The Nightmare Affair (29 page)

“Smart,” said Eli. “That’s one problem down.”

Unfortunately, the next problem wasn’t so easy. Even though Mr. Ankil’s death had been reported as an accident, security on campus had still been heightened afterward. The dorm room curfew was set at nine as usual, but nobody was supposed to be outdoors or in the tunnels after sunset without permission.

Since the Suits of Armor were the primary enforcers of the curfew, and they didn’t do actual floor checks, we decided the best solution was to simply find somewhere to hide in Coleville and wait for it to get late enough to break in. After my week of tailing Culpepper, I knew he kept pretty regular daytime hours. It was possible that the werewolf policemen might patrol the cemetery at night, but that was a risk we would have to take.

Yeah, this would’ve been a
great
plan if it were June or maybe even September. November, however, meant cold and more cold. The four of us took up positions in various hiding spots around the entrance to the crypt. Fortunately, the trees and bushes were still in full bloom, thanks to the magic of the fairy gardeners, which gave us extra coverage. Unfortunately, the foliage didn’t improve the temperature any. By the time the sun went down, my fingers had turned to icicles.

We’d agreed to hold out until midnight in the hope that Culpepper would’ve turned in for the evening. But by a quarter to eleven I made an executive decision and stood up from my hiding place behind a gravestone.

“What are you doing?” Eli hissed at me from across the way. I could barely make him out, dressed all in black as he was.

“I’m done waiting.” I walked up to the crypt, pulling the moonwort key out of my pocket. Selene, Eli, and Paul joined me a second later, and I slid the key into the hole. The key vibrated for a moment, like some machine kicking on. Then I heard a soft
click,
and the door swung open of its own accord. A wave of hot air swept out from the doorway, stunning me with welcoming warmth. I stepped in automatically, thinking about nothing other than defrosting my appendages.

“Hold up, Dusty,” Eli said. “You don’t know what’s in there.”

Too late. I was already four steps inside the crypt, which was dark and gloomy despite the warmth, when suddenly the floor disappeared beneath my feet.

I choked on a scream as I went tumbling down a narrow flight of stone steps. Ten bumps later, I came sliding to a stop in an underground chamber. I sat up and groaned, assessing the damage. Aside from some scrapes and inevitable bruises, nothing felt broken. Lucky again, I supposed.

“Are you okay?” asked Eli, racing down the steps toward me. He was the only one of us who owned a flashlight, which he now held pointed in my eyes.

“Fine, but you’re blinding me.”

“Sorry.”

Paul appeared, bumping Eli out of the way to get to me. Eli glowered at him as Paul grabbed my arms, lifting me to my feet. “You might want to be more careful next time.”

“You think?”

“Here’re the torches,” Selene said, rummaging in her backpack. She lit one with a simple fire spell and handed it to Paul. She did the same for me and finally one for herself.

“You sure you’re okay?” asked Eli. He touched my arm, a concerned look on his face.

I nodded, distracted by the sight of the crypt. We were in some kind of huge storeroom. Dozens of freestanding shelves filled the place, packed with all kinds of stuff. The one nearest to me held crate-sized boxes of candy—Twizzlers, Pixy Stix, Sprees, not to mention all the candy bars Hardwick had gone so bananas for.

“I think it’s safe to say he’s got some kind of side business going on,” said Paul.

“Either that or he’s preparing for nuclear fallout,” said Eli.

“Or,” I said, walking over to another shelf that had caught my eye, “he’s thinking of starting World War Three.” This shelf held crates with ominous labels like “C4” and “TNT.” Beside them were countless rifles and handguns hung from racks set next to other crates full of various types of bullets.

“Yikes,” said Eli, coming over to me. “Didn’t you say this guy was an ex-Marine? ’Cause I’m not seeing the ex part so much. He could kill everybody with all this stuff.”

“Um, guys?” said Selene, a hint of panic in her voice. “I think we’ve got even more to worry about.”

I turned to face her, but she’d disappeared down another aisle. When I found her, I understood her worry at once. This aisle was full of black magic items.

