Page 24

With the she-pixie and her male counterpart cracking the whip, I addressed the now-attentive creatures. “Do you know where the missing magicals have gone?”

Chattering whispers did the rounds, each pixie turning to the next, and the next, until they had formed some kind of collaborative answer for me. But the she-pixie seemed to have taken on the role of spokesperson. She stepped forward and cleared her throat, then began chirruping a mile a minute in high-pitched pixie-speak.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” I put up my palms to stop her. “I’m sure what you’re saying is super helpful, but I don’t understand. Can you make it… simpler?”

The she-pixie rolled her eyes and gave a sarcastic nod.

My heart leapt. “You know where they were taken?” I paused, realizing I might have jumped the gun. “Or are you saying you can make it simpler?”

She tilted her head from side to side, which muddied my understanding even more.

My temper flared, but I had to keep the wheels greased. “Let me ask in a different way. Do you know anything about the missing magicals? Or anything about a magic door?”

I struggled to suppress the snap in my tone. My friend was waiting for me out there, and I needed to get to her ASAP. I didn’t have time to decipher pixie hijinks, but I also couldn’t do this without them.

The pixie tapped a slim finger against her chin, then jabbed it in the air as if she’d had a lightbulb moment. She ran into open space and began what could only be described as a mind-boggling interpretive dance—definitely one for the contemporary crowd. Smoothing down her mossy mass of hair, she sauntered a few paces forward and then lifted her head in melodramatic awe. Her black eyes widened until they took up most of her small face, and then she dropped her jaw comedically and released an excited “aaaah.” She switched to a zombie shuffle, her arms trawling sluggishly through the air as if she were trying to catch something. Mimed to perfection, she opened up an imaginary door and stepped inside.

I might not have understood the rest, but I understood that.

“There is a magic door?” Nathan’s jaw dropped just as comically as the she-pixie’s had.

The pixie took a bow and drank in the rapturous applause of her fellows, clasping her hands together and shaking them from side to side. I added a few lackluster claps, so as not to seem rude. Useful though the charade had been, we really didn’t have time for more amateur dramatics.

“Can you take us to it?” I failed to disguise the pleading in my voice.

The she-pixie gestured around and shot me a look that said, “Well, duh. Why else would I have asked everyone what they know?”

“Point taken.” I smiled apologetically. “Please, guide us there. My friend is one of the people missing, and I need to get her back.”

The entire squadron of pixies gasped and shook their heads, chattering ominously. I even saw one of them pretend to tie a noose and hang themselves with it. The gesture felt like a knife to the gut. I didn’t need to understand their language to get the picture—if Genie had entered that doorway, then she was obviously in a lot of trouble. All the more reason to get going.

The she-pixie held up her hands and drew a square shape. Her eyes narrowed in annoyance, and she shook her head vehemently, giving one loud, high-pitched squawk that definitely sounded like “NO!”

“You don’t want us to put you in puzzle boxes?”

She nodded, repeating the singular squawk.

I cast a look at Nathan. “What do you say?”

“I say we let them go free-range. They’re helping us, after all.” Nathan looked pointedly at the assembled crowd. “But you have to stay out of sight. Can you do that?”

The pixies snorted and puffed out their chests proudly, and a few polished their fingernails against their shoulders: “easy peasy lemon squeezy.” They’d given the hunters the runaround for days without getting spotted, and they had us to help cause any necessary diversions if hunters happened upon us. And why shouldn’t they get to come with us as equals? They were doing us a favor, not the other way around. And the pressure was mounting by the second.

“Just keep as close as you can, and stay hidden,” I warned. To the she-pixie, I said, “You can lead us there, but don’t take any chances. If you see a hunter, take cover, and only come out again when it’s safe.”

She lifted her hand to her temple in a salute. No sooner had she done that than the entire crew took off into the air, fluttering all the way up to the ceiling. The she-pixie surged upward last and flew past the others to take her position at the head of the aerial squadron. Once there, she beckoned for Nathan and me to follow before waiting by the closed Repository doors. Nathan and I gave each other an encouraging nod and jumped to our feet, racing across the marble floor. He did the honors of opening the towering doors, and all of us ducked out into the hallway beyond.

I scoured left and right to make sure there were no hunters around as the pixies blended into the shadows overhead. I glanced up and saw how their colored banding and vibrant wings darkened until they were entirely camouflaged. Now I understood why they’d given everyone hunting them such a headache; like cuttlefish, they could alter their skin to fit their surroundings, making them trickier to find than a needle in a stack of pins. The only one who stayed vaguely visible was the she-pixie, who I decided, then and there, to name Boudicca.

