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

  One that would undoubtedly turn into a whole skeleton of trouble if a connection really existed between those creatures and Xanthippe’s disappearance.

  Twelve

  Persie

  Silence stretched like taffy being pulled, sticky and terrifyingly mesmerizing. A power play of sorts, each of us trying not to break first. Victoria and I had been sitting quietly for five minutes, and she showed no signs of relenting. She just sat there, in her cream-leather, wingback armchair… watching me. It felt like a test, and my every move could give away valuable information.

  I turned my nervous attention to the view. Gray rain pattered against the tall window, and I chased the droplets down the pane with my eyes. Beyond lay an expanse of emerald hills and drystone walls packed with pervasive olive-green moss, stark in contrast to the gloomy sky overhead—though the weather suited my mood perfectly.

  There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution. Oscar Wilde might have been onto something there, even if Dorian Gray wasn’t exactly the best role model. Part of me felt like I might feel better if I spilled all the beans and got this exhausting mess off my chest once and for all. If it was just about the pixies, I probably would have. But I didn’t want to admit my guilt over the pixie debacle if it would instantly tie me, and them, to this missing girl. Not without solid evidence that they were involved, which I refused to believe.

  “You may begin whenever you feel ready,” Victoria prompted. She’d broken the silence first, but it didn’t feel like a victory. It felt like a warning: speak, or I’ll have no choice but to take your silence as culpability. That sort of thing.

  I looked away from the window. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

  “There are a few less-intellectually-gifted students in this Institute, Persie, but you’re not one of them.” She leaned forward and steepled her fingers, the default setting for an adult with an axe to grind. “Xanthippe is missing, and there are extinct monsters loose in the Institute. They didn’t just wander in, Persie, and Xanthippe didn’t just wander out.”

  I shrugged, picking at the hem of my sweatshirt. “She might have.”

  “Then let’s set Xanthippe aside for a moment.” Victoria forced me to hold her intense gaze. I’d never seen eyes so dark, not up close. Dark eyes were usually brown, but her irises appeared to bleed directly out of her pupils. “The pixies, Persie. What do you know about them?”

  “Uh… they’re rare.” I gulped loudly.

  Victoria lifted a finger. “Not rare. Extinct. A subtle but important difference. One that you’re hopefully going to shed some light on. Any information, at this point, is vital.”

  But they didn’t take her! I wanted to shout it until I turned blue in the face, but a nagging doubt held my tongue. I sat with the idea that they might’ve been capable for a second, trying to make sense of it. Perhaps it was a mischief that had gone too far, and they didn’t intend to hurt her. Maybe they’d give her back when they got bored of the trick. My mind took a dive into darker territory. What if it was a hostage situation? We took one of theirs, so they took one of ours. My stomach jittered with nervous butterflies. I’d seen the she-pixie’s reaction when she’d been put in the Repository orb, and if that anger happened to spread across the whole horde… Perhaps it would be enough to warrant an abduction.

  “I don’t know much about them, Ms. Jules.” It wasn’t a lie. I knew about as much as Nathan.

  She cut to the chase. “Did you create them, Persie?”

  I swore not to disappoint you, didn’t I? I thought about lying to save my own butt. But she clearly already knew. I exhaled and said, “I Purged last night, after five days without one. I’ve never Purged more than one creature at a time before, but it happened, and the pixies came out of it. They wrecked my bedroom and set fire to the rug. I tried to get a handle on it, but by the time I put the fire out, the pixies had opened the door. I went out looking for them and caught one in Nathan O’Hara’s room. He found me in there, and I didn’t want to lie, so I showed him the creature and we put it in the Repository together. He wanted to help with the rest, but I ran off because I wanted to clean up my own mess. I wanted to prove I could control this, and I was… embarrassed that I’d screwed up again.” I took a deep breath, and realization dawned. I’d just accidentally thrown Nathan under the bus.

  I’d completely forgotten to keep him out of it. I opened my mouth to blurt an excuse for him, but Victoria interrupted before I could.

