Page 107 of Sweet Nightmare

“But I don’t know.” I reach for him, but he backs away again. “Because you’ve never told me. If you want me to back off, if you want me to leave you alone, tell me whatever secret it is that has you locking yourself away from me. Tell me why you keep running away.”

He gestures to the air around us, to the swirling, black plumes that fill the air. And then he throws his arms out, and right in front of me, he pulls them back onto his body. One after the other after the other.

They disappear in moments, but he doesn’t stop there. He keeps his arms where they are, his fingers curling into fists as he grasps at the air over and over again. And keeps pulling more and more of the ropes through the air and onto his skin.

Not just the ones around us, but from everywhere. I turn to watch them float like black mist out of the students still milling on the center mall, one after the other. Then they glide through the rain-drenched air straight toward Jude, swirling themselves into tighter and tighter ropes until they finally reach Jude and slither straight onto his skin.

“I’m not just an oneiroi,” he tells me jaggedly. “I’m the Prince of Nightmares. And this”—he gestures to the broken, battered students all around us—“is all my fault.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

HAPPILY

NEVER AFTER

Shock reverberates through me at his words.

I know there are royal families for each kind of paranormal—along with whole, elaborate courts for each as well. Just like I know that the reinstatement of the Gargoyle Court has swept through the paranormal world like a cyclone, shaking everyone up with its new queen. We’re isolated here at Calder Academy, but not so isolated that something like that doesn’t show up on our radar. Especially since my cousin, Carolina, died trying to help the new Gargoyle Queen in a war against the Vampire King.

But the Prince of Nightmares? The Nightmare Court? Those are things only whispered about in the scary stories kids tell each other—or by adults, late at night, after they’re sure the kids have gone to bed.

The Nightmare Court—and its ruler—is so feared that no one wants to attract their attention. Yet Jude, apparently the Prince of Nightmares—has been here at Calder Academy all along.

How is that possible? And why?

But he’s still watching me with eyes gone prismatic with pain. I know I have to say something, know I have to answer him. But I don’t have a clue how to respond right now.

So, in the end, I say the only thing that I know is true. “I don’t understand.”

“What’s there to understand?” he asks with a pained laugh. “Haven’t you ever wondered why you never had nightmares after I got to the island? Why no one has? It’s because I harvest them.”

“Harvest?”

“I still have my magic, Clementine. All of it.”

“What do you mean?” I demand as I cross to stand next to him. “The school locks down everyone’s powers.”

“Not mine,” he says quietly. “The island’s power blocking has never worked on me—I don’t know why. It’s just how it’s always been.”

His quiet explanation shakes me to my core, has me reevaluating everything my mother and aunts and uncles have ever said to me about student magic and how they control it on the island.

“I don’t understand,” I finally say. “How is that possible?”

“I don’t know,” he answers with a baffled shrug. “When I got here, no one ever mentioned anything to me about locking my powers down, and no one ever did anything to dampen them. I didn’t even know it was school policy until you and Carolina mentioned it weeks later.”

I’m still reeling, so I let that go—as well as the question about why he didn’t tell me any of this sooner. We have bigger things to worry about right now. Though I am curious about one thing. “That’s a lot of magic that you carry around with you. How did you keep anyone from noticing?”

“I use it, every night. Too exhaust my power and keep it in check—keep it from hurting anyone—I harvest nightmares from everyone on the island. I store them—”

“On your skin,” I whisper, part fascinated and part horrified. “All those twisty black things. They’re nightmares.”

He nods.

“But there aren’t enough. I mean, there are a lot,” I tell him, especially now that they’re all over his face. “But not enough to be every nightmare you’ve harvested from every person on the island for the last decade or so. Right?”

“After I harvest them, I funnel them into something else and that takes care of them.”

I want to ask him what he funnels them into—and how exactly they are taken of—but right now, that seems like the least of our problems. So I settle for something more pertinent.

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