I gave him a quick summary of the Senate Hall dream and the connection between Mr. Corvus and crows.

“I suppose he might be involved,” Paul said when I finished. “But I don’t know much about him. We should check him out.”

Frowning at the “we” in his statement, I said, “Now wait a second. All this might be true, but if so, why haven’t you gone to Sheriff Brackenberry with it? Why come to us at all?” I waited, expecting Paul to finally be stumped, but he answered as quickly as before.

“Because I don’t have any concrete proof. Sure, his name is probably in the data, but so are hundreds of others. That’s not enough. And the stuff about Britney and the assassination is all guesswork. It’s not like they’re going to take my word for it, not considering my history. No, I can’t go to the authorities without indisputable evidence. My uncle is too powerful. There’s no telling how many people he has working for him. He’ll try to kill me if he thinks I’m going to turn him in, data or no. If I’m going to take that kind of risk, I want to make sure it’s worth it. I want to make sure that he pays.”

I flinched at the hatred in his voice, like the hard crack of a whip. It was shocking to learn the reality of his life now, the perilous tightrope he had to walk every second. Not that it wasn’t his fault.

But I decided his reasons were valid. With an accusation this big, they weren’t liable to take my word for it either. Titus Kirkwood was a magistrate, and you didn’t get that high up without lots of support. Besides, we hadn’t seen any definite signs of this in Eli’s dreams that I could tell.

“Okay,” Selene said. “I’m convinced.”

I glanced at her and then at Eli. He slowly nodded. “Me, too.”

I turned back to Paul. “I guess this means we’re on the case. But you’ve got to promise me something first.” I pulled the cell out of my back pocket again and held it up. “Once we’ve taken down your uncle and you’re no longer in danger, we give the phone and the password over to the sheriff.”

Paul hesitated, but only for a second. “I promise.”

His hesitation worried me, but there was nothing I could do about it at present. “All right,” I said to the room at large. “So I guess we start with Mr. Corvus and the Terra Tribe.”

“Yes,” Eli seconded. “And we’ve got one week to figure this out.”

One week until Beltane.

I hoped it would be enough.

24

Dream Remix

My session with Mr. Deverell the following afternoon wasn’t at all what I expected. It was less like Star Trek and more like Luke Skywalker being tortured by Obi-Wan with the blast shield and the training remote. Not that I pointed out this comparison to Mr. Deverell. I didn’t want him to think I was a total sci-fi geek.

We started off doing some mental “exercises” designed to strengthen my mind and to make sure I could keep the important stuff hidden, then he performed the nousdesmos. It seemed a lot like being hypnotized. In seconds I found myself slipping away, not falling asleep, but more like entering a dream. Except there wasn’t a dream or even a dreamer. There was nothing but empty blackness all around me as if I’d been submerged in an ultra-advanced sensory deprivation chamber.

Mr. Deverell’s voice spoke to me from somewhere in the darkness, encouraging me to visualize the plinth. “Let your instincts guide you.”

Yeah, he might as well have said “stretch out with your feelings, Luke” for all the help it was. I didn’t feel any instinct about anything. All I felt was nothing at all, just one big black everywhere. It was frightening and yet oddly peaceful at the same time. Unbeing.

But slowly I managed to reach the plinth and focus on the words, willing them into sight. It was hard, but infinitely better than scratching away at them the way I did in my dreams. I didn’t have any fingers to scratch with in this state.

But by the end of the two-hour-long session, I’d managed to uncover only two letters: A N.

B E L L A N

It wasn’t as much as I wanted, but at least it was a step in the right direction.

“Let’s try again on Friday,” Deverell said afterward.

“Why not sooner?” I asked, trying to hide my disappointment.

He shook his head. “Your mind needs time to recover from what we did here today. The brain’s a muscle, same as any other, and we just put it through a rigorous workout.”

I wanted to argue but could tell it was no use. As I left the classroom, I decided I would have to try again in Eli’s dream during our session tonight. Deverell had said it was dangerous to let anyone else see the name, but with so much at stake, I knew it was a risk I would have to take.

* * *

I told Eli this plan the moment I arrived in his dorm that night for our dream-session.

He thought about it for several long seconds before answering. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“What do you mean? Of course it is.” I leaned forward in the chair I was sitting in. Eli sat across from me on the sofa, slouched back and looking as hot as ever. The light blue T-shirt he wore was threadbare, as if from hundreds of washings, and it had a rip on the collar, one long enough that I could see the edge of the tattoo on his chest. Try as I did, I couldn’t keep my eyes from slipping down to it again and again.

Damn him.

Eli leaned forward, too, the opening in his shirt spreading even wider. “I don’t want you to get hurt, Dusty. If Deverell says your mind needs time to recover then we better do it.”