  “It’s okay, Persie. I already guessed Nathan was helping you when I found him ricocheting around in the Repository, trying to catch two more.” She gave the ghost of a smile, her eyes twinkling with surprising warmth. “He’s a good lad. But I wanted to hear it from you, anyway.”

  I lurched forward in my chair. “It wasn’t like I swore him to secrecy or anything, Ms. Jules. I know he would’ve told you if you’d asked, and I was going to come back to him for help if I needed it, but I was so desperate to get these pixies back on my own. I’ve been looking for them relentlessly—the whole night, actually. And I came close to catching a few. I only stopped because of the cleaners, and then my classes. But I was going to get you involved if they did anything bad. In fact, I made the decision this morning, after I realized the job was too big, that I was going to come to you and tell you everything at lunchtime. But, obviously, things didn’t work out that way.” I paused for another breath. “Please, Ms. Jules, you have to know that I was trying to do everything possible not to get expelled… or worse. I did intend to tell you. I just wanted to prove, to some degree, that I don’t need to rely on anyone else to scoop up my Purge debris.” I sank back in the chair, breathing like I’d run a marathon.

  Victoria observed me quietly, her expression unreadable. Did she believe me? Did she think I was an idiot for trying to go it alone? Did she respect me for deciding to tell her, even though I hadn’t gotten to her in time? Did she have an expulsion form at the ready, to kick me out for making all the wrong decisions? Even the warmth had gone from her eyes, replaced with a cool, blank nothing.

  All the while, I shifted uncomfortably on the chair, willing her to release the hounds or tell me everything would be okay. One or the other, but quickly, before I exploded with nerves.

  “And when did this Purge occur?” she said, eventually. A weirdly innocuous question, considering everything I’d just thrown at her.

  “Uh… around seven-thirty. I’d just gotten off the phone with my parents.”

  She nodded slowly. “You didn’t say anything to them about an imminent Purge?”

  “No.” My head sagged forward, to hide the heat in my cheeks.

  She continued with an unsettling composure. “And did you happen to see Xanthippe Evershot at any time during your scouring of the Institute?”

  “I wouldn’t know if I had, Ms. Jules. I’ve never met her, but I can say that I didn’t really see anyone while I was out searching for the pixies. I bumped into Nathan, Charlotte, and Genie, but that’s about it.” I scooted forward on the chair cushion. “I’d still like to help catch the pixies, Ms. Jules. That’s what I was going to ask when I told you everything. I don’t understand their language, but they seem to understand me. Maybe they’d be able to give us some idea of where she is, if they saw her, or if they know what happened to her.”

  Even if it’s just to get people off my back. I felt awful about Xanthippe, but I also wanted to give the pixies a chance to prove themselves innocent. It was funny to me—and not funny ha-ha—that people immediately laid blame on monsters. In my experience, humans were usually the culprits, especially if they had Purge-beast scapegoats to pin their misdeeds on. Aside from Leviathan, and the will of his dead mother, I’d never heard of a single beast who wanted to wreak havoc on the world, but I’d heard of plenty of humans.

  Then, a curious notion came to me. “The first priority is, obviously, making sure
Xanthippe is safely returned.” I paused, gathering courage. “But what if this has nothing to do with the pixies at all? Don’t get me wrong, the timing is very suspicious, but that doesn’t mean they’re to blame. What if this has something to do with magicals instead?”

  “Go on…” Victoria urged.

  I knew I might get into trouble with my parents for revealing this, but it made a lot of sense. More sense than a bunch of pixies spiriting away a student.

  “Well, my mom and dad are in the middle of an investigation. They’re looking for magicals who’ve been abducted across the US. It’s happening more and more frequently, and they don’t know who’s doing it. What if it’s more global than they realize? What if it’s linked to Xanthippe’s disappearance, too?”

