Harley Merlin 19: Persie Merlin and the Door to Nowhere Read online

  “Okay, I’m really going to need an explanation.” Nathan came nearer, eyeing his jacket with a mixture of curiosity and confusion. “What’s in there?”

  I gripped the top of the sack tighter, feeling the tiny monster trying to force her way out. “Honestly? I don’t know. A monster of some kind. She looks a bit like Archimedes, but not quite the same.”

  His eyes widened. “She?”

  “I mean, I’m no expert, but I think she’s a she,” I replied.

  “May I?”

  I hesitated. “Close the door first. If she gets out, you’re going to have to help me catch her again. I’ve been chasing her for ages.” I paused, my cheeks heating up. “And there’s some yogurt on your kitchen floor. Sorry about that.”

  Nathan closed the bedroom door. “No problem. I can catch monsters when I have to, you know…” He arched an eyebrow. “But I don’t much care for it. I suppose that’s why I ended up a researcher instead of a bona fide hunter. You see, there comes a moment, for some people, during training where—I’m digressing, apologies. Please, let me see the creature, and I’ll try not to let it loose.”

  I wonder what he was going to say… It sounded like the beginning of something profound, but it would have to wait—the ferocity inside the makeshift sack had amped up a level. My fluttery friend strained against the opening, and I realized I’d probably frightened her by trapping her in a dark mass of tweed. Maybe if I gave her some air and made her feel more comfortable, she would calm down.

  Feeling for her thin body through the fabric, I wrapped a hand around what I hoped was her waist and peeled back a few pieces of the gathered jacket. Her head poked out, her needle-sharp teeth gnashing at me as more rude shrieks pierced my ears. Those big black eyes narrowed as she sucked in deep breaths and tried to shimmy her shoulders out. I let her wriggle her arms loose, but made sure to keep the wings locked down.

  Nathan yelped so loud I almost dropped the monster again. “No way! This isn’t possible!” He took off his glasses and wiped them on his polo shirt before putting them back on, like he couldn’t quite believe his eyes. “For the love of Chaos, this is… this is incredible! Never in my life did I think I’d see one in the flesh!”

  “Would you mind sharing?” I asked.

  The tiny monster looked pretty cool, for sure, but she didn’t look special enough to get a grown man jigging around like a little kid. He’d leave boot marks on his super-clean floor if he wasn’t careful.

  “Sorry, yes, of course.” He clasped his hands together, grinning so wide the corners of his glasses dug into his cheeks. “Persie, you have no idea how amazing this is. The creature you’re holding in your hands is… goodness, I can’t believe I’m saying this. It’s a pixie!”

  I nodded dumbly. “And that’s… good?”

  “Good?” He gave the first real guffaw I’d ever heard in my life. “It’s more than good, Persie! This might be the rarest monster I’ve ever laid eyes on. In fact, they’re archived under ‘obsolete’ in just about every monster research library you’re likely to come across. Pixies are… Oh goodness, oh goodness, this is so exciting!”

  “They’re what?” My Purge not only made him dance like a marionette with the shakes, it had also made him very distractible.

  He clamped a stunned hand across his mouth, then removed it, saying, “They’re supposed to be extinct, Persie! Extinct! Defunct! Nonexistent! Pick your synonym! And you’re holding one in my jacket!” He laughed so hard I worried for his blood pressure. Even the pixie stopped squawking for a second and stared at him with scathing judgment. She turned her face toward me, and I swore she rolled her twinkly black eyes. It took everything I had not to snort and ruin Nathan’s moment of euphoria.

  “Well, then, they can’t be extinct,” I said sagely, but Nathan shook his head.

