The Nightmare Affair (28 page)

By the time we reached the second floor, I was ready to throw myself in front of a bus rather than clean another toilet. I opened the door to the men’s and was greeted by the biggest mess I’d ever seen in my life.

“Oh, screw this,” I said, taking in the three inches of water on the floor, the clogged sinks with the taps turned on full blast, and from the looks of it all ten toilets and urinals overflowed.

“My, my, what a mess. I wonder what happened in here?” Ms. Hardwick said, wading inside.

I had a pretty good guess as I spotted a joker playing card floating in the puddle of muck, “3–2” written on it in big black letters. Lance Rathbone. I could’ve killed him.

“Not to fret.” Hardwick pulled out a cell phone from the front pocket of her housedress and flipped it open. The cell chirped in a perfect imitation of R2D2 as she dialed.

“Hello?” she said a moment later. “It’s Emma. I’m in Jefferson Tower. We’ve got a problem on the second floor … uh-huh … looks that way … yes, we’ll wait. Oh and why don’t you bring my package along with you?… Yes, I know it’s early, but it’s been a long week. You know I’m good for it … of course … good-bye.”

She stowed the cell away again, turned off the faucets, and we stepped out. Then she conjured two chairs for us, and we sat down. “It’ll be just a few moments then.”

Grateful as I was for a break, I wanted to get done with this already. “Can’t you just magic the mess away?”

“Afraid not. All the bathrooms at Arkwell have anti-magic spells on them, which block everything save glamours and the simple cleaning spells
I
employ, which aren’t nearly enough for that mess.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Why’s it blocked?”

Hardwick began to pick at something in her teeth. “To prevent students from playing pranks, for one thing. And there’s the issue of animation of course. The administration likes to keep the liveliness in the bathrooms down to a minimum.”

“Nothing worse than a talking toilet,” I muttered.

Hardwick nodded. “But unfortunately the spells don’t prevent a highly motivated student from disrupting things the manual way.”

That was Lance, all right, highly motivated to make my life difficult. I wondered how he knew about my detention.

It seemed Mr. Culpepper was highly motivated to make my life difficult, too, seeing how he took nearly a half hour to arrive. A strange clicking sound preceded his appearance down the corridor. Mr. Culpepper was leading a leashed dog beside him. No, not a dog—a hellhound. As it grew closer, I saw the hairs of its black coat were more like scales than fur, hard and slick as armor. Its eyes shone like flashlights. I’d heard rumors that Culpepper had a hellhound, but I’d never seen it before. Not surprising, since hellhounds were nocturnal—and extremely volatile.

“Why on earth did you bring
that
mangy thing along?” Ms. Hardwick said.

The hound growled as if it had understood the insult. The sound made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

Culpepper grunted. “Somebody’s out there killing folk, if you haven’t noticed.”

Hardwick snickered. “And you think they might come after you? My goodness, Faust, you’re getting more paranoid every day.”

Culpepper glared at her. Then he looked at me and glared some more. “What’s
she
doing here?”

“Detention. Did you bring my package?”

“Yeah, but what about
her
?”

Hardwick waved, dismissively. “Never mind that. Hand it over, if you please.”

Culpepper grunted again as he set the toolbox he was carrying with him on the floor. He bent over it and pulled out a brown paper package the size of a pencil box, which he handed to Ms. Hardwick.

He stood up again. “Gonna check things out.” Then he turned and entered the bathroom, taking the hellhound with him.

I sucked in a relieved breath—the hound had been watching me with its eerie eyes like it was hoping I might make a run for it so it could give chase.

Hardwick ripped into the paper surrounding the box with her long, thick fingernails and yanked the lid off to reveal a stockpile of candy bars. “Would you like one?” she said, pulling out a Baby Ruth.

Under normal circumstances, I would’ve jumped at the chance to indulge in a piece of contraband candy, but something about the way Hardwick was looking at it, like a dog drooling for table scraps, decided me against it. “No, thanks.”

Hardwick shrugged and tore in—literally—gobbling down the Baby Ruth in a matter of seconds. Next she started in on a Mr. Goodbar, then a Butterfinger followed by a Clark Bar, and so on. I was beginning to notice a disturbing theme to the names of these candy bars and had to rein in my imagination before it started picturing what
other
edible things a hag might eat that would produce that same chomp-chomp-chomp sound.

