whatever was about to happen next suddenly dissolved in her mind like the tide washing away a sandcastle as the sound of the alarm rang in her ear. For a moment she just lay there in a tangle of sheets and sweat. The alarm rang again and this time she jumped out of bed, eager to push away any remnants of the dream. The dream where her mom seemed to be hiding something from her. She quickly got dressed so that she could join Loni and Tyler and see if they’d had success in finding answers to the question that had been going around in her mind like a carousel. What exactly was a darkhel?
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
For the first time since the explosion in the food court, Emma realized that all eyes weren’t on her as she hurried across to the cafeteria to where her friends were both sitting. Which in turn meant that her fight last night must’ve gone by undetected. Thank goodness for Northern California’s early-evening fog and gloom.
Tyler shook his head so that his red hair scattered in all directions. “Well?” she demanded the minute she sat down. “Did you find anything out?”
“Sorry, Em. There was nothing. I even tried sweet-talking Gretchen, but unfortunately she appears to be completely unbribable.”
“You tried to bribe Gretchen the librarian?” Emma said.
“‘Tried’ being the operative word.” Tyler let out a disappointed sigh. “I figured since Brenda is always walking around with old-fashioned-looking leather books, there must be some secret stash that was reserved for really brainy people, or really sneaky ones. But apparently not.”
“But don’t worry,” Loni added, no doubt catching Emma’s look of frustration. “Because I have an idea. It’s been really bugging me all night about how the darkhel even got into Burtonwood. Twice. I mean, this place is warded up to the hilt, so technically it shouldn’t have been here.”
“Hence the conundrum.” Emma tapped the table in frustration. “Since that’s the reason why Kessler doesn’t believe me—well, that and the fact that this thing apparently doesn’t exist. But then again, the little fairies don’t seem to be affected by wards either, which is why they can come and go so freely at the mall.”
“Yes, but we have a lot more wards at Burtonwood than they have at the mall,” Loni pointed out. “The double Windsor alone pumps out so much voltage that it should fry any elemental within a three-mile radius, and we have twenty of them dotted around the boundaries, which is why I’m wondering if the darkhel has managed to interfere with one of them.”
“Is that even possible?” Emma frowned and tried to remember everything she had learned in her Ward Building class. I mean, aren’t the wards designed so that elementals can’t tamper with them?”
“Yes, as a rule,” Loni said, “but since we don’t know anything about the darkhel, we really don’t know what it’s capable of. You said it had talons, but it also sounded like it was pretty dexterous. I don’t suppose you noticed if it had opposable thumbs?”
Emma stared at her blankly.
“No, I didn’t think so,” Loni quickly added. “Anyway, I thought I should go and make sure that everything’s okay with all the wards.”
“You can do that?” Now it was Tyler’s turn to look surprised.
“I can.” Loni grinned as she pulled out a small map of what looked like the entire Burtonwood grounds. “Who knew it would be so handy that I spent all that time tagging after the tech guys watching them do their maintenance. Anyway, all I need to do is slip into the workroom at lunchtime and get my hands on an analyzer. It will tell me if the electromagnetic field is still working and at what voltage it is pumping out the positive electrons. As long as it’s over fifty volts, then the wards are working. Simple.”
“You know, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Loni’s just a bucket of plutonium away from being an evil genius.” Tyler grinned.
“Ignore him,” Loni advised as she gave Tyler a friendly shove. “Because the important thing is that we’re going to get to the bottom of this. I know we are. We’ve just got to stay positive.”
By the end of the day Emma realized that just because a person wanted to figure something out didn’t mean the person would figure something out. Not that she’d really had much of a chance, since between going to classes and her after-school detention, her time hadn’t exactly been her own. But if