  “That’s just it! Even the rarest of creatures will pop up on our radar from time to time, but the last sighting was over a hundred years ago. This… this is an impossible monster.” He held out his hand to touch her, and she snapped her teeth at him. His fingertips recoiled out of harm’s way. “She’s certainly spirited. Now, you have to tell me, did you create her or did you find her? They’re of Celtic origin, though they used to be found primarily in Devon and Cornwall in England. Perhaps they’ve reappeared here of their own accord, or perhaps the land itself has manifested them back into existence? Ireland is famously rich in magic, so it would not be entirely out of the question. Chaos, that would be thrilling! It would change everything we know about monster creation! Oh, think of all the theses I could write.” He went off into a daze, evidently dreaming of sleepless nights at his computer and mountains of research. In fact, I wasn’t even sure he still knew I was there. I felt almost reluctant to burst his academic bubble.

  Wait… what do I tell him? My mind forked into two roads. Nathan knew more about monsters than I did, which meant he could be useful in figuring out what these things liked and how to wrangle a whole bunch of them. Although I supposed he could do that without knowing I’d created them. On the flipside, I thought about the implications of what I’d done. I’d expelled a horde of formerly extinct pixies, which was an oxymoron in and of itself; something was either extinct or it wasn’t. What if people worried about the other extinct things I might Purge—creatures with far more dangerous motives than these mischievous things?

  The glass box loomed large in my fears.

  “Persie?” Nathan prompted, waiting impatiently.

  I glanced down at the pixie and she gave me a shrug. “I took an evening stroll, and I happened to see her moving down the hallway. I chased her because I figured she probably shouldn’t be running wild, and I found her rifling through your underwear drawer.” I settled on a compromise—not the whole truth, but not a lie, either. It seemed like the best course of action, though the little she-pixie didn’t appear to agree. She snickered into the tweed, muttering something that sounded a lot like “big fat fibber.”

  Nathan laughed, then asked nervously, “But where did she come from in the first place?”

  “Right… that.” I couldn’t conjure up a believable excuse out of thin air, and I didn’t know that I wanted to. But the truth… that would mean admitting that things had gone horribly awry.

  He offered me a reassuring smile. “Persie, it’s okay. You can be honest with me. The scholars and their assistants were all briefed about your unique ability, and if this pixie came from that, then I won’t judge you for it or get you into any sort of trouble. Truthfully, I will be in utter awe of you.”

  “You will?” An unexpected lump formed in my throat.

  “Did you not see me before? I think I squealed like a piglet when you showed this creature to me, Persie. I would be over the moon if you created it!” He grinned from ear to ear. “There are some fairly gaping holes in a land-emission theory, so you would be saving me a great deal of wasted time and effort delving into how that could be possible.”

  The pixie chirped and gave my hand a nudge that said, “Go on, stop being a coward.”

  “Shush, you,” I muttered.

  “You understand her?!”

  I mustered a nervous laugh. “No, but I get the gist. You know, when someone shakes a fist at you, or glares at you, or rolls their eyes, you generally know how they’re feeling.” I sighed, my stomach doing somersaults. “Okay, so I Purged her. That’s where she came from. Me. I’m so sorry that I invaded your space. I wouldn’t have done it if I wasn’t—”

  He cut me off with a sudden round of applause. “What are you apologizing for? This is momentous, Persie!” He waggled his hands in another bizarre dance, shuffling his feet a bit. For just that moment, I was glad Genie wasn’t here, more for his sake than hers. She always said that the moment a guy made you cringe, especially in the fledgling stages of flirtation, it was game over.

  I looked back down at the pixie—who had started smoothing a dramatic hand across her mossy hair, relishing the praise—and I found a smile tugging at the
corners of my lips. She certainly had personality, even if she had given me the run-around. I mean, if someone had been trying to catch me, I imagined I’d do just about anything to give them the slip, too.

  “You’ve got no idea how envious I am,” Nathan said, continuing to gush. “Don’t misunderstand me, I’m sure it has its drawbacks, and I don’t want you to think I’m making light of it, but to create something so wonderful—that is everyone’s dream, isn’t it? To make a masterpiece. Some see it in their children, some see it in their first novel, or in a piece of artwork, or a play, or a dance. Some see it in successful business endeavors, or landing a dream job, or making a difference in someone else’s life. Some see it in research, or teaching, or—I’m rambling again, aren’t I?”

  I smiled. “A little.”