To take my mind off the sick feeling in my stomach, I thought about Culpepper. It seemed a safe bet he was running some kind of black market here at Arkwell, apparently one that provided the faculty with banned substances like chocolate. But I knew my mother didn’t have a sugar problem. So what had he given her? Sugary contraband wasn’t very serious, but what if he dealt in harder stuff? Like maybe black magic items. The little I knew about black magic was enough for me to suspect you could do any number of horrible, vile things with it.

Culpepper and his hellhound emerged a few minutes later, long enough for Culpepper to pull out a couple of tools. It struck me as a bit odd that he hadn’t tied the hound up in the restroom so he could have both hands free. He must not want the animal out of his sight. What was he so nervous about?

I checked his fingers for rings when he emerged again to get even more tools, but he wasn’t wearing any. It was a stupid idea anyway. For one thing, I seriously doubted anybody would’ve made Mr. Culpepper the third Keeper. For another, it was highly unlikely I would recognize a Keeper ring if I saw one, besides Rosemary’s. There was no reason to believe the rings looked the same. Even if they did, surely the person wearing it would be smart enough to disguise it with a glamour.

When Culpepper went back into the bathroom again, I noticed that the contents in the toolbox had shifted to reveal a set of keys. Not just any set, but the mega-ultra-open-every-door-on-campus set. At least a hundred keys hung from the big silver loop. I thought it likely that
one
of them would open the door into the crypt Culpepper had disappeared into that night.

I spent the next couple of minutes contemplating how to steal the keys without getting caught. Fortunately, I’d worn my Chickery High School hoodie, which had a huge front pocket. Unfortunately, I was certain Ms. Hardwick wasn’t distracted enough with her candy bars not to notice me pilfering Culpepper’s toolbox.

When Mr. Culpepper came out of the bathroom for the third time, he looked like someone had given him a swirly. Droplets of water fell from his wet hair and shirt, and he was angry enough that I could see the tips of his horns showing through the glamour and the hint of an electric green glow in his eyes.

“This is going to take the rest of the night to fix,
stupid idiot sons of
 … No point in hanging around here if you’ve got other things to do. I’ll let you know when I’m done, Emma. It’s gonna need a good cleaning.” He turned around, muttering swear words as he went back inside.

“Well, that’s a shame,” said Hardwick, wiping her mouth with the back of her sleeve. The gesture didn’t help. The chocolate smears remained around her lips, looking like dried blood. “I suppose you’d best call it a night, my dear. We can pick this up again next week.”

“Oh, okay.” I stood, not sure if I should consider myself lucky or not. On the one hand, I was so tired my eyeballs were twitching, but on the other, I hadn’t made it through one building in an entire night. Detention was going to last forever at this rate.

Then I remembered the keys, just sitting there, begging to be picked up. Acting on impulse, I flicked my wrist toward the box of candy bars perched on Hardwick’s lap, giving it a little push with my magic. It went flying down the corridor, spewing its contents like a burst piñata. Hardwick startled so badly she tumbled sideways out of her chair.

Whoops.

I tried not to laugh as I rushed over to help, feigning concern. “Are you all right?” I put a hand on her wrist and pulled. Hardwick’s skin beneath my fingers felt as slick and slimy as a snake’s.

“Oh, I’m fine. We must have a poltergeist in here.”

Glad to find she wasn’t the brightest hag in the monster book, I grabbed the keys out of the toolbox as she scurried away to retrieve her precious chocolate.

“Um, do you want some help, Ms. Hardwick?”

She waved at me. “Not at all. You run along now.”

Don’t have to tell me twice.
“Okay. See you.”

I turned and trotted down the corridor to the stairs with both hands inside my front pocket, holding the keys so they wouldn’t jangle. Spending the night cleaning toilets with a chocolate-crazed hag might not have been fun, but it was totally worth it. I was certain that all the answers were waiting inside that crypt.

Somehow, I just
knew
it.

22

The Crypt

Paul and I spent the morning traipsing around Coleville in search of the crypt. I was only slightly worried about bumping into Culpepper—he was probably still asleep after the late night he had. It took us two hours to find it. Paul wanted to check the keys right then, but I thought we might be pushing it. When Culpepper did wake up, he was bound to be suspicious about his missing keys.

