Eli shook his head. “Nope. I’m not even friends with Britney. I don’t really friend people unless they ask me to. Too much hassle.”
I made a noncommittal “mmmm,” although the childish, prone-to-be-jealous part of me was secretly glad Britney hadn’t friended him.
“Actually, I think the only naturekind I’m friends with is Irene Stark,” Eli said, his fingers striking the keys as he entered a search.
I rolled my eyes at the back of his head. Britney would’ve been far preferable to Irene.
In seconds, Eli had pulled up Irene’s wall. He clicked on her info, and we both saw the Terra Tribe listed as one of her groups.
“Bingo,” Eli said.
I caught myself grinding my teeth and stopped. “What makes you think she’ll talk to you about it?”
“I don’t know if she will or not, but I’m going to give it a go.”
Perfect.
“Are Oliver’s friends hidden or can you see them?” I asked, bending toward the desk.
“No idea.” Eli searched for Oliver and clicked on the link.
We could see the list all right. And it was long. Half of the people I didn’t recognize, many of them adults. I suspected quite a few might be Arkwell graduates. There were a number of photos of people wearing jerseys from the various international magickind universities.
Eli scrolled slowly through the first hundred or so then started moving through the rest more quickly. I recognized a couple of people but none that I knew well enough to try and get them to spill the beans on the Terra Tribe’s inner secrets.
That was until a familiar face caught my eye.
“Wait a minute.” I touched Eli’s shoulder, hyperaware of how warm he was and how close. “Go back up.”
Eli did as I asked, and he stopped in the right place without any prompting from me. He knew exactly which person I’d recognized. He beamed up at me. “Perfect. You can get her to talk for sure. She owes you big time.”
I nodded. Melanie Remillard did owe me, a little anyway. She had asked me to discover her best friend’s murderer, a task that eventually led to the showdown with Marrow. Still, I wasn’t wild about the idea of asking her about the Terra Tribe. She seemed nice enough, but after the way Oliver had behaved, I wasn’t sure I could count on her to help. Nevertheless I said, “I’ll ask her about it as soon I can. I’ll get Selene to come with me. She knows Melanie better.”
“Sounds like a plan.” Eli tapped his wand ring against the desk. “She might not be willing to tell us much about the group, but she should at least be able to shed some light on Britney’s activities that night. And it’s not like we have any reason to believe there’s a connection between the Terra Tribe and what happened to her.”
“Good point.” I smiled, feeling better about the whole thing.
Eli stood up without warning, going from beneath my eye level to towering over me. I took a step back, my senses on overload. An odd expression crossed his face, and for a second, I allowed myself to believe it was disappointment that I had moved away.
“You ready?” I said.
In answer he turned and lay down on the sofa, his body covering the expanse of it with at least a foot of leg hanging off the end. “I will be soon.”
I leaned against the desk and waited for him to drift off. Then I climbed on top of him and into his dreams like I’d done so many times before.
But unlike all those dreams before, the world I emerged into was blurred and foggy like a picture out of focus. The ground beneath me seemed to be nothing but smoke and mist, and I experienced a moment of vertigo, feeling like I would fall right through it.
“Whoa,” I heard Eli say from somewhere to my left. “What’s going on?”
I turned my head, wishing there was something I could hold on to, to steady myself. A second later a tall-backed chair appeared in front of me. I reached for it, and the vertigo stopped.
“You okay?” Eli said as he emerged from the fog.
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak yet.
Eli halted a few feet from me and motioned to the formless world. “Are you doing this?”
I shook my head. My reply came out a croak. “I’m not doing anything.”
Eli didn’t appear to hear me. His attention had shifted to the world beginning to take form around us. It was like watching a painter filling in the blank spaces of a sketch.
We were in some kind of large chamber with a high-vaulted ceiling. Tall stained-glass windows decorated the stone walls at regular intervals with marbled statues of various magickind in their native forms set on the floor in between them. In the center of the room stood a long rectangular table, a massive wooden slab polished to a bright shine. The tall-backed chair I was leaning against was one of several set around the table.
“Wow,” I said, recognizing the place from various pictures in the magickind news outlets. “Have you been to Senate Hall before?”
Eli didn’t look at me as he answered. “Yeah, the day I found out I’m a Conductor. One of the scientists was pretty friendly. She thought I might enjoy seeing it. I guess they don’t let civilians in here very often.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard that, too.” Across from me, several suits of armor were just coming into focus, lined up along one section of wall. They were far grander than the ones at Arkwell, with vivid indigo plumes on their ornate helmets and glistening shields engraved with the Magi Senate crest. I wondered if the real-life ones were as lively as those at Arkwell. It would make for interesting meetings.
“I’ve never even been to Lyonshold,” I added, a little envious.
“You’ll get to see it soon,” Eli said as he moved down the table that, like the knights, was still taking on form around us.
“How do you figure?”
He picked up an object from the table that looked like a stick or maybe an overly thick wand. “The Beltane Festival.”
“Oh, yeah. That.”
“I’ve been thinking about volunteering for it.” Eli held the object up higher. “I really hope this isn’t a regular feature at senate meetings.”
I took a longer look at it and noticed a little piece of string sticking out from the end of the stick. “Is that dynamite?”
“Yep.” Eli leaned toward the table and set it down much more carefully than he’d picked it up. I understood his caution. Dreams were a lot more real than most people realized. Especially Eli’s dreams.
“Yeah, I think that would be out of place even among magickind.”
Eli grinned. “Not unless Culpepper suddenly gets elected to the senate.”
“Let’s hope not,” I said, picturing Culpepper’s secret storeroom of illegal items. It included not only candy bars and black magic objects but also entire crates full of dynamite and other dangerous explosives. Yeah, not exactly the type of guy I wanted in charge of things.
Eli started to say something more but stopped. I turned to see what had stolen his attention. More of the table had come into focus by now, and with a sickening drop in the pit of my stomach I realized that we were no longer alone in the vast chamber. People now sat in the chairs—twelve of them in all.
And they were all dead.
I gasped and took an involuntary step backward, repulsed by the sight of their slackened faces and dulled, unseeing eyes. Even worse was when I realized they were people I knew, schoolmates and friends. There was Britney, her head craned back over her chair, her long strawberry blond hair spilling downward behind it. Beside her sat Oliver Cork with Melanie Remillard next to him.
The girl in the chair nearest me was Katarina; her torso was slouched forward, braced against the table. Selene was next to her, her position upright and the most normal of those I’d seen so far, but still undeniably dead.