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

  “I thought Victoria warned you about the biting?” I asked, smiling.

  “She said I couldn’t bite any of her people,” Genie reminded me.

  After the banshee debacle, she’d apparently bared her teeth—figuratively and literally. It certainly explained why a few of the other students had been wary around her when we’d done some exploring of the Institute.

  Genie waited as I took a clean T-shirt and my mom’s fancy leggings from the old-timey wardrobe crammed in beside my bed. As I changed, the scent of the clothes briefly whisked me away to the SDC, the home I couldn’t go back to. Crap, I’m going to have to learn how to do my own laundry… It was just the dose of independent reality that I needed to stop dwelling on the bad. O’Halloran had made his position clear—I still wasn’t welcome back home, as long as I was a perceived risk—but so had my parents and Victoria Jules.

  And so had I. I was here to learn and get this curse under my control, and once I’d succeeded in doing that, I could go back to O’Halloran with a diploma in my hand that said to the world, I’m in control. I belong, no matter what I am. Frankly, I couldn’t wait to get started, and figuring out a washing machine couldn’t be any harder than Purging a beast… right?

  After throwing on my clothes, I walked a few steps toward the mirror that hung on the opposite wall. I scooped my dark hair into a messy bun, which looked more sleepless-chic than casual-chic. But I wasn’t there to be part of a fashion parade, as my mom would’ve said. I was there to become the best damn hunter I could be.

  “What if all these nerves make me Purge?” I checked my reflection. The gray complexion and the dark circles under my eyes definitely told of uneasy dreams. Purging was never far from my mind, and the anticipation grew with every Purgeless day that passed.

  “You’re in an Institute full of hunters whose primary purpose is to capture Purge beasts. That’s why we chose it,” she said matter-of-factly. “There’s no safer place for you. Even your mom agreed on that, in the end.”

  I faltered, having a momentary crisis of confidence. “What if they never truly accept me, though? If I end up being a liability, they’ll have a hard time viewing me as anything but a… problem.” The word monster had almost come out, but I’d stopped myself. Even if I Purged them, I wasn’t one myself, and a curse couldn’t change that.

  “Victoria is gaga over you!” Genie swooped in with a bit of bolstering. “You think she hands out invites like a broken candy machine? She chose you because of your Purge ability. She’s not scared of it, and neither am I. I doubt anyone will be. They might be curious about you, but then the novelty will wear off and you’ll fit right in with everyone else. I feel it in my Atlantean waters, and they’re rarely wrong.”

  I chuckled. “You and your waters.”

  “Besides, Victoria will have put hunters on standby in case of emergency, and you’ve got your beeper thing.” Genie leaned out the door and pointed down the stone hallway. “There’s a dude at the end of the corridor who’s been loitering there since last night, and there’s only one reason he’d be hanging out in the ladies’ dorms. Actually, there’s two, but I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt. Victoria has all bases covered, so all you need to worry about is—”

  “Learning how to hunt and capture properly, so I can turn this curse into a gift.” I finished the sentence for her as I gave myself a stern look in the mirror.

  “Exactly.” Genie smiled at me like a proud mother hen.

  It was going to be a long, hard process, but I hadn’t come all this way for nothing. This was what I’d wanted—a new start to my independence, where I could make a change. Sure, I hadn’t expected to have to give up the SDC for this, but it had played out that way, so I had to make it worth it. And Genie was right—until I had more knowledge and practical training under my belt, I had the Institute watching my back.

  And I had my best friend at my side, going through all of this with me.

  It’s definitely a start. I looked back at my reflection and smiled. I had to remember; I’d asked for this. I’d wanted to do more for myself so I wouldn’t have to rely on friends and family—or other hunters, for that matter—to save my ass when I puked up a Purge beast. And I was only going to learn this stuff here.

  Victoria knew what she’d gotten herself into when she’d seen me unleash a banshee, and she’d still accepted me. I had to trust her judgment.