There were individually wrapped boxes of shrunken heads, jars of severed hands floating in liquid, and rows of crudely made dolls with no faces. Other jars contained dead scorpions and spiders, snake fangs, live maggots, rat tails, even one labeled “eye of newt.” I would’ve laughed at the irony, but I was too grossed out. Some of the stuff I didn’t recognize at all, but from the rank, decaying smells lingering in the place, I could tell it was all bad.

“Wow,” said Eli, covering his nose. “What the hell is this guy into?”

“Look, there’s moonwort.” Paul pointed down the row.

I shook my head. “This is creepy, but it’s not what we’re looking for. We should spread out, see if he’s got an office or something.”

Everybody agreed to the plan, and I made a left at the nearest aisle and walked all the way until I reached the edge of the chamber. I made my way around the perimeter and in moments had come across a door. I undid the dead bolt and swung it open, fully expecting to find another storeroom beyond it.

It opened into a tunnel. I looked right and left trying to determine where it went, but the tunnel disappeared into blackness a few feet from the doorway. The air was much cooler and damper out here than in the storeroom and held the distinctive, slimy odor of canal water. The tunnel must connect to the main ones on campus. Well, there was one mystery solved. Culpepper must’ve used this as his exit the night he came up behind me in the cemetery.

I stepped back into the storeroom and moved on. After a while, I came to a desk set in a small nook between two rows of shelves. More evil-looking items cluttered the desk, so much so that I was afraid to touch anything for fear of bumping into what looked like the severed hand of a werewolf being used as a Post-it notes holder or the skull that held an assortment of pens and pencils sticking out from its eye sockets and nose hole.

“Need a hand?” Eli said from behind me. I jumped, knocking over a pile of paper on the edge of the desk.

“Crap.” I stooped and started picking them up.

Eli squatted down to help and said in a low voice, “I didn’t get a chance to tell you earlier, but I think Selene’s right. Your mom doesn’t give me the impression that she would do something like this.”

I snorted. “You just think she’s hot.”

He grinned. “Yeah, well, so does everybody. But there’s more to it than that.” He paused. “She reminds me a lot of you, actually, like the way you play soccer, so fierce and tough, but honest.”

I blushed, my heart rate increasing. “I never knew you saw me play.”

He shrugged, looking embarrassed. “It’s sort of hard not to notice you. But the point is, I know someone like you would never get caught up in something as bad as this.”

“You don’t know that for sure. I mean, look at what I did to Katarina in that dream.” It was the first time either of us had mentioned it. For whatever reason, Eli had pretended it never happened, and I was grateful for that. But it had happened. There was no denying it, much as I wanted to.

He touched my arm, his hand warm through my jacket. “That was different—you didn’t know what would happen. Besides, we’ve all done things we’re not proud of.”

“Well, I really hope you’re right about my mom,” I said, “but it’s like Paul says, people are capable of anything.”

Eli grimaced, letting go of me. “Doesn’t surprise me
Paul
was the one to say that to you. Have you noticed how he sort of eggs you on about your mom being guilty? Giving you that e-mail. Doesn’t it bug you that he’s so ready to pin it on her? There’s something not right about it.”

I stood up, suddenly angry. “Don’t start in on him again, okay? I mean, geez, I haven’t said anything bad about Katarina in at least twenty-four hours.”

“It’s not about that, it’s just—” He broke off, and I turned to see Paul coming toward us.

“Find something?” he asked, his gaze shifting between Eli and me.

I motioned toward the desk. “I was just getting ready to check the drawers.”

“Here,” said Eli. “I’ll do it.” With way more bravery than I possessed, he started pulling open drawers. Thankfully, they contained the kind of stuff you expected to find in a desk, like a stapler and tape dispenser. The largest drawer on the left held hanging file folders. The first one was labeled “Ankil.”

“Jackpot,” said Eli, pulling out Mr. Ankil’s file. He pushed aside the junk on the desk and flipped the file open, rummaging through the contents.

“What is it?” I asked, peering around him.

“Looks like he’s keeping tabs on people. Here are vital statistics, family background, and I’m guessing this is a record of purchases.”

I looked at the paper he was indicating and saw a list of dates, items, and prices. The dates were pretty regular, one every couple of days. Beside nearly all of them Culpepper had written the word
pot
.

“Do you think that means ordinary pot?” I said. “Like marijuana?”