  “What I’m trying to say is, some people spend their entire lives pursuing this, and you have already achieved it. You, and what you are able to do… It’s nothing short of astonishing.” He reached toward the pixie again. Now that she’d received his endless flow of compliments, she allowed him to get a smidge closer before she gave a warning snap of her teeth.

  “I’ve never thought of it as anything but a curse,” I admitted. If he fully understood what my body and mind went through in order to expel these creatures, I sensed he wouldn’t be nearly so envious. And yet, glancing at the pixie, I couldn’t deny her beauty. Just looking at her made me want to grab a pencil and start sketching, so I could put every feature to paper-memory. She had life because of me. Sure, her and her wrecking-ball crew weren’t using that life so wisely, but they would’ve gone on being extinct if not for my Purge. There had to be some magic in that—if not the Chaos kind, then the emotional kind.

  I held her in my hands and felt her chest rising and falling, felt the toughness of her muscle and bone, as real as Nathan or me. Maybe that made me more than a conduit. Or, maybe, Leviathan’s gift had a way of tricking me into thinking that, the way a mother forgets the specifics of the intolerable pain of childbirth. If they remembered, no one would be crazy enough to have more kids, right?

  Nathan nodded. “It’s your cross to bear, and I’m not going to tell you what to think about it. But I will marvel at the outcome.” He put a fingertip on a pleat of the tweed jacket, and the pixie slapped it away with a shrill chatter. “You might not like me much, pixie, but you’re remarkable.”

  “I don’t think it’s personal.” I eyed the pixie and she blew a raspberry at me. Not exactly polite, as far as creations were concerned. The griffin had been much more reverent toward me, though it was hard to imagine a griffin sticking out its tongue.

  “We should get her to the Monster Repository,” Nathan suggested. “I would offer her some closet space, but I have a feeling she would take the first opportunity to escape.”

  Before the pixie could argue, I juggled the makeshift sack and my backpack and took out a Mason jar. Removing the lid, I loosened the neck of the sack and clamped it over the jar’s entrance, watching as black mist poured inside. I had the pixie trapped.

  “Sounds good to me. I don’t have the energy to chase her any more tonight. Tomorrow, my bruises will have bruises.”

  He paused awkwardly. “And if we could forget the underwear part, I would be eternally grateful, as I’m sure you would be?”

  “No problem. Your secret is safe with me.” My cheeks seared with embarrassment. “But… there’s one other thing you should know.”

  “What’s that?” He raised an eyebrow.

  I had to tell him. “There are a lot of these loose. Thirty or more.”

  He mustered a deep, calming sigh. “Well, let’s deal with this one first, and then we can think about the rest. This will require some reading.”

  With the pixie’s black mist kicking up a royal fuss inside the Mason jar, we set off for the Repository.

  Entering the realm of the silver-poled, blue-tinged glass orbs, I stopped dead on the threshold. For a good few seconds, I wasn’t sure I’d stepped into the same place as before. The light of the Repository had shifted as night had crept in sometime between my Purge and my wild pixie chase. The blue glass now looked navy, bordering on true black, dulling the silvered moonlight that touched the surface. Shadows moved across the white floor, which appeared unnaturally pale against the contrasting dark.

  I put a foot forward, and the darkness appeared to follow, the shadows closing in somehow. The glass orbs hadn’t frightened me before, but now that the night had transformed them, I felt as if the monsters inside could burst out at any moment, becoming one with the glass in order to overwhelm their enclosures. I couldn’t even see the black mist swirling inside anymore. It set my nerves on a knife-edge, the hairs on the back of my neck tingling as if I were being watched.

  I’m being stupid. I’m just tired.

  “Over here.” Nathan beckoned me to a nearby orb. “We’ve got smaller ones, but I don’t like using them unless we’re reaching capacity. She deserves some space to stretch, you know?”

  I eyed the Mason jar; the pixie, in mist form, hadn’t stopped swirling violently the whole walk over. “I guess so.”