  And if it’s not enough and I fail, they can always put me in a box… I hadn’t meant to think it, but the dream clung to the back of my mind. It had scared the bejeezus out of me because it had felt so painfully, desperately real, devoid of the usual fluff and trickery. Maybe, all things considered, my mind actually was my own worst enemy; I didn’t need Leviathan to show me my gravest fears because I already had them lined up and ready to go. Despite my determination to ignore it, I had a feeling I wouldn’t be able to shake the dream entirely. Not with my knuckles still sore and bruised, each dull ache a reminder of what I’d experienced.

  “We need to get a move on,” Genie said. “Charlotte Basani is leading our tour, and I don’t want to be late!”

  I grabbed a notebook and shoved it into a backpack. “Is she one of the instructors?”

  “Charlotte?” Genie giggled like a schoolgirl. “No, she’s Shailene Basani’s daughter.”

  “Right, got it.” I remembered now—Fay and Shailene were the twin founders of this place, and it stood to reason that one of them would’ve had kids. I slung the backpack over my shoulder and headed for the door. “Kes had us cram so much into our skulls that I think a lot got pushed out right after.”

  Genie made an airy, whistling noise. “It was literally in one ear and out the other with me, but I know all about Charlotte from the ever-helpful grapevine.” She turned and we walked down the corridor together, past the hunter who had apparently been keeping watch all night. He gave a discreet nod and immediately walked off in the opposite direction. “Everyone talks about her. She’s apparently one of the best monster hunters to have ever come out of this Institute. Top-ranking, future head-huntswoman material, with a Bestia ability that I’d kill for! And she’s got the name to go with it.”

  “Bestia? I don’t know that one.” We fell in step, and the chatter helped ease my increasing nerves.

  “It means she can turn into all sorts of creatures and get into their mindset, which gives her a massive edge when hunting.”

  “Isn’t that just Shapeshifting?”

  “Kind of, but it’s exclusive to animals. I hear she can even change into a few Purge beasts, but you know what the rumor mill is like.” She sighed, as if she were already besotted with this Basani woman. “Still, it’d be amazing if she could, and it would definitely explain the glowing resume.”

  Turning the corner of the cavernous hallway that led into the main body of the Institute, where the old collided with the modern, I spotted two more hunters who were doing a terrible job of acting nonchalant. They’d obviously been stationed there to keep an eye on me. I didn’t mind, given my history, but their presence made me feel like a pariah before I’d even gotten started. A watched enemy in the ranks, one who could go rogue at any moment. I was really trying to be optimistic, but every time I glanced at my knuckles and thought of the curse that had brought me there, my lungs seemed to shrivel like prunes and my throat got tight.

  You will smash them all. Leviathan’s words hadn’t sounded at all comforting while I was deep in the tangle of the dream. But now… I remembered the panic I’d felt pummeling that glass, willing it to break beneath my futile fists. Faced with the prospect of life in a box if I couldn’t make this work, those words now acted as a weird salve to my fears. And that worried me most of all.

  Two

  Persie

  “Would a signpost be too much to ask for?” Genie came to a stop beside a display case containing two wrist cuffs that had belonged to Artemis herself. They gave off distinct Wonder-Woman vibes, but they wouldn’t give us the superpowe
rs required to find the main assembly hall. We’d spent the better part of twenty minutes trying to find the banquet hall so I could pick up breakfast and a coffee, and had spent another twenty minutes running around, looking for the assembly hall. Shaky splashes of coffee had spilled out of the paper cup in my hand, leaving a wet trail behind us like I was some kind of caffeine-deprived Theseus.

  “I was sure it was this way.” I was wheezing, thanks to my general aversion to cardio. “But then, I thought the banquet hall was in the opposite direction to where it was, so I’m not much of a tour guide.”

  Genie huffed, putting her hands on her hips as she scoured the Institute’s baffling layout. Every hallway looked the same, with endless corridors leading to endless destinations.

  “I could’ve sworn I put the orientation map in my bag,” I lamented. I had a sparkly new pencil case, a bevy of empty notebooks, a half-filled sketchbook, and a pastry wrapped in a napkin from the banquet hall, but no map to speak of. I must have left it on my desk this morning in my nightmare-addled state.