  Her sleek eyebrow raised a quarter of an inch. A hint of surprise. “I admire your flexible thinking, but I find that highly unlikely. We currently have no clear evidence that Xanthippe has been hurt, nor any sign of a struggle or external abduction.” She flattened her palms onto the black marble desk, where veins of gold slithered through the darkness. “It’s my hope that the lass will show up on her own, but we do have to consider other possibilities.”

  I nodded eagerly. “That’s what I’m trying to say. Talk to my mom at the SDC about this. You might find out you’re investigating the same thing, and a problem shared is a problem halved, right?”

  Victoria physically sat back, as though she couldn’t even be near the idea. “This is an internal matter, Persie. Liaising with outside territories is out of the question, but we will conduct interviews with those who were close to Xanthippe within the Institute. That said, until we are able to exclude the pixies as suspects, they will be considered an immediate threat and hunted accordingly.”

  “What?! No! Sure, capture them, but don’t kill them!” I blurted out, my protective instinct flaring. The same one I’d felt when I’d held the she-pixie in my hands and knew I could’ve crushed her or spared her.

  Victoria mustered a bemused snort. “I didn’t say I’d have them killed, Persie. That’s not what hunting is about. You know that.” Her eyes narrowed slightly, as though she was wary of my impulsive outburst. Nathan sympathized with the monsters, in his own way, but I wondered if anyone had outright suggested an alternative to catching and trapping them. Maybe there wasn’t one.

  “Sorry…” I forced a smile. “It’s been a long day. My head’s not on straight.”

  She visibly relaxed. “They’ll be captured in the usual fashion and sent to the Bestiary, though I don’t imagine they’ll be much use to the Bestiary’s energy supplies.” Her fingertips toyed with a small, silver clover on her lapel, with the tiniest emerald in the center. “Although we’ll have to keep some specimens for training and research purposes, given their… recent resurgence into the world.”

  Specimens? The word riled me up, and I struggled to conceal my distaste. They weren’t lab rats. They had thoughts and personalities, and sass by the bucketload. I didn’t like the idea of them being prodded and poked by the Institute’s researchers. I knew that not all of them would be like Nathan.

  “How many pixies are we dealing with? An estimate will suffice,” Victoria said.

  I tried to picture the mayhem in my bedroom, my mouth moving in a silent tally. “Um… a couple dozen, I think.”

  Truthfully, I had no clue—except that there were definitely more than two dozen. By giving her a loose number, I’d leave some wiggle room to find some on my own and find out if they knew anything about Xanthippe’s disappearance. Getting them to trust me enough to tell me, however, would be the tricky part, and time was of the essence. Everyone knew that the first 72 hours in a missing persons case were the most crucial.

  “That shouldn’t be too challenging.” Victoria seemed pleased. If I’d said there were a thousand, even as a joke, I wondered if her calm façade would’ve cracked at all. What did it take to rattle the fabled Ms. Jules? I wasn’t sure, but I liked that she seemed completely fearless. It made the rest of us feel more at ease.

  Once I’ve caught some… then what? If I put them in a Repository orb, I’d hate myself for it. I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the she-pixie and her abject misery. Perhaps if I talked to Nathan about options, I might be able to come up with a better solution for the pixies. I could hide them somewhere safe, or set them free elsewhere, far from the Institute. Anyway, I’d have to cross that bridge when I came to it. What mattered now was capturing as many pixies as possible before the hunters got to them. Some would end up in boxes, but not all, and that was the most I could ask for at the moment.

  “That’ll be all, Persie.” Victoria stood and nodded to the door.

  My heart swelled. “Does that mean I’m not expelled?”

  “Why would I expel you?” Her expression softened a touch. “You showed perseverance and fortitude by trying to remedy the situation yourself. You were honest when it mattered. You sought help when it mattered. The Institute is here to teach you control, not to punish your mistakes. Do I wish you’d come to me sooner? Yes. That is why I gave you a direct line to my phone, and an emergency beeper. Do I understand why you didn’t? Also, yes. Though I believe you when you say you made the decision to come clean with me, even though the pixies were discovered prior to that. That shows an understanding of your limitations. So, no, you’re not expelled, though you will leave the pixie capture to the experts now.”

