The Nightmare Affair by Mindee Arnett Read Free Book Online Page A

I’ve tried before and never had any luck. Only, hasn’t your Mom done it?”
    “All the time,” I said. This, more than any other reason, was why my mother had such a bad reputation. She made a regular—and miraculous—habit of breaking The Will.
    “Any idea how she does it?” asked Selene.
    I opened my mouth to respond but the cafeteria suddenly went silent. I peered around, wondering what had gotten into everybody. Didn’t take long to figure out.
    Eli stood just inside the main entrance, surveying the crowd. He looked as hot as ever with his short black hair and eyes so bright a blue you could almost see the color from a distance. His dark gray T-shirt with some band logo on the front fit snug across his chest, and his frayed jeans hung low on his hips. Things would’ve been a lot less uncomfortable if I didn’t find him quite so appealing. Stupid male magnetism .
    He wore his usual tough-guy expression, but I detected shock and a little fear in the rigid way he stood there. I sympathized. The students had reacted with the same judgmental silence when I made my first appearance. I was sure it didn’t help that Eli was so new to the whole concept of magickind. The faces staring back at him weren’t all that weird, not with Arkwell’s ninety percent Humanoid Resemblance Requirement for admission, but plenty were weird enough.
    That remaining ten percent could be a doozy if the kids weren’t wearing their glamour charms that day: some had pointed ears or oddly colored skin, even horns and tails. Selene and the other sirens had wings. Not that I’d ever seen them. Sirens were like birds in that way; their wings were visible only when they were using them. But The Will prevented people from flying, which meant sirens rarely had a reason to unfurl them.
    Still, Eli was the true weirdo here. He was one hundred percent ordinary. Talk about being a disadvantaged student.
    Eli gazed at me, his eyes narrowing into something like a glare. A spark of fear went through me, and my nerve endings tingled. I wanted to look away, but couldn’t. Silly as it sounded, we were connected now. For better or for worse.
    It was definitely going to be worse.
    For one terrible, nauseating moment I thought he was going to come over to me right then and give me a telling-off for getting him involved in this mess, but he marched down the main aisle through the row of tables until he reached the one farthest from the cafeteria monitor’s station. Not just any table, of course, but the table. The popular kids’ table. Mr. Popularity himself, Lance Rathbone, immediately started introducing him to the other cool kids. Lance was a wizard whose father was a big-shot senator.
    Eli’s easy acceptance surprised me. The amount of magic a person could wield—at least in theory—mattered a lot when it came to the social ladder around here, and Eli had none. Katarina bestowed one of her dazzling smiles on Eli and gestured for him to sit beside her. Eli’s eyes widened, and he practically fell into the chair. Apparently, I’d underestimated the importance of good looks even among magickind.
    “Geez,” I said, looking back at Selene. “Is being at the top of the social food chain like a universal birthright or something?”
    She grimaced. “I think there’s a national registry. It’s online at eat-crap-dot-com.”
    I forced another smile.
    “So I guess he was popular at your old school?”
    “Um, yeah, you could say that.” Back at Chickery High, I’d been fairly popular, too. I didn’t inhabit the inner circles Eli did, but I had plenty of friends, most of them my teammates from soccer.
    “Well, he is pretty cute,” Selene said, looking him up and down. “Not that I care one bit about that. Looks shouldn’t matter when it comes to judging a person.”
    I snorted. “Yeah, right.”
    She grinned. “So you think he’s hot, too.”
    I shrugged, feeling suddenly warmer than before.
    “He must be Lance’s new