I’d read about the ancient Iceni queen in the Institute’s entrance hall, on a plaque beside a gold torc, a thick metal necklace, that had belonged to her. A rumored Celtic magical of the Primus Anglicus, she’d led an uprising against the Romans. Like the she-pixie, the original Boudicca was said to have wild hair, a harsh voice, and a piercing glare.

“Why are you smiling?” Nathan whispered, looking at me as though I’d lost my marbles.

I pointed up to the leader. “I named her.”

“Oh?”

“Boudicca. Queen of the Pixies.” I slowed my pace to match hers as we approached an intersection of hallways. She stopped, looking both directions for the enemy.

Nathan laughed. “I think she’d like that.”

“Me too.” I quickened my pace again as Boudicca took a left. Where were we going? There wasn’t anything up there aside from the new wing, which hadn’t been built yet. But I wasn’t about to argue with her. She could sense high concentrations of magic, and I couldn’t.

Nathan side-eyed me. “Do you think she might have her wires crossed?”

“I’m not sure. Is there an annex up here that I don’t know about?” I whispered back.

“There are private studies and offices, and a chapel which has an exit to the back gardens. Maybe that’s where she’s leading us. It would be the quickest way.” He frowned, evidently deep in thought. “I suppose it depends where this doorway is. Did your little birdie happen to mention how far down it was buried beneath the Institute?”

I shook my head. “My little birdie is never that detailed.”

The day Leviathan gave me information that wasn’t peppered with gaping holes would be the day his glass box properly froze over again. All he’d told me about the door was to “look into it.” I’d done that, and I’d hardly learned anything. Oh, he must’ve been killing himself with laughter, knowing my only option was to ask the pixies for help, that we’d have to resort to a bevy of hilarious charades to communicate.

“It’s Leviathan, right?” Nathan asked as we continued to walk, following Boudicca’s fluttering wings. Some of her motley crew were acting up, wiping the last of the strawberry goop off their faces and smearing the jammy blobs across the nearest available canvas—rafters, the tops of the high windows, the wall. I didn’t get to focus on it much, since Nathan had dropped that doozy of a question on me.

“Huh?” My throat closed up.

Nathan looked half-excited, half-sorry, an expression he seemed to have perfected. “The little birdie is Leviathan. He gave you this ability, didn’t he?”

“H-how could you possibly know that?” I blurted out, my hands turning clammy with cold sweat. No one, other than Victoria, was supposed to know where my ability had come from. Chaos, if the rest of the Institute found out… They’d make accusations like the head huntswoman had, claiming I was in cahoots with an ancient monster who wanted to make mankind suffer for centuries of injustice against him and his kind.

Stop panicking. Even Victoria doesn’t know the part about turning the world into monster paradise or him making me his queen. I served myself a swift reminder of the facts before the stress could take hold and bring on another unwanted Purge. Learning to control my emotions was my best defense against this ability. I needed to stop with the knee-jerk, paranoid reactions, before they got even more out of hand. My cousin Diana would’ve called me a “typical Pisces.” I didn’t necessarily believe in that stuff, but my emotions really did have an iron grip over me. One I’d have to loosen, if I wanted to get ahead of my curse.

Nathan smiled reassuringly. “Relax. No judgment here, remember?” He gave me a light knock in the arm. “Victoria mentioned it to me, in private, after she caught me trying to catch pixies in the Repository. She hasn’t told anyone else, but she knows about my research into ancient monsters. I think she wondered if I knew of anything that might be helpful to you.”

My panic turned into a fleeting glimmer of hope. “Do you?”

“I can only tell you what I told her: that I will look into it, and let you know if I find something worthwhile,” he replied. A few of the pixies at the back of Boudicca’s aerial squadron shoved each other for a better spot in the line-up, earning a sharp hiss from their gutsy leader. I wouldn’t have wanted to get on her bad side, either.

“Could you maybe tell me before you tell her?” I said. “Give me a grace period, to see if I can do anything with it?”

“It’s your ability, and your connection to Leviathan. It would be wrong of me to do otherwise. I swear on my integrity as an academic that I will come to you first. After all, you have more insight on this matter than anyone else.”

“Thank you,” I said, relieved.

He chuckled softly. “Might I ask a favor in return?”

“That depends…” I eyed him curiously. “If you’re going to ask me to set you up on a date with Genie after we’ve got her back safe and sound, I can’t make that sort of promise. I can put in a good word, but it’ll be up to her.”

