Chapter Twenty-Three
“What did you do?” Sip cried. “Lisabelle, are you alright?”
Lisabelle looked up, her eyes glassy, her lips trembling. Finally, she stuttered, “I didn’t. I didn’t do anything!”
While Sip stood there dumbfounded, I knelt next to the motionless form. “Who is it?” I asked. “Should I get help?”
“He’s dead,” Lisabelle wailed. “Are you an idiot? HE’S DEAD.” I leaned over the body, trying to see his face. Though he was covered in dark blood, I could see who it was: Bailey, the other dream giver. Lough was now a Dream Giver Association of one.
“What happened to him?” Sip breathed, kneeling down beside me. There were tears in her eyes and her hands trembled. “Poor Bailey. His poor family. How will we ever tell Lough?”
“What happened to him?” I asked, echoing Sip and glancing at Lisabelle. But she was in no condition to answer me. Her breath was coming fast and shallow, and she looked ready to collapse. She was distraught, but something told me we didn’t have much time, so I pushed.
“Lisabelle?” I said, trying to get her attention. At first she just continued to stare down at our dead friend. I said her name again, louder, and finally she looked at me.
“You have to tell me what happened,” I insisted. “Now, before anyone else gets here.” Sip’s attention was focused on Bailey, but at my words she looked up in alarm.
Lisabelle coughed. She looked away as she remembered something that wasn’t right in front of her. “I was in my room, reading. Just relaxing. Waiting for you and Sip to get back. I heard someone calling my name, so I looked out the window. I thought I saw something….” She paused and grimaced. “I thought it was you two playing a joke on me. So, I came outside….”
Guilt tore through me. “You came outside because of us?”
There wasn’t anything else to say. All three of us knew what was coming. Lisabelle was covered in his blood.
“Then what happened?” I asked. My voice trembled, but I was trying to keep my emotions under control. I had to stay calm until I finished talking to Lisabelle, because I had a feeling we weren’t going to have another chance to talk for a long time.
“I came outside and he staggered past me,” said Lisabelle. Tears started rolling down her cheeks. She swiped one away, leaving a bloody smear.
“He was already hurt?” I asked. I couldn’t see what wound had killed Bailey. Just the blood.
“Of course he was already hurt!” she cried. “Then he just staggered and fell. Into my arms. I held him while he died. He let out an awful sort of gurgle, then stopped moving.” Lisabelle was no longer trying to keep the tears from coming.
“Did you see anything else?” I asked.
“No,” said Lisabelle, “NO.”
She screamed. Not because of the story she was trying to tell us, but because just at that moment a green magical fire slammed into her.
The professors had arrived. Lisabelle was pinned to the ground with fire that burned into her skin. She struggled, but she couldn’t move. I turned and looked over my shoulder. My gut felt like someone was stabbing a knife into it.
“Sip, Charlotte, get away from him,” said the President. Her eyes were black pinpoints as she marched toward us. Professor Zervos and two other professors flanked her.
Slowly, hands raised, Sip and I backed away. My heart was pounding. I couldn’t take my eyes off Lisabelle struggling against the fire holding her down. Suddenly, she sprang upright, screaming as the bonds cut deeper.
“I didn’t do it,” she yelled to me. “You listen. I didn’t do it.”
“Sorry,” said the President. Her eyes pitiless. “But the evidence is overwhelming.”
“She told you she didn’t do it,” I said, pushing forward. “Leave her alone. There’s no proof. There never has been.”
The President turned icy eyes on me. “There is blood on her hands. Literally. We have a student dead. This school has operated for hundreds of years, and this is the first time that a student has been murdered on our grounds.”
“All you’re worried about is finding someone to blame,” I yelled. “You aren’t worried about the truth.” Before I was done speaking Professor Zervos came toward me and yanked me away from the President. I looked frantically at Sip. She agreed with me, but there was nothing she could say. Lisabelle couldn’t speak. The green fire was choking her.
“You have to believe me,” I told the President, pleading. “You have to!”
Professor Zervos tightened his grip. I whimpered. I was as trapped as Lisabelle.