  But when someone or something was in a cage, did it really matter how big the cage was? It didn’t change the fact that they were trapped. I shook off the thought, knowing it had to happen. The thought of a free-range pixie was nice in theory, but I’d seen what they were capable of. If this one didn’t go inside an orb, what else would I do with her? Let her go so she could wreak more havoc? No matter how I considered it, I arrived at the same conclusion: She had to go in the cage.

  “Can you hand her to me?” Nathan asked, still visibly buzzing from the night’s events. I had to say, it felt nice to have someone treat my Purge as a cool ability instead of something to panic about. I hadn’t known I’d needed a fresh perspective, but it had helped. Genie and my parents claimed they weren’t afraid of what I could do, but when a Purge threatened, I saw it on their faces. Nathan was different.

  I gave him the jar, and he proceeded to work his magic on the orb. His mouth moved silently as he conjured the spell that would crack it open. Soon enough, a twisting iris opened in the glass surface, expelling a rush of cold air. Nathan took off the jar’s lid, shoved the top into the opening, and gave it a gentle shake, prompting the mist to cascade into the orb. As quickly as he could, he snatched the jar away and the iris twisted shut again before the pixie had time to react. Still, she more than made up for it once the iris had closed. Erupting back into her physical form, she pounded her miniature hands against the glass, the faint spots across her body throbbing violently. Her black eyes turned in my direction, filled with rage and sadness, and I knew she blamed me for this. Who else was there?

  “I’m going to grab a few books that might be useful, as there’s not much lore on these creatures. Are you okay to stay here, or do you want to come with me to my study? It’s just over there.” He gestured toward a door, tucked away on the far side of the Repository behind the bubble forest.

  I shook my head. “I’ll be fine here.”

  “Okay, I’ll only be a minute.” He darted away, practically skipping to his study.

  I couldn’t muster the same enthusiasm, even though, technically, I’d done what I’d set out to do. I’d caught and caged my first real-world Purge beast. Regardless, my fingers itched, albeit illogically, to let the pixie back out of her prison. It might not have been shaped like a box, but it served the same purpose as the box from my nightmare—the same ones that housed countless monsters year after year. I hated to see her thudding her tiny fists against the glass, the same way I’d done in that petrifying dream.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

  The pixie glared back, hammering harder for the freedom she couldn’t have. In the end, I had to turn away from her, even though I felt like a chicken for not facing her. Why had I bothered giving her life at all, if this was where she’d spend it?

  Nathan came back a few minutes later, his nose already buried in a boo
k. He had an entire stack in his arms, his eyes flitting left to right as he plowed through the information within. “Ah, here it is! I knew I’d seen it somewhere.”

  He stopped abruptly, one step from bumping into a low-hanging orb. With a grin, he turned the pages toward me before flipping them back.

  “So, it says here that pixies are curious and playful creatures, with a distinct mischievous streak. They are known to play tricks and jests and cause trouble, but they are not evil or malicious by nature. They love to dance and gather in large numbers. They will defend themselves when they feel threatened, but they won’t attack unprovoked.” He licked his finger and flicked through a few more pages. “Oh… and they love milk and sweet fruits. In the old days, it was believed that if you left a saucer of milk outside your house each night, then the pixies wouldn’t play tricks on you. They were even thought to bring good fortune on homes that left milk out for them.”

  “That’s why she went into your fridge.” With new understanding, I pictured her struggling with the large bottle of milk.

  He peered over the book. “Huh?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Books aren’t always correct, but this is a good starting point.” He snapped the volume shut, looking pleased with himself. “We’ll have to do some more research, considering what you told me about there being a lot of these creatures on the loose.”

  I gulped. “Yeah, sorry about that…”

  “Why should you be sorry? You don’t have any say over it.” He didn’t look scared, per se, but he certainly looked a bit warier. However, I found myself distracted by the prickle up the back of my neck. It got worse, all of a sudden, turning into a searing burn that made my ears tingle. A quick look around at the Repository revealed the reason. The monsters inside had all transformed out of their mist states and fixed their eyes firmly on me. They watched me with a mixture of expressions: intrigue, caution, disappointment, excitement, to name a few.