  “Well, we need to keep going and hope the assembly hall throws us a bone and appears out of nowhere.” She checked her phone. “It’s ten to nine, so we’ve got nine minutes and fifty-nine seconds to get there. I can almost hear the whispers already—can’t you?”

  No whispers, please… I knew the curiosity would come, but if they kept it for another day—tomorrow, even—I would be forever grateful.

  Genie took off again, and I followed on weary legs. I’d recovered from the banshee-Purge, but last night’s dream had taken more out of me than I’d first realized. My hands and wrists and arms throbbed as though I’d been… well, slamming them helplessly against a sheet of glass. And my chest still felt heavy and clenched, like some of that unnerving dark sludge lingered in each lung.

  “There! Cadets!” Genie punched the air and picked up speed, chasing after a gaggle of cargo-panted students who appeared to know precisely where they were going. It made me feel a tad uncomfortable, seeing how professional and clean-cut they looked, while Genie and I ambled along in our civilian get-up of T-shirts and athleisure pants. They’d probably spent the last five days studying the orientation map religiously instead of recuperating and strolling around like this was a holiday camp.

  We hurtled after the militant contingent, our shoes screeching on the polished concrete as if we were doing laps of a basketball court. In focusing on the other students, we might have neglected our spatial awareness. Skidding around a corner into a narrower corridor so as not to lose sight of our unwitting guides, we crashed straight into a figure hurrying out of a doorway on the right.

  The three of us went flying. Papers and folders erupted in a snowfall, the sheets fluttering down in a chaotic whirlwind as I bounced backward and hit the floor with a thud that knocked the wind out of me. My coffee arced into the air and landed in places unknown. Staring up at the paper blizzard, I cocked my head, distracted from the pain shooting across my shoulders. Every sheet was etched with intricate illustrations of monsters, labeled and detailed with technical jargon in elegant handwriting. They were on par with my own drawings, though I noticed some discrepancies from my useful angle: too-small wings on a gargoyle, scales on a serpent that should’ve been feathers, a wrongly proportioned loup-garou, that sort of thing. Minute details that only someone who’d been up close and personal with these creatures could have noticed.

  “They’re beautiful,” I blurted out as I maneuvered into a crouch and started picking up the pages. I was so engrossed in the images that I barely even saw the person we’d careened into.

  “Yeah… beautiful.” Genie tapped me on the shoulder. I peered up at her and saw her wide eyes and open mouth directed at the mystery artist. Following her gaze, I glanced over my shoulder to see who she was gaping at.

  A young man, somewhere in his early twenties, dusted down a gray tweed suit jacket, shot through with delicate threads of vivid purple that formed checkered squares. A stylish kind of tweed, like something from those old Kingsman films my uncle adored, but mismatched with a white polo shirt that had a fresh coffee stain down the front and faded black jeans that I would’ve described as “dad fit.” He had a nice face, though: unusual green-blue eyes that reminded me of Amazonite, with a dark ring around the iris. His sweeping mane of unruly golden-brown hair had been hastily gelled into submission, and defined, manly features and blonde stubble added to his Tobe-like leonine look. His fair eyebrows knitted together in consternation as he looked down at the stain on his shirt.

  He bent down for a pair of rectangular glasses that had survived the fall and cleaned them on the edge of his polo shirt. “I prefer to drink coffee, but maybe the caffeine will sink in via osmosis.” He put the glasses back onto the bridge of his nose, and then it was his turn to start gaping like a beached fish as his gaze fell on Genie. “I mean, not that I… uh… mind. No, osmosis is good. Um… accidents happen. It’s nothing. I can just… uh… fasten the button and hide it.”

  Realization dawned as I connected that the coffee all over him was my coffee. “Oh, my goodness, I’m so sorry! That was me.” I scooped more papers into my arms, checking them for liquid damage. “I hope it didn’t get on any of these. It’d be a shame. They’re… nice.”

  I was thoroughly mortified that I’d doused him in coffee, but he didn’t seem to be paying attention to his shirt or sketches. Nope, my friend had all of his interest. There were very few who could look Genie straight in the eyes and not get stung by the smitten arrow, but it was far rarer for Genie to look into a man’s eyes and get hit too. And, unless I was mistaken, it looked like she’d been hit.