“Where is nurse Tabby?” asked the President. She was no longer looking at me, or indeed at Sip or Lisabelle. It was like we weren’t really there. Not worth her attention.
“She’s coming,” said one of the other professors. “Is he dead?” The adults ignored everything that Sip and I tried to say after that.
“Charlotte and Sip must both be tired from preparing for finals,” said the President. “They don’t know what they are saying and they need rest. Get them out of here,” she ordered Zervos. “Before they make a scene.”
“I won’t leave Lisabelle,” I cried, struggling out of the chokehold Professor Zervos had me in. “You can’t make me.”
“I won’t either,” said Sip, pushing forward to stand next to me.
But of course we were forced to leave. Professor Zervos was a professor, and a full-grown man, and he was stronger than either of us. We had no chance against him and we both knew it. With one last desperate look back at the immovably bound Lisabelle, we were herded away. My last glimpse of my friend was of her being led off by the President, still in green chains of fire.
“Go to your room,” ordered Professor Zervos once he had shoved us inside.
I spun around to argue, but Zervos was already gone. The door slammed behind him. Then silence.
Sip was shaking. She raced to the window, but we both knew that the windows didn’t overlook that part of the front yard. Besides, the professors were cleaning everything up. We continued to stand in the hall anyway, staring at nothing. I was too shocked to move, and Sip was no better off.
Bailey was dead. The hellhound had murdered one of our own students, and it was still on the loose. The knife in my stomach twisted.
“Charlotte, you’re here, wonderful,” Lough cried. He came bounding into the room. I turned to him, numb.
He saw our pale faces and halted. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “I’m really looking forward to playing games tonight. You okay?”
Tears started streaming down Sip’s face. “Oh, Lough. It’s so awful,” she said, collapsing into his arms. He caught her, but his face showed his bewilderment.
“What is it?” he begged. “Tell me what happened!”
Once I said it I couldn’t take it back. I did not want to watch his face crumple. “Lisabelle’s been arrested.”
Lough made a move as if to run. Sip was still in his arms. He paused and looked down at her blond head. Pain etched in amongst the laugh lines of his face.
I took a steadying breath. I had only told him half of it. The first half hadn’t killed him, but the second half might. “Because she was found near Bailey’s body. He was murdered.”
All color drained from Lough’s face. Not releasing Sip, he sank to the floor, the picture of someone too devastated to cry. “Bailey’s dead?” he croaked. “Are you sure? He might just be sleeping. This is no time for jokes, Charlotte. A lot’s been going on in the past couple of weeks.”
I nodded. “I know,” I said. “Lough, I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah, so am I,” said Sip. She pushed herself away from Lough but didn’t try to get up off the floor. She was shaking so badly her legs didn’t look like they would support her.
“I have to see for myself,” he said. He started to get up.
“No, Lough,” I said.
He slipped. And fell. He did not rise again.
“Lough,” I said softly. “I’m sorry.?
?? I knelt on the floor on front of my friends. Slowly, I wrapped my arms around Lough. At my first touch he started, like he was coming out of a trance, but he let me hug him. Sip wrapped her arms around both of us.
“Sip,” Lough said, his voice muffled in my shoulder. “Your crying is getting my shirt wet.”
“Get used to it,” said Sip.
“That’s something Lisabelle would say,” he said. He pulled away and sat back. “Tell me what happened.”
His jaw jutted out and his eyes were hard. He kept an arm around Sip, but his focus was on me. I told him everything.
“Did Lisabelle do it?”
“No,” I said firmly.
“She didn’t,” Sip agreed.
“I saw her a half hour before,” Sip said, snuffling. “There’s no way she did it.”
“Poor Bailey,” Lough said, and his head dropped into his hands. “Poor, poor Bailey.”
Regret and sadness mingled with exhaustion, but I couldn’t think about it now. I looked out the window. In the distance I could see the professors retreating.
“We have to save Lisabelle,” I said, trying to believe we could.
“Well, duh,” said Sip.
“Yeah,” said Lough. “Thank you, queen of the obvious.” He gave a thin smile.
