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

  “Why not? Is it—” Before my mom could finish, I heard a door opening and my dad’s voice cut through the feed.

  “Hey, I just got back from Astrid’s,” he said, sounding out of breath. He clearly hadn’t realized my mom was on a video call. “Marius and Azar found a handful of witnesses who’ve been able to piece together the last 24 hours of the missing magicals’ whereabouts. This is big—”

  “Wade!” my mom interrupted him, panic on her face. “Persie’s on the phone.”

  He appeared a second later, looking sheepish. “Persie?”

  You were busy. They clearly had major fish to fry with the missing magicals, but my mom hadn’t mentioned it at all.

  “Hi, Dad.” I waved awkwardly.

  His face broke into a broad smile. “About time, stranger. We thought you’d dropped off the Giant’s Causeway.”

  I played up to his cheer. “How long have you been waiting to say that? You sound like Uncle Finch.”

  “Hey, your dad can be funny, too. Finch doesn’t have a monopoly on jokes.” He gave a full-belly laugh. “But, truth be told, I’ve been holding onto that one since you last called.”

  “I got kind of caught up with recovering and stuff. Sorry about that.” I drew some swirls with the tip of my pencil, soothed by the quiet scratching sounds.

  My dad frowned. “And how are the… Purges?”

  “I haven’t had one since I came here. Five days and counting.” I forced a hopeful smile and hoped it didn’t look as fake as it felt.

  Now that my dad had pulled back the curtain on the strain my parents were under, it no longer seemed right to bother them with my dream and anxiety attack. Would I go running to them every time I had a nightmare or crumbled under pressure? No, not if I wanted to stand on my own two feet like I’d promised myself I would. Besides, I had Genie as my sounding board.

  My mom made a bizarre half-squeal, half-gasp. “That’s really promising, Persie. Maybe the Purges are slowing down? And it’s becoming more manageable? Not that I’m minimizing what you’re going through,” she added quickly. I had an inkling she’d been hitting the “How to Speak to Your Offspring” section of the library. A week ago, she would never have said anything like that. “In fact, your dad had to hide my phone last night to stop me from checking in on you and your Purges.”

  My dad squished his head against my mom’s, even though they had plenty of room on the screen. “I did. I said, ‘She’ll call us when she wants to, and if she has a Purge, she’ll let us know in her own time.’ I thought she’d smother me in my sleep after that.” He kissed Mom’s cheek and she smiled up at him.

  “When you said you were having trouble sleeping, I thought it might be Purge-related.” My mom segued back into our previous conversation, and I braced to gloss over it. They needed to hear the Hollywood version of how I was doing, not the grainy, indie version. Sitting there in my room, a continent and an ocean away, the distance between us had never felt bigger.

  I widened my smile until my cheeks hurt. “No, no, nothing like that. I’m just getting used to all the noise. There are women down the hall who have their music blasting all hours, so I’m not sleeping until late, and then I have to get up early. Sure, that makes me sound like a granny, but a girl’s got to have her eight hours, right?”

  My mom’s expression relaxed immediately. “Oh, thank Chaos.” She turned slightly to face my dad. “She was just telling me she’d been having some sleeping issues when you came in. My heart’s been pounding for the last five minutes, thinking it was something awful. I’ll send you some earbuds to help. If that doesn’t work, you should bang on their door and, when they answer, act all shocked and say you thought someone was strangling cats.”

  I smirked. “I’ll think about it.” Now, it was my turn to do a bit of segueing. “What about the two of you? It sounds like there’s been a breakthrough with the missing magicals cases?”

  My parents exchanged a solemn look before my dad answered. “You know that’s sensitive information, Persie. We can’t disclose details of the investigation yet, since it’s in such fragile stages. You shouldn’t have even heard what I said when I came in. There are protocols we have to follow.”

  “How come Marius and Azar know all about it, then?” I might’ve been coming across a little petty, but the point stood. Last I’d checked, Marius and Azar weren’t part of my parents’ Secret Agent Squad. Actually, last I’d checked, they were in freaking Mexico. They were the same age as me, and they weren’t carrying around a big “Merlin” target on their backs. Surely I deserved to be in the loop—or was that forbidden, now that O’Halloran had decided I was a menace to polite society?