  “Thank you, Ms. Jules.” I scraped back the chair and hurried away before she could change her mind. Plus, I didn’t want my face to give me away.

  I had no intention of leaving it to the experts. Not entirely, at least. If I could use the pixies to find Xanthippe and exonerate them in the same breath, then I would. That way, everyone here would understand that it wasn’t always the monster’s fault. I had nothing but respect for Victoria, but her “they’re fuel and nothing more” attitude left a bitter taste in my mouth.

  If it’s not the pixies, then who is responsible? That was a perplexing thought for another day. And not one I could consider just yet, not with the pixies at the top of the culprit list.

  Thirteen

  Persie

  I walked out to find Genie waiting, midway through a tense conversation with Nathan. He shot up like I’d caught him doing something wrong. Genie jumped up with him and threw her arms around me.

  “Persie! Thank Chaos, are you okay?” She clung to me and I held her back.

  Meanwhile, Nathan scrambled to get a pile of books together. He made an awkward bow in our direction before disappearing into Victoria’s office. The door closed behind him with an ominous thud. I wanted to warn him that I’d unintentionally thrown him to the lions, but Victoria hadn’t seemed remotely surprised by Nathan’s involvement. I hoped she’d go easy on him. She’d said he was a nice “lad,” after all.

  “Well, I’m not expelled.” I mustered a stilted laugh. “But we’ve got work to do.”

  She pulled away. “We do?”

  “Oh, yes, and we’re starting with the engineering lab.” I led her away by the arm, filling her in on the way. “So, you see the predicament here. We’ve got to beat the hunters, and that calls for puzzle boxes.”

  “If you downplayed it to Victoria, how many pixies are we actually talking about?” She eyed me with a glimmer of approval, and a hint of “I’m not going to like this, am I?”

  I pretended to count on my fingers. “Maybe thirty to forty.”

  “Holy crap, Persie!” She clamped her hand over her mouth, eyes bugging. “That means… we need to catch, like, three dozen?!”

  “Something like that.” I dragged her faster through the halls. By now, everyone would have dispersed from engineering. They were probably in the common areas or their bedrooms, having a long old gossip about how unsuitable I was to be a student here. They’d have to vent their energy somewhere now that Victoria had put the Institute into a loose version of lockdown, with no classes for the foreseeable future. At least it would make my classm
ates easier to avoid. I just hoped Naomi had hung around so we could ask her for some puzzle boxes. After dodging an expulsion, I didn’t feel like sliding back into the firing line for stealing.

  “Let me get this straight.” Genie strode along beside me, our arms still linked. “While the Institute is investigating Xanthippe’s disappearance and the potential connection to your ankle-biters, we’re going on a mission of our own to try and catch as many pixies as possible? Aren’t we just doing the same thing as the hunters?”

  I shook my head. “Nope. We’re going to get the pixies to help us.”

  She spun me around and put her palm to my forehead. “Are you feeling okay? Do you need to sit down and take a few minutes? I think you’ve lost the plot.”

  “This is the only way,” I insisted, removing her hand and continuing down the corridor. “They can sneak into places that we can’t. They might’ve seen something nobody else did. And, on the off chance that they did this, I can hopefully persuade them to come clean and show us where Xanthippe is.”

  “Is this about the dream? Don’t get me wrong, I see why it’d frighten the crap out of you. But if Victoria didn’t expel you or anything, then maybe everything’s peachy. She’ll just give her hunters a piece of her mind for not watching you when they were supposed to, and that’ll be that.”

  It’s not enough. I pressed on, as determined in my stride as I was in my mind. Clearing the pixies of Xanthippe’s disappearance might have been the one thing that could stop the whole Institute from looking at me like a ticking timebomb. Victoria had not been unsympathetic, but if enough people pressured her to get rid of me, maybe there would come a time when she had to buckle to keep the peace. If I could nip that in the bud, then I could get on with the training I came here for.