“There’s nothing we can do tonight. We won’t do Lisabelle any favors by being exhausted,” said Sip. Lough nodded numbly.
Sip stood up. “Let’s get some sleep. We have a lot to do in the morning.”
“What do you think they’re going to do with Bailey’s body?” Lough asked. He stood up as well. Slowly, like an old man.
“I think they’re going to call his family, and they’re going to have to make an announcement tomorrow at breakfast,” said Sip.
I wondered if some of the other dorms would clap. The pixies’ hatred of me had spread to the other members of Airlee too; none of them would shed a tear for Bailey. The relationships among the paranormals had deteriorated to such an extent that no one outside of Airlee would care what had happened to him.
In bed, I was too tired to cry. One thing I knew to be true: this had to stop. I was going to find that hellhound, and whoever let him onto Public’s campus. Magic or no, I was going to make them pay.
Sip and I trudged to breakfast the next morning with Lough beside us. His eyes were bloodshot in a way that I would have expected after a night of hard partying. Sip was quiet and pale. Her lips formed one thin white line.
I stared hard at the spot where Bailey’s body had been. Part of me wondered if it had all been a bad dream. Someday Lough would be good enough with his magic to create living dreams like that, and if there were a really powerful dream giver on campus, maybe they had sent the awful nightmare where one of my friends was dead and another of my friends was blamed.
But Lisabelle’s absence confirmed the horrible truth: Bailey was dead, and Lisabelle was gone. She would never be a student at Public again. There was a good chance they wouldn’t even let her live. A lump formed in my throat.
I had imagined blood-soaked grass, but of course it wasn’t. There were no signs that a body had lain there the night before and that one life had been lost and another ruined.
As we walked in to breakfast, none of the other students acted like anything was wrong. They didn’t know. The pixies were nasty as usual, but it seemed so irrelevant now. I tried to ignore their foolish barbs and their attempts to trip me. Kia came up behind me and stuck her foot out, but she wasn’t subtle enough, and I saw her extended green ankle in time. It was the second time she had tried to trip me this semester. The first time she had succeeded and I had ended up with more Astra work. This time, the spark of fury inside me became an inferno. I flipped my empty tray in my hand. My grip was solid. I checked my stance. Like I was swinging a baseball bat, I brought my other hand up and pivoted. The tray slammed into Kia’s face. It was no longer a time to be passive.
Kia screamed. As blood squirted from her nose in bubbly spurts, Camilla came towards me, yelling. I flipped my tray again, ready for a second swing, and she came to a dead halt. Without ever taking her eyes off me, she went to help her friend. The dining hall had gone silent. Lough was staring at me like he had never seen anything like it before.
“You just reminded me of Lisabelle,” he said. “It was awesome.”
Defiantly I picked up a new tray, and as I did so my eyes met Keller’s. He looked worried. I couldn’t imagine why; he knew I had taken a lot of abuse from the pixies. Maybe he would have thought better of me if I hadn’t snapped, or maybe not. But what was done was done, and I was glad of it.
Once I was seated between Lough and Sip I tried to get a look at the professors, but none of them were there. I was about to take the first bite of my eggs when someone slid into a seat next to me. It was Keller. The tip of his elbow touched the tip of mine.
“What happened?” he asked.
“What makes you think something happened?” I asked as I savaged my eggs. He eyed the mush for a second, then said, “You don’t usually start the morning by taking batting practice at someone’s face.”
“That’s a baseball term,” said Lough to Sip.
She glared at him. He took a big bite of toast.
I leaned closer; I didn’t want to be overheard. “Lisabelle was arrested last night. Another hellhound attack.”
Keller didn’t react. “Are you alright?”
Why was he asking if I was alright when Lisabelle was the one who had been arrested? I told him, “I don’t think I am.” But before he could ask anything else, the professors, led by the President, swept in. Until that point I had liked the President. She had treated me with respect, if not kindness, which was a lot better than Professor Zervos had ever done. But now I looked at her differently. Last night she had led Lisabelle away in chains. I would never forgive her for that.