He froze mid-step and turned to face me. “A… date?” His cheeks burned beet red. “Chaos help me, have I really been so obvious?”

I shrugged, smiling.

“She’s just… intriguing. I’ve never met anyone like her, and nor do I think I’ve ever had anyone keep me on my toes in quite the same fashion. I’m genuinely worried I might end up with some kind of repetitive-strain injury in my feet.” He smacked himself on the forehead, shaking his head at himself. “And now I’ve just gone and babbled all of that to you. That wasn’t even what I was going to ask.”

“Is it even okay for students and aides to date?” The prospect of a maybe-romance was a welcome distraction from monstrous, worst-case scenarios. I reminded myself that we’d rescue Genie, and everything would be all right again.

He swallowed audibly. “It is, but that’s really not what I was going to ask.” He looked down at the ground. “I’m just so worried for her welfare… I didn’t mean for all that to come out. Please, I’d appreciate if you forgot I said anything.”

“Forget you said what?” I gave him a conspiratorial smile to let him know I didn’t plan to breathe a word. Girl code maintained that I would have to, but he didn’t need to stress himself out over that. Besides, we didn’t even have Genie back yet.

I glanced up and realized that Boudicca had stopped and was waving her hands wildly. And probably had been for a while, judging by her annoyed expression.

“Crap. We’ll have to talk about this later, or we’ll lose the pixies.”

“Of course.”

We carried on up the corridor from the Repository toward the point where it branched off to the right. Above, Boudicca did a rude mime that made it clear she wanted to strangle the life out of me before fluttering onward.

“What’s the favor?” I asked Nathan, keeping an eye on the pixies.

Nathan looked up. “Ah, well, I was hoping you might be willing to tell me more about what Leviathan is like from a personal perspective. Anecdotes from your mother and her friends, from their experience with Echidna, would also be welcome.”

I mustered a halfhearted snort. “Would a page full of curse words do?”

“There must be hidden depths to him, even if they are—”

He came to a stop, eyes locked on Boudicca. She was waving maniacally from behind a rafter, her tiny colored dots flashing a red warning through the shadows. I frowned in confusion. Did she not want us talking to each other?

Everything became clear as Charlotte rounded the corner, carrying one of the heavy metal folders that I’d seen during my exam—the folders that connected to the wider magical world through the Krieger Detection Technology, or the KDT, as it was more commonly known. She must have been using one of those private offices that Nathan had mentioned, and we’d been too busy talking about Genie to hear the door close. Seeing us, she halted abruptly, looking from Nathan to me, then back again.

“You’re not supposed to be out here! Victoria put you on hexed lockdown!” She cast a conflicted look at Nathan. “And you… you should have stopped her. I remember what you said in the orchard, Persie, but I can’t allow this. I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to hold you here and call for Victoria.” She dumped the folder on the floor with an echoing bang and raised her hands.

Finally, I’d get to see the famous Charlotte Basani in action—just not in the way I’d imagined. White sparks glittered around her fingertips, and I knew what was about to go down—the same thing happened when my mom got ready to use her Telekinesis.

Here we had a classic preemptive strike (apparently, I had learned something in Hosseini’s class), and I dealt with those the pacifist’s way—by ducking and rolling. Silvery strands shot out of her palms, and I made my escape, diving under the Telekinetic trajectories. I hit the floor hard, a jolt of pain shooting through my knee, which had absorbed the shock.

“Charlotte, enough!” Nathan stepped between us. “You may be Shailene’s daughter, but that doesn’t give you the right to attack us. What we’re doing does not concern you, and Persie and I will deal with Victoria once we’re finished.”

Charlotte didn’t listen. Instead, she shot a strand of Telekinesis toward him. It took him by surprise, snaking around his waist. He lifted his palms to retaliate, but she flicked her wrist and threw him against the nearest wall before he had the chance to do anything. I grimaced as I heard the thud.

Meanwhile, my hand clawed for the metal folder she’d dropped. I grabbed it before she could aim a fresh round of Telekinesis at me and hurled it at her head with all my might. She ducked, whirling around to watch it skid down the hallway behind her. I didn’t waste any time. Jumping up, I raced toward Nathan, helping him up.

He groaned. “We need to get… out of here. We can’t… save Genie, if she turns us in… to Victoria.”

“Way ahead of you.” At least, I’d thought I was, but Charlotte was facing me again, her hands raised and ready for more.

“If you’re not going to come quietly, that causes a few problems for me,” she said. Closing her eyes, she slammed her palms into her chest, sending green ripples down her body.