“Well, he always did strike me as a bit of a hippie,” said Eli.

“But why would Culpepper keep all this?”

Eli turned to the next page. “Blackmail maybe?”

Paul squatted in front of the drawer and started shuffling through files. “Everybody’s in here.” He paused. “Even my uncle.”

“What about my mom?” I asked.

Paul pulled out a file labeled Everhart and handed it to me before returning his attention to his uncle’s. His eyes flew across the page.

I opened the file to discover it wasn’t
only
about my mother. Culpepper had written a note on one of the pages about me taking the ledger and using spells on him. I shuffled to the page where he kept track of purchases. There was only one listed for my mother, dated last Monday with the words
moonwort key
written beside it.

“Looks like your mom wanted to do a little breaking and entering herself,” said Eli.

I bit my lip. “Yeah, but where?”

He didn’t answer, but stooped, examining more files. A moment later he said, “Check it out, guys. There’s a file on Rosemary.” Eli set it on the desk and began flipping through the pages. I leaned in close to him to see. The first page held vital statistics and the second a list of purchases for Pixy Stix. The contents further in nearly made my heart stop from shock. A photograph of Rosemary’s smiling face stared up at me. Someone had drawn a heart around her in red ink.

Eli picked it up. “I don’t believe it.”

There were more photos beneath the first, covered in more hearts.

“
Faustus,
” I said, still stunned by disbelief. “Culpepper’s first name is Faustus. Do you think this means he’s the F from Rosemary’s diary?”

“Looks that way,” said Paul.

Before anyone could speculate further, Selene darted around the corner, running toward us with a look of alarm on her face. She slid to a stop, waving her hand and muttering the anti-fire spell. All our torches went out, even Eli’s flashlight.

“Someone’s coming,” she whispered.

I heard a familiar clicking noise in the distance, the sound of claws hitting stone. Culpepper was here, and he’d brought his hellhound with him. By the faint flicker of torchlight shining through the shelves, I could tell he was near the entrance and moving this way.

“Where are they, George?” Culpepper’s voice boomed throughout the chamber.

The hound whined in answer.

He named his hellhound George? Seriously?

“Come on out! I know you’re in here,” said Culpepper. “Got this place bewitched to let me know when people break in. You didn’t really think you’d get away with taking my keys, did you?”

I looked around, trying to figure a way out of this. Then I remembered the door leading into the tunnels. “Follow me,” I whispered, taking hold of Selene’s hand.

The light from Culpepper’s torch was just enough that I managed to navigate the aisle without running into anything. By some miracle, I’d left the door unlatched. But that didn’t keep it from making a loud creak as I pushed it open. George the hellhound started barking in response.

“Get them!” Culpepper screamed, which was followed by the distinctive sound of a leash unsnapping.

The four of us hustled through the door, and Eli managed to slam it closed in time to keep the hound from following us out. The creature struck the door so hard Eli almost fell down. Paul jumped forward, adding his body weight to Eli’s.

“Quick. Somebody seal the door,” said Paul.

Selene performed the barricade spell while I relit our torches.

“We better hurry,” said Selene. “That spell won’t last long.”

“Which way?” I said.

Beside me, Paul glanced left, then right several times, his face tense with worry and indecision. “This way,” he finally said and took off to the left. Selene and I followed after him, but Eli remained in place.

“Hang on, guys,” he said. “I think this is the way we should go.”

Selene and I stopped and looked back at him, but Paul kept walking.

“Why do you think so?” I asked.

“There’s something familiar about it.” He shook his head. “I’m having déjà vu.”

“A tunnel is familiar?” asked Selene, incredulous. “Don’t they all kind of look the same?”

Eli shook his head, his body tense. “There’s a draft this way, too.”

“Hold on, Paul,” I called.

Paul stopped and turned around, his eyes narrowed, but still worried. “Why?”

I didn’t answer, as I walked back to Eli, trying to detect the draft. I didn’t sense anything different, but I was struck by my own sense of déjà vu.

“The dream,” I said, a wave of dizziness washing over me. “It reminds me of your dream Friday night.”

Paul rejoined us. “We don’t have time for this. It’s that way. Trust me.”

“No, it isn’t,” said Eli, his voice hard and his expression dangerous.