  My mom sighed, and I saw the depth of the fatigue she’d been hiding. “They’ve been assigned to the SDC’s agent training program. They both showed an interest in wanting to make careers out of it, so they signed the NDAs and all the forms and they were brought on board.”

  “In a week?” I might’ve snorted.

  “It was already in the works before you went away, Persie,” my mom explained. “They were given their first tasks when they got back from Mexico two days ago.”

  My dad offered me an apologetic look. “However, if our investigation goes anywhere near Galway or the Institute, we’ll let you know what’s going on.”

  Yeah, because that’ll happen. My dad was just paying lip service to stop me from trying to pry more information out of them. Still, I knew a hopeless cause when I saw one. Without an NDA, or my dad bursting into the room again without spotting me on video call, I wouldn’t find out anything else. And the sudden spike of annoyance and jealousy made my stomach churn in a deeply unsettling, painfully familiar way—a Purge was coming. The shivers would be next, then the chest pains, and then the need to expel.

  “I get it.” I drew shaky fingertips across my lips. “Ask you no questions, you’ll tell me no lies, right?”

  My dad gave a reluctant nod. “It’s just red tape, Persie. You know we’d tell you if we could.”

  Best not to open that can of worms… A comeback tingled on the tip of my tongue, but I let it stay there. Leviathan’s gift had already been given, so there seemed little point in dragging up old quarrels and old lies for the sake of landing a jab. Especially with the nausea rising and the shakes settling in.

  “Kes has been asking about you.” Mom switched back to fluffy small talk. “He’s insanely jealous of you and Genie. Tobe had to carry him out of the Bestiary at least six times this week. He’s been trying to spring some beasties loose so he could start up his own monster hunting program. Last I heard, Tobe went to ask O’Halloran if he could put a magical bell around Kes’s neck, so he’ll know where Kes is at all times. Finch keeps joking that it’s Victoria Jules’s fault for mesmerizing him, but I think he’s keen on the bell idea.”

  “Really? That’s… uh… very Kes.” I wrapped my arms around my stomach, the nausea still bubbling up. Sweat began to bead on my forehead, while the telltale prickles began to scuttle up the back of my neck like ants. “Maybe Tobe could… teach him?”

  My dad chuckled. “He’s too young. In three years, maybe, but not yet. The potential backlash, if anything went wrong, would be enough to put anyone off.”

  “Oh, yeah, I guess… I hadn’t thought of… um… that.” I jiggled my legs, fighting back the swell of the sickness. “Look, this is awkward, but I’m going to have to say goodbye and nip off to the bathroom. We had tacos for dinner, and I think I ate a bad one.”

  “Bad tacos? Are you sure it’s—”

  I cut my mom off. “Okay, I’m going to sign off before I need to… uh… trash these pants. Bye! Love you, bye!”

  The last thing I needed them to see was me Purging up whatever happened to be coming. If they saw, they’d come crashing through the mirrors before it was even over. I ended the call before they could respond and flopped off the chair onto all fours.

  Oh no, oh no, oh no… Pain splintered from my stomach up into my chest, forming a he
avy ball of agonizing weight that threatened to crush any organs in the way. Blinding bolts of white-hot lightning ricocheted away from the lump in my chest and sizzled down my arms and legs until my fingers went into frantic spasms. Hugging my knees, I rocked back and forth while sharp stabs pinballed between my temples. Black spots danced in my field of vision—the evil twins of the floaty orbs from the hallway.

  “I can do this. I can do this. I can do this.” I repeated the mantra in a panicked whisper as more symptoms crept over me. I hated Leviathan so much, I wanted to snap off his stupid glowing hypno-thing and shove it down his throat.

  My heart hammered hummingbird fast. Sweat drenched my white T-shirt and my sweatpants, darkening the gray fabric until it was closer to black. And then the punches came, socking my stomach, my chest, my legs, my back, my arms, my throat, until everything hurt. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that this particular Purge would be a sizeable beast. And I wished I had the strength to push it back down into the ether, but that wasn’t part of the game Leviathan had forced me to play.

