on a deeper meeting. So many of the places where Marrow had been resurrected were magical like the Great Oak was magical—restorative, healing places. Holy places, in the most fundamental sense. There was the Temple of Athena, the pyramids. It seemed that Marrow had been using these things to help speed up his resurrection from the beginning. I supposed that confirmed that he was behind the Death’s Heart theft. Or more accurately, someone working for him was behind it, one of his many followers.
It has to be Corvus.… Or at least he was involved somehow—the Borromean brand proved it.
But how to fish for information about him without rousing suspicions? “The last thing the sword showed us,” I said, taking a peek at Lady Elaine to gauge how well she was listening, “was a group of men getting ready to attack Marrow. I’m pretty sure it was right before Nimue locked him in a dream. But what was weird about it was that four of the men were Nightmares.”
I deliberately stopped speaking, hoping she would offer some insight, but she just kept walking, her gaze focused ahead.
“And even more strange,” I continued, “was that all the men were branded with Borromean rings on their chests.” I indicated the area, pressing a finger to my breastbone. “Right here. Have you ever seen anything like that?”
Lady Elaine considered the question. “I’m familiar with the Borromean rings, of course, but I don’t know of any brands like you’re describing.”
I frowned at her in surprise. I didn’t think she was lying, but why didn’t she know about Corvus? Maybe Valentine was keeping secrets. Don’t trust anyone, my mom’s warning came back to me.
We walked on in silence. With the conversation at an apparent end, my mind soon began to wander. Memories of Lady Elaine’s vision came pressing in, digging, clawing at me.
It only worsened when we arrived at Eli’s dorm. He was already asleep on the sofa, on his back, just like in the vision. Seeing him that way, I was afraid even to touch him. It was an automatic fear, like being afraid of a growling animal or a fire burning out of control.
“Go on.” Lady Elaine prodded me forward when I just stood there frozen.
I turned my gaze on her. You did this to me, I thought. I wanted to say it aloud, to hurl it at her like a curse. But I couldn’t. If I did, she would think she’d won, that she’d convinced me to turn my back on my feelings for Eli. She hadn’t. I wouldn’t. We would fight our way through this like we did everything else.
Despite the quake in my stomach, I turned away from her, climbed on top of Eli, and entered his dreams.