Nathan sighed. “Ah, crap.”

“What?” I whispered, trying to hurry him away from the scene.

“Charlotte’s best attack.” He dropped to the floor and pressed his palms into the ground, presumably preparing some kind of Earth-based defensive maneuvers. Beneath my feet, I felt a rumble growing. The polished concrete splintered just in front of Charlotte’s feet, and out slithered a tangle of vines. They crept up Charlotte’s legs, wrapping around her.

It took a second for me to understand what was happening when her body began to transform. Her face morphed into a mask of pain as her shoulders broadened. She lengthened right in front of us, growing two feet taller. Her skin rippled, and thick brown hair sprouted rapidly. Muscles that hadn’t been there before bulged out, and I stared in disbelief as a snout formed and huge claws protruded from newly-born paws. It took less than twenty seconds for the process to complete, leaving Nathan and me standing in front of a freaking grizzly bear. The only thing that hadn’t changed were her hazel eyes, which glinted at us with very human anger.

“She’s… she’s…” I remembered vaguely that she was a Bestia, but I hadn’t fully understood what that entailed until now. With a growl that shook the walls, she clawed away the constricting vines like tissue paper. And that meant nothing was holding her back from a full-on grizzly charge. Surely she didn’t intend to maul us?

“We need to run!” Nathan urged. “I could hit her with everything I have and it wouldn’t bother her in the slightest, not in this state.”

Just as we were about to whip around and flee, my own beasts reminded us that they were there. A divebombing unit of twenty-plus pixies plummeted from the ceiling, shrieking a deafening war cry. The bear looked up in bemusement as the creatures struck. Two of them went straight for the eyes, coming in for a dropkick with their tiny legs extended. The bear’s massive paws flailed in front of her face, trying to fend them off, but there were two more right behind, prepared and willing to temporarily blind Charlotte. A distraction crew circled her, tugging at her fur and generally trying to piss her off by socking her in the jaw and yanking on her ears. Meanwhile, two smaller groups had materialized curtain ties from who-knew-where. One team wrapped the velvet cords around her legs, crossing over one another in perfect unison as they pulled the cords tighter and tighter, like something out of a cartoon. The other team did the same with her arms, binding them to her sides.

I wanted to give them a standing ovation as the bear came crashing down like a bowling pin. Charlotte roared as the distraction crew jumped on her head, dancing a jig and elbow-dropping into her fur, while others pulled at her bear ears, basically ensuring she kept her head down. Boudicca walked across the bear’s head, all the way down to the tip of her snout, lifting her hand in a salute before gesturing wildly at the now-clear hallway.

“Sorry, Charlotte.” Grabbing Nathan’s arm, I pulled him past her. “I didn’t want you to get involved in this,” I said to bear-Charlotte. “But you wouldn’t listen. You’ll understand soon. I’m doing this to save both of our best friends.”

If the pixies were right, then we’d be able to solve the mystery of the missing magicals before the night was over. I just prayed I wouldn’t be getting expelled for letting a horde of free-range pixies loose on a Basani-Bear.

She attacked first. She’s the one who should be reprimanded. Defiant, I let go of Nathan’s arm and tore along the corridor, though I still had no idea where we were going. Once Charlotte broke out of her bonds, she’d probably go straight to Victoria and we’d be on the hunters’ most-wanted list, but we’d have to handle that after we saved Genie. I couldn’t waste this window of time worrying about what might happen, not with my friend in peril.

The farther we ran, the closer we got to the unfinished part of the Institute. But that couldn’t be right. Boudicca landed on my shoulder and pointed forward as if I were her majestic steed. I glanced at her as I ran and she grinned back, her pulsating spots turning a vibrant shade of golden yellow—the color of friendship and triumph. Beside me, pixies crowded Nathan’s shoulders and head, enjoying a free ride. The rest flew above us as an aerial entourage, no longer worried about hiding in the shadows. Boudicca had spotted Charlotte long before we did, and I wondered if they had a way of sensing the hunters.

“Are we going to the new wing?” I asked Boudicca.

She nodded solemnly and swirled her hands over each other, as if trying to explain the unknown power that awaited us there. Her pulsating spots changed to a dark, foreboding purple. Knowing my color palettes had been a Godsend for breaking through language barriers with these pixies. They wore their hearts on their sleeves, literally.

Sprinting onward, we pounded the polished concrete until we came to the stunning, half-formed entrance to the new wing. The darkness dulled the colors of the stained glass, giving the wing a gloomy feel, as though it didn’t want us to enter. Nothing penetrated the dense black beyond the archway. No workman’s lights, no fireballs, just endless shadow.

