I sighed and got out of bed. It was time to take Mr. Deverell up on his offer. I still harbored reservations about someone else learning the word, but if the person behind Britney’s attack wanted the dream-seers out of the picture, then there must be something big coming. And given that small glimpse we’d seen in the Senate Hall dream, it would be all kinds of bad. I needed to get my dream-mojo working correctly again.
In the meantime, there was Paul to focus on. Remembering my discarded phone, I picked it up from where it had fallen beside my bed. Surprise, surprise—it was turned off. I hit the POWER button and then stuffed it into my pocket, knowing it would take a good five minutes to turn back on.
“I’m heading down now,” I said to Selene, who was still getting dressed. She nodded, her face expressionless and her eyes red and rimmed with dark spots. I tried to think of something to say to make her feel better, but I knew only time and finding the bad guy would be able to do that.
More determined than ever, I marched out the door and down to the cafeteria. My phone chimed from inside my pocket halfway there. It was from Paul and had arrived around three this morning. I tried to read the text but couldn’t. Half of the letters had been replaced with symbols.
Ugh, of all the times for the animation phenomenon on it to worsen.
Afraid I would crash into something if I attempted to decipher it while walking the hallway, I returned the cell to my pocket and hurried to the cafeteria. Eli beamed at me from across the room the moment I arrived, his eyes lighting up. He waved me over, quite unnecessarily—as if I would go anywhere else.
“How are you?” Eli said as I reached the table. He lifted the strap of my backpack and slid it from my shoulder, setting it down on the table for me.
I blinked up at him. “Um, I’m fine. What about you?”
“Just glad you’re all right.” He squeezed my shoulder.
As I sat down, I realized he must’ve heard about what had happened at Vejovis. I wondered who told him. Selene and I had gotten back far too late to tell him in person and it wasn’t something I’d wanted to send in an e-mail.
“What all do you know?” I asked as he took the spot right next to me, near enough that I could feel the heat of his body. I thrilled at his closeness even as unsettling memories of our last kiss and its disastrous non-results afterward came over me. I did my best to ignore them and retrieved a pencil and notebook from my bag.
“Most of it,” Eli said. “Lady Elaine filled me in last night right after they came and took Lance to Vejovis to try and figure out what’s wrong with him.”
I froze midway through pulling my cell out of my pocket. “They took him to the hospital?”
“Sure, where else?”
“I dunno. Maybe somewhere safe.”
Eli grinned, a dimple appearing on one cheek. “Could it be you’re starting to care whether Lance Rathbone lives or dies? Miracles and wonders abound.”
“Shut up.” I returned my attention to the message on the screen. Deciphering it was going to be a lot harder than I thought.
After a moment Eli asked, “What are you doing?”
I scrunched up my nose. “Trying to decode a text message.”
He snorted. “I told you that thing needs to be replaced.”
“Yeah, well, my birthday’s not until September.”
“I know,” Eli said. “September first.”
I glanced at him, surprised. I couldn’t remember us ever talking about when my birthday was, but the fact that he knew made my insides tingle. “Right.” I forced my gaze back to the cell.
“Who’s it from?” Eli leaned over me to look down at the screen, his chin brushing my shoulder. His breath tickled the side of my face, sending shivers down my neck. I resisted the urge to close my eyes and savor the feel. It was too risky—not knowing how Eli would react, not being certain if he felt the same. I stiffened at the reminder.
“Something wrong?” Eli said, his hand coming up to rest against my lower back.
I gaped at him, incredulous that he could be so clueless.
“What?” he said, frowning.
“Just … just don’t, okay?”
“Don’t what?” He cocked his head.
I clenched my teeth. Stupid handsome, confusing boy. “It’s just … hard to take you being all … touchy and stuff. Not after…” I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “After that kiss,” I blurted out.
Eli’s hand fell away from my back, and I opened my eyes to see him run his fingers through his hair hard enough to draw back the skin on his forehead. “Dusty, if you only…”
“What?” I said, shivering again. Even hearing him say my name made my body react in ways I couldn’t control.
“It’s just—”
He broke off as Selene arrived.
“What’s up?” she said, sitting down across from us.
I tried to smile, hoping she wouldn’t sense the tension—fat chance, of course, considering this was Selene. She looked between Eli and me, puzzling it out.
“I’m trying to figure out this text,” I said, before she had a chance to ask any probing questions. As much as I wanted to know what Eli was going to say, it needed to be a private conversation. I held up the phone. “It’s from Paul.”
“Awesome,” Eli said, putting a little distance between us.
Pretending not to notice, I examined the message and started making notes, decoding each word through simple trial and error.
Finally, I determined that it read: Meet me by my locker after first period. Alone.
“So what does it say?” Eli asked as I set the pencil down.
“Nothing. He just wants me to meet up with him after English.”
Eli cleared his throat, the sound suspiciously close to a growl.
I braced for him to tell me not to go, but he didn’t. Before I could wonder why, he changed the subject to what had happened to Britney. He wanted a blow-by-blow account, full of the details most people would’ve thought meaningless, but from which Eli was sometimes able to glean clues.
Selene and I told him what we could. When we finished, Eli spent a good five minutes in brooding silence while Selene and I focused on breakfast. The look on Eli’s face as he contemplated the details we’d given him could only be described as inward. He was present physically but checked out mentally, lost down whatever path his thoughts had taken him.
Finally, that inward look broke, and he picked up his goblet and took a drink.
“Well,” I said, “what did you figure out?”
Eli set down the goblet hard enough that milk sloshed over the side. “Not much, but at least we know where to start looking.”
“How so?” I knew better than to be skeptical. Eli had a knack for this detective stuff. He was the only person my age I knew who had a good idea of what he wanted to be when he grew up. I kind of envied him that. For me, I just wanted to survive the next two years of high school.
Eli tapped the table. “Britney. We’ve got to figure out what she was doing that got her caught up in all of this.”
“Yes, that makes sense,” Selene said.
Eli pointed a finger. It was crooked, bending inward at the last knuckle. “But that means the two of you need to ask Melanie about the Terra Tribe. I’ll give it a shot with Irene Stark. Between the two of them, we might figure out what the group is up to.”
Selene nodded. “I’ll see if Mellie can stop by the dorm tonight or tomorrow.”
The bell rang a few minutes later, and the three of us made our way to English class. I barely paid attention to Miss Norton’s impassioned lecture on Alexander Pope’s inappropriate characterization of sylphs in The Rape of the Lock. My thoughts kept returning to Paul as I wondered what he would have to say.