  Wrenching pulses launched my body into convulsions. I raked my fingernails across the stone floor in an attempt to stay connected with something solid, until the floor scraped my skin rusty-red. This didn’t feel like any Purge I’d had before. In my chest, I felt that heavy ball moving upward. When it reached my throat, my eyes bulged. I wasn’t aware of much beyond my own pain, but I could’ve sworn I heard the bones in my throat creak and strain to make way for the foreign object.

  Finally, with one exhausted retch, a smooth orb, trailing black smoke, erupted from my mouth and hit the floor in an explosion of black fire. A second later, dozens of tiny creatures burst out of the flames and took flight. They zipped around the room in darts of vivid color, fluttering gossamer wings so fast it looked like they weren’t moving at all.

  One landed on the ground by my trembling hand and looked me dead in the eyes. Similar to the sprite that Nathan had showed us, its wings looked like paper-thin sycamore leaves, tinged with an alarming shade of red. It wore what looked like a tiny bird skull as a helmet, with two beady black eyes glinting behind the eye sockets. Tufts of mossy hair extended from the bottom of the skull. As for its body, it had frog-like legs and arms, minus the webbed feet, which were banded with streaks of pearly white and indigo. Its thin torso didn’t look like it could hold the creature up, but somehow, it did.

  It grinned at me, flashing a miniature set of razor-sharp teeth. Then it gave a sarcastic bow, like it knew it was about to make my life hell, before taking flight again.

  I managed to drag myself into a sitting position to assess the mayhem. A few of the creatures wore the bird skull helmets, while others sported upturned walnut shells and some had no headpiece at all. But I had little time to wonder if it was a hierarchy thing, since at that moment two of the fluttering beasties were pulling a lamp off my shelf. It plummeted to the ground and smashed, sparks flying. The creatures giggled raucously, pointing at the debris and grinning those sharp-toothed smiles.

  On my bed, four of them were gleefully in the process of putting my Thread Bear through torture. They had a limb each, pulling with all of their tiny might, trying to rip him in four directions.

  “Hey! Stop that!” I jumped up on shaky legs and ran to the bed, and not a moment too soon. I lunged for Thread Bear just as the critters dispersed in a cacophony of jangling laughter. They chattered to one another like monkeys, but I had no idea what they were saying. I probably didn’t want to know, either, as one pointed at my soaked sweatpants and started giggling. Its buddies joined in. Clutching Thread Bear to my chest so they couldn’t hurt him, I stared in abject disbelief. They whooshed in every direction, taking no prisoners: a cluster swung from the light fixture overhead, shrieking with naughty delight; two ran at each other across my desk, jousting with pencils; another dipped his butt in the cold coffee I’d left atop my wardrobe, then dragged his cheeks across my sketchbook. Still another group was causing all kinds of bedlam in the bathroom, whooping and trilling, with a few very worrying splashes thrown in. I knew I should’ve been trying to stop them, but their sheer volume overwhelmed me. I couldn’t have moved if I’d wanted to, not even knowing there was a whole team of butt-painters going to town on my sketchpad.

  Another crash jolted me out of my deep freeze. One of the idiots had toppled my scented candle from the side table against the wall. It cackled and danced a jig on the edge of the table, giving it the full hoedown as the candle flame licked the border of the thin rug in the center of the room. The fabric caught abruptly, and the creatures all paused and “oohed” at the same time, unconcerned that fire threatened to consume the entire thing.

  “What the heck did you do?” I yelled, finally shaken out of my daze. With no useful magic, I’d have to put the fire out the old-fashioned way. I raced into the bathroom, only barely registering the destruction I saw. Toothpaste had been squirted all over the walls, creatures dripping in goopy shampoo were flinging handfuls of it at each other, and two of them were having a whale of a time in the toilet bowl, using it as a personal jacuzzi.

  I drenched my towels under the faucet while batting away the buzzing creatures. With the towels fully doused, I sprinted back out and threw them over the flames. Smoke and steam billowed from beneath, filling the room until I had to cover my face with the collar of my T-shirt. From somewhere within the smoky haze, I heard a ripple of mad laughter and the echo of tiny applause.

  They’re freaking mocking me! The absolute audacity of these things. When this smoke cleared, they’d learn a valuable lesson. All I had to do was lock them in my room, find some puzzle boxes, and catch the little pests. I had a few pre-hexed Mason jars in my luggage, but not enough for all of them. Then again, with them being so small, maybe several could fit into one. I steeled myself to return to the mayhem.

  But when I poked my head out of my T-shirt to check on the state of the smoke, the joke was definitely on me. Heavy, significant silence hung in the foggy air. No laughter, no whoops, no shrieks. Deadly silence. Holy crap, no! With my arms outstretched, I ran in the direction of the front door—and where the door should’ve been, my hands felt empty space.

  Terrifying realization struck like a thunderbolt. I’d just Purged a horde of tiny, chaotic monsters, and now… they’d all escaped.

  Six

  Genie

  I lurked by the hot chocolate urns, assessing the situation like an army general plotting out the best course for socializing. It paid to know your enemy, though thinking of them as the enemy probably wasn’t the best mentality for striking up friendly chat. The banquet hall filled with a steady stream of students and graduates, all branching off into their own ranks and gunning for the best seats: first years, second years, yada yada. The long wooden tables had bowls of snacks in the center, ready for mid-movie munching. A few folks were wrangling with a projector to get the movie going, arguing over the mechanics.

  Man, I should’ve dragged Persie along. She called me the social butterfly of our outfit, but it was looking more like I was the mangy moth that nobody wanted fluttering around them. My classmates had rebuffed all my previous charm offensives over the last five days, but I hoped tonight would mark a shift in dynamics. I’d never really felt out of place before. I knew everyone at the SDC, and they knew me. More to the point, they liked me. Still, I wouldn’t be beaten. No siree. This moth was determined to get some flames to at least give me a friendly smile.

  Sipping my hot chocolate as if it were high-dollar champagne, I unfurled my social butterfly wings and drifted over to a table with a few familiar faces, about ten classmates in all. They didn’t even look up at me. And, judging by the oh-so-stony silence, I’d just interrupted a volley of banter.

  “Anyone know what the movie is tonight?” I hid my nerves, smooth as anything.

  Mr. Bike-Pump Biceps shrugged. “No.”

  I really need to learn their real names. I tried to sift through my brain for them: Brian? No, that wasn’t it.
Xerxes? Definitely not. I knew I should’ve pleaded for name tags at orientation, not that I had that kind of say. The best way to get someone on your side was to call them by their name; every psychologist worth their salt knew that. First rule of negotiations—keep saying someone’s name to get a rapport going.

  “Can I get anyone a refill on the hot chocolate?” I powered on. “It’s good, right? Usually, you get that powdered stuff that tastes like diluted mud, but this might actually have some real chocolate in it.”

  Ponytail #1 took a pointed sip from her mug. “We’re fine.”

  “Sorry, I’m not very good with names. I’m Genie.” I sat on an empty part of the bench. They looked at me as if I’d just suggested we go and drown some kittens.

  “We know,” Ponytail #2 snarked.

  “Right, but I’m saying I don’t know your names.” I resisted the urge to give her the evil eye. “They go in one ear and out the other, so why don’t you tell me, and I’ll remember for next time?” I glanced at a round-faced girl with equally round glasses. Her name came back to me like a boomerang. “You’re Colette, right? Any French ancestry, or did your parents just like it?”

  She puckered her lips until they looked like… well, it wouldn’t be polite to say. “French-Canadian.”

  “Ah, les Quebecois. Do you follow ice hockey, or is that a stereotype?” I smiled to show I meant no harm. Only chimps grinned when they meant to do some damage. A warning first, a bite later. And I’d promised Victoria I’d sheathe these gnashers, not that I’d ever actually bitten anyone. Not since I was a kid, anyway.

  “What do you think?” she replied coolly.

  A long-haired guy, who might’ve been called Adrian, snorted. “Yeah, it’d be like her asking if you ride seahorses.”