“In here?” Nathan asked his freeloaders.

The pixies jittered, trying to tuck under the lapels of his jacket, and hide behind his ears and his neck. A few slipped into his pockets, and one managed to fold itself under his leonine locks, trembling against his scalp.

I shuddered, strengthened only by Boudicca’s steadfast face. “I think we can take that as a yes.”

With a deep breath, I put my best foot forward and stepped into the breach. It might’ve sounded dramatic, but it felt even more dramatic. The moment I entered the half-constructed foyer, the shadows seemed to close in and darken further, reminding me of that endless, tarry black substance I’d been trapped in at the start of my nightmare. Had that been an omen of this? I couldn’t see Nathan or Boudicca anymore, which supported the impression that I was entirely alone in a world of impermeable black.

“Nathan?” I whispered.

“I’m here,” he replied from nearby, though the reverb made it sound like his voice was coming from everywhere at once. “I can’t see a thing,” he whispered.

“Me neither.” I reached out, swishing my arms in front of me and hitting only air. “Can you find my voice?”

“I’m not sure.” His tone was concerned, but not afraid, and that was comforting.

“Do you have a lighter, or some kind of light spell we could use?” I all but begged. A moment longer in this darkness and I’d lose my mind. My breaths had already become ragged, and if I couldn’t fight it, the cold sweats would follow. And then, the inevitable.

Just then, I felt tiny hands on my face and heard a soft hush from Boudicca. She smoothed her palm across my cheek, small as a dime, and whispered in her pixie dialect. The words made no sense, but the sentiment did. Boudicca—the pixie I’d put in a glass orb—had sensed my terror and was trying to comfort me. Through the dark, I saw her pulsating spots glowing white.

“Thank you,” I murmured, feeling my breaths slow with every stroke of her small hand.

She giggled and chattered something that sounded like: “No problem.”

“Persie,” Nathan hissed. “Do you see that?”

“What?” I whipped my head around, my eyes focusing on lights heading in our direction. I nearly shrieked, thinking they were hunters’ flashlights. But then I noticed the colors, burning bright at the center, encircled by a gaseous halo. Purples, pinks, greens, blues, yellows, all bobbing toward us. They’d come from somewhere within the unfinished sphere of the new Repository, though I had no idea which way I was even facing.

I smiled as they illuminated the dark of the foyer, chasing the shadows back into the corners where they could lurk all they liked without bothering us. They were beautiful, like magical, dancing wisps. Just looking at them made my insides warm and happy.

“The orbs came back,” I thought aloud, ignoring a frantic chirp from Boudicca. Her tiny hands tried to grab my face, but I was too fascinated by the lights to turn away. “Do you remember them, Nathan?”

He stood beside me, looking up. “I do. They were in here last time, weren’t they? I… didn’t realize how astonishing they were. I expect you have to see them in the dark to fully appreciate their beauty.”

“Didn’t you say they might be spirits of dead hunters?” I whispered, not wanting to disturb the wisps as they spiraled around each other and danced off in different directions, putting on a show just for us.

“Hmm?” Nathan appeared just as captivated as I was. “Oh, yes, something to… uh, that effect. They might be the remnants of… What did you say again?”

“Dead hunters’ spirits,” I replied.

“Yes, they might be remnants of… a dead hunter’s magic, though I can’t think who they would belong to.” He giggled, his eyes wide as saucers. “They would have had to be… What was I saying? Um… exceptionally powerful to leave such wondrous fragments behind. And I can’t think… I can’t think… of anyone who would have fit such a bill recently. Maybe not even in the… the Institute’s history.”

Grinning idiotically at the floating lights, I looked around in wonder as music began to play, melodic and sweet with an undercurrent of sadness that brought tears to my eyes. I could almost envision a chorus of angels, cheesy as it sounded. But music inspired imagination, and I’d never heard a sweeter or sadder song in my whole life.

“Tell me you can hear that?” Nathan sighed, his eyes wet.

I nodded dumbly. “It’s incredible. Do you know what they’re saying?”

“It’s an old variation of Gaelic…” He hummed quietly, trying to find the melody. “But even my ordinary Gaelic is very rusty. I can only make out something to do with a broken heart and… eternal longing, perhaps? But it might be a stomachache.”

Persephone? A not-so-melodic voice cut through my charmed thoughts. Persephone, can you hear me?

Not now! You’re ruining it!

Ruining what? