“Crap,” I whispered, sidestepping to avoid him. My foot caught on a tombstone, and I stumbled but managed to swerve my momentum left, barely missing a collision. Too close for comfort, I hurried past Eli, heading for a safe distance.

Something touched my arm, and I shrieked as a jolt of pain went through my entire existence. I turned to see Eli’s gaze fixed on my face, his hand gripping my arm. The world around me began to slip away, the colors melting like fresh paint in the rain. Then my consciousness was hurled out of the dream back into my body hard enough that I screamed again—for real this time. I let go of Eli’s forehead and grabbed my own, trying to stop my brains from rolling around like marbles inside my skull.

The pressure helped for a moment, but then Eli sat up and shoved me. I tumbled off the bed, landing on my back. I tried to take a breath, found I couldn’t, and panicked, arms and legs thrashing. Eli’s bewildered face appeared over me. He grabbed me by the shoulders and hauled me to my feet as easily as if I weighed nothing at all.

As soon as I was upright, my wind came back. So did my senses, and I cast the corrector spell like I’d been taught to do in moments like this. “Aphairein!”

The spell struck Eli, then bounced, hitting me instead. The corrector spell worked like an undo button on a computer, but it wasn’t meant to be self-administered. Instead of undoing my actions, it slammed into me with the force of a battering ram. Eli still had hold of my shoulders, and both of us went crashing to the ground this time. He landed on top of me so hard I felt like I’d been sat on by an elephant.

“Get off,” I said, struggling to breathe. I cast another spell at him, but it bounced, too. What the—?

Eli rolled off me and stood up. When I realized he’d been lying on top of me in only his red boxers, I blushed from head to toe. My skin was so hot I thought I’d turn to ash any second.

“Who the hell are you?” Eli pointed at me, his chest muscles flexing in a way that made me want to giggle.

I resisted the urge and leaped to my feet. We were close enough to the window that the moonlight shone full on my face.

Eli made a choking sound. “I know you. What are you doing here? And what’s wrong with your eyes? They’re … glowing?”

I groaned inwardly, ashamed that this hot boy who’d probably never noticed me before was now seeing the worst of me, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Stupid, stupid, unreliable magic. In the daytime, Nightmares looked as human as anybody else, our unusually pale eyes strange but not alarming. At night, our eyes glowed white. The glamour I usually wore to hide the glow must’ve come undone.

“What kind of freak are you?” Eli said.

I glared at him, ignoring the sting of his words. “At least I’m not the freak dreaming about dead girls.”

He gaped. “How do you know that?”

Uh … More embarrassed than any one person should ever have to be, I decided it was time to make a break for it. I could hear loud footsteps outside his door and knew I had about two seconds to escape. His dad was a cop; I was certain he would shoot me first and regret later.

I ran to the open window. Rule number two in dream-feeding: always have an escape route. I climbed over the edge, grabbed hold of the ivy-covered drainpipe, and slid down as quickly as I dared. Thank goodness for all those gymnastic lessons when I was younger. Normally, I would’ve used a glider spell to get down, but with my magic misfiring, I couldn’t risk it.

As my feet touched the ground, I looked up to see Eli staring down at me, mouth open. I stuck my tongue out at him. Then I turned and sprinted up the sidewalk.

A few minutes later, I slowed to an easier pace. I had a few blocks to go until I reached McCloud Park, where I’d stowed my bicycle in some bushes. Would’ve been nice to have a car or motorcycle for these late-night dream-feeding adventures—hell, I wouldn’t have turned down a moped—but my chances of getting any kind of motorized vehicle were slim to zero. Arkwell was a boarding school with a strict no-student-vehicles policy.

I spotted my bicycle sitting between some bushes where I’d left it and dropped down to a walk. If Eli or his dad hadn’t caught up to me by now, they probably weren’t going to.

Should’ve known better than to trust my luck.

An enormous black sedan rounded the corner into the parking lot, and I froze as the beam of headlights struck me. It came to a stop, and all the doors opened in unison. Four hairy-looking men in matching gray suits stepped out.

Four werewolves, to be precise. Local law enforcement for magickind.

2

Dream Come True

They put me in the back of the sedan, a werewolf on each side. The guy on my right was Hispanic and the guy on my left black. Not that it meant anything. Most magickind didn’t come from any one ethnic group. We had enough trouble getting along without adding racial divisions. Our divisions came from our magical classifications. Think Carl Linnaeus, although instead of class, genus, species, we had “kinds.”

There were three main kinds with loads of sub-kinds, all under the generic umbrella of magickind. The divisions were based on how we get our magic. There was witchkind, like wizards, witches, and psychics, whose magic was self-fueled. Naturekind, like fairies, dryads, and mermaids, who derived power from nature and the elements. And darkkind, like demons, werewolves, and Nightmares, of course, whose power came from other living creatures. I was part-ordinary, considered halfkind, which put me one step above reject in the social hierarchy.