She didn’t bother to sit down. Instead, she walked straight to the podium. I was flooded with memories of my first night, when everything was bright with possibility and the idea of my friend being arrested would have seemed laughable. Ruthlessly I pushed the memories away. I had to concentrate.
The President rested her hands on the podium. The room fell silent. She’d never addressed the students at breakfast before.
“Good morning,” she said. I thought she trembled a little. Good. Serves her right.
“We have some distressing news. First, I would like to make clear that everyone here is safe. We are doing our very best to protect students. The perpetrator has been captured.”
Murmurs rippled around me.
I looked at the rows of professors as she talked. One was missing: Zervos. I wondered where he was now. I hoped he wasn’t with Lisabelle.
“Last night, a hellhound attacked a student at the direction of another student. It pains me beyond measure that we were betrayed by one of our own.” Her shaking hand adjusted the collar around her neck. “With great sadness, I must announce that the dream giver Bailey was killed.” She paused as murmurs subsided into disbelief. A couple of students cried out. The vampires were stone-faced, so were the fallen angels. The pixies didn’t have any expression on their faces at all.
I was aware of Keller’s weight at my side like the sun blazing next to me. He covered his mouth with his fist. He glanced at me, but I couldn’t read his expression.
The President continued. “The guilty student was caught not long after the dreadful and vicious attack. I believe that the threat has been neutralized. Therefore, students no longer need to worry.”
Students, from vampires to werewolves, were looking around the room. Several called out, “Who was it?”
The President, with a deep sigh, said, “It is no surprise that the guilty student was Lisabelle Verlans. We regret that fellow students were put in a position where we allowed a dangerous killer in your midst. We regret that you were tainted with her presence. Of course, letters will be sent home to your parents with our sincerest apologies.”
> Now the students were really talking. The pixies looked smug. Everyone believed the President. They all thought Lisabelle was guilty.
“This is the last time a darkness mage will be allowed within these walls,” said the President. “I take full responsibility. It was a mistake.”
“Serves her right,” called one of the pixies. “She should never have been here in the first place. None of the Airlee students should be here.”
That set off an explosion of noise. Lough stood up and started yelling. Sip forced him back into his chair.
“Now, now,” said the President. “Enough.”
Kevin, the senior pixie, stood up. “But why would Lisabelle attack someone from her own dorm?” I was so grateful I could have kissed him. Maybe they will listen to him, I thought.
“We believe,” said the President, “that Lisabelle did not view herself as loyal to any dorm. Every student was at risk. We do not know why Bailey was targeted, but perhaps he found out something he shouldn’t have.”
That was the last straw for me. If Bailey had found out something, it hadn’t been about Lisabelle.
I pushed my chair back and stood up. Into the silence I said, “Lisabelle is innocent. She’s been falsely accused.”
Everyone in the hall stared at me. Then a pixie started to laugh.
“She’s a darkness mage,” the girl scoffed. “They cannot be trusted. Most of them are already on the side of the demons. And now we know why Lisabelle hated all of us. And you befriended that thing.”
I was so angry I couldn’t think straight. Here was someone acting like Lisabelle was some conniving, evil mage, instead of a person, while the true villain was still at large and no one wanted to do anything about it. I was about to shoot a reply back when Keller stood up. The pixie shut up instantly. Challenging a probationer was one thing, challenging Keller was another. He took hold of my arm and propelled me away. I fought him; I didn’t want to go. I had to defend Lisabelle. But he was stronger than I was.
“Come on,” he said in a low voice, “or do you want everyone in the school thinking you are a threat too?”
That shut me up. What did Keller mean? Did he believe me that it wasn’t Lisabelle? I allowed him to take me out of the hall. I didn’t look back. He led me towards the door.
“Are you trying to get yourself killed? For once in your life act cowed,” he whispered furiously. “At the moment it is more important for your enemies to think you are scared than for you to defend your friend.”
At the door we passed Professor Zervos, who went frantically by us without seeming to see us at all. Keller and I both stopped to stare at him. Once inside the hall he skidded to a stop. His robes were flapping and untied and his hair was sticking out at odd angles.
“President,” he cried, “she’s gone. Lisabelle Verlans has escaped.”