So we waited and brought the keys to Room 013 that afternoon to work out a plan for breaking in with the others.

“Wow,” Selene said when we were all gathered together. “That’s a
lot
of keys. Did you guys figure out which one it is?”

“No, but it shouldn’t take too long to try them all,” I said.

“I don’t know,” said Eli. “With that many, it could take all night.”

“Let me see them,” said Selene. She was sitting in the same chair that had given her such grief last time. It seemed to have developed an attachment to her. The moment she walked into the room it had chased her around until she’d given up and sat on it. She hadn’t moved since.

I set the key ring down on the desk in front of her. She started shuffling through them one by one, finally stopping on a small skeleton key with a weird greenish color to it. She ran a finger along its edge then looked up at me. “This is the one.”

“How do you know?” Eli stepped up next to me for a better look, brushing his upper arm against my shoulder.

“It’s a moonwort key.” Selene slid it off the ring and handed it to me. It wasn’t made out of metal but rather some soft, flexible material.

“Um, color me crazy,” I said, “but doesn’t a key have to be kind of rigid in order to trigger a lock?”

“Not if it’s moonwort,” Paul said, joining us around the table. “May I see it?” I handed it to him, and he nodded. “Selene’s right. Moonwort.”

“Okay, somebody explain already,” said Eli, rapping his knuckles on the table.

“Moonwort is a type of plant that will open almost any lock when made into a key,” said Selene. “It’s completely illegal.”

“My turn, please.” Eli gestured at Paul, who handed him the key. “Huh. If you’re right, then this little thing is a private detective’s dream tool.”

“So we sneak into the crypt and look for Rosemary’s ring or one that might’ve been Ankil’s, right?” Selene said.

Paul cast me a significant glance. I still hadn’t told them about my mother. Sighing, I said, “Well, not
only
the rings.” Then I told them my suspicions about my mom and the truth about Nightmares. It got easier as I went along, mostly because nobody went screaming from the room at the news or started looking at me like I’d turned into a giant spider.

Selene was the first to speak afterward. “I’ll help you figure out whatever it is your mom got from Culpepper, but I don’t believe for a second she’s the killer.”

Her words made me feel better at once. I knew that for Selene, my mother’s innocence was the same as mine. Right or not, her loyalty meant a lot. And no matter my resentment to my mother, I didn’t want her to be the killer.

Paul cleared his throat. “What makes you so certain?”

“Because I just know,” Selene said, staring up at him from under her baseball cap. “Why would she do it?”

“Does it matter?” said Paul. “She’s the only one we know for sure
could
have done it.”

Selene glowered. “Just because someone has the
power
to do something doesn’t mean they will. Sometimes people choose to be good even when they don’t have to.”

“Yeah, and sometimes they don’t.”

“Hold on, guys,” Eli said, a reproach in his voice. “Don’t forget, Dusty’s mom isn’t the only Nightmare around. Bethany Grey could have done it. And after what Lance told me, I think she’s a better candidate.”

“What did he tell you?” I asked.

“That she’s some kind of hit man or assassin for Consul Vanholt.”

Selene rolled her eyes. “That’s just a rumor. Contrary to what Lance says, he doesn’t know half as much about the goings-on in the senate as he claims. His dad absolutely refuses to let him in on anything. If Senator Rathbone gets his way, Lance will stay as far away from politics as possible. Trust me. I know.”

Eli looked ready to argue, but I cut him off. “Rumor or not, she is
capable
of doing it, so we can put Bethany Grey down on the list, right?”

“Right,” Eli said.

Selene folded her arms, pouting. “Right. At least she’s a better option than Dusty’s mom.”

Eli nodded, although I couldn’t tell if it was in agreement or if he was just pacifying her. “Now we need a plan for getting in and out without getting caught.”

“And fast,” I said. “We’ve got to get those keys back to Culpepper.”

“No problem,” said Selene. She removed the plastic barrette from the end of her braid and placed it on the desk in front of her. She concentrated on it, muttering an incantation. A moment later the glamour charm had transformed the barrette into a nearly perfect reproduction of the moonwort key. She picked it up and slid it onto the key ring. “There, that should buy us some time. I’ll just drop this in the lost and found.”