  Genie looked toward me, severing their connection. “Sorry about that, and all of this.” She gestured to the sheets in my hand. “We were trying to find the assembly hall, and we weren’t watching where we were going.”

  Flustered, he took the papers from me and jammed them into one of the folders. “It’s fine, really. Happens all the time. More than I’d like to admit.” He cast her a shy look, but she was deliberately avoiding his gaze. I knew my friend, and she was definitely in shock. “And they’ll dry out, if any of them are wet. It might make them look a bit older, give them gravitas. You know, like those history projects when you were a kid, where you’d tea-stain a piece of paper and singe the edges to make it look old-timey?” A faint flush of pink tinged his complexion as he sought Genie’s eyes again, but she carried on pretending to be absorbed in the sketches he’d already tucked away. “I’m talking too much, aren’t I? Sorry. I can take you to the assembly hall—I’m actually headed there myself.”

  “That’d be great, Mr.—?” Genie waited.

  “Nathaniel O’Hara. No ‘mister’ necessary, Nathan’s fine.” He appeared to rally, making a show of pushing the stray pages into the folder. “And who might you be?”

  I knew he didn’t mean me, but it didn’t bother me in the slightest. Actually, it did a bit, but only because I wanted to know more about his illustrations. Who was this guy, and why did he have folders of beautiful drawings that matched my own endless sketchbooks? True, we were in a monster-hunting Institute, so it wasn’t exactly odd, but there was something undeniably intimate about his artistry. Each touch of shade and light was painstakingly crafted, the creatures made three-dimensional with skill and thought until they almost leapt off the page.

  “I’m Iphigenia Vertis, but Genie’s fine,” she copied him. “And this is my best friend, Persie Merlin-Crowley.”

  He adjusted his specs. “Merlin-Crowley? As in—”

  “Yep, my famous parents.” I rubbed the back of my neck, bracing for the usual torrent of compliments for my mom and dad. Even here, I couldn’t escape their legacy. I wished I could’ve been more mature about it, but it did tend to grate after a while. Instead, he just furrowed his brow, as if he were more irritated than impressed.

  “I corresponded with her a few times when I was younger,” Nathan said, “trying to gain access to the Bestiary for research pu
rposes. All my requests were denied.”

  Huh, how about that… Of all the institutions in all the world, I happened to come here and meet the one person who didn’t immediately turn gooey-eyed at the sound of my family name. It was kind of refreshing.

  Genie chuckled, though I spotted a subtle blush in her cheeks. “Maybe they know you’re clumsy. Being around all of those glass boxes and narrow walkways would probably push them up to DEFCON 1.”

  “I’m the clumsy one? You’re the ones who barged into me!”

  “Only because you were backing out of a doorway,” Genie retorted. I wasn’t entirely sure she wasn’t teasing him. That tended to be a defense mechanism for her, but it was never easy to tell. Either way, I doubted it would diminish her charms in his clearly curious eyes.

  He straightened slightly. “Don’t forget, you’re the new students here. I know my way around, and I’d urge you to be more careful in the future.”

  “We really are sorry,” I cut in, before Genie could make another ill-considered joke. “You’re right, we should’ve been more aware, but we were frazzled about missing our orientation assembly. It’s not good to be late on the first day, you know? And I’m so sorry we made you drop all of your incredible sketches. Are they yours?”

  He focused his attention on me, but I saw him steal another look at Genie as he spoke. “They are. I’m a scholar’s aide here at the Institute, in the field of Monster Research.” His body language relaxed as he struck more comfortable territory, his fingertips adjusting the arm of his glasses. “I delve deep into Purge beasts and their individual natures, though my main interest is in all things ancient and obsolete. Of course, that’s not as useful to the Institute, as such creatures are unlikely to pop up during a hunt.” He gave an awkward laugh, as if we were supposed to understand an inside joke, before hurriedly continuing. “But I still think there’s value in the history of beasts, because that can give us insight into current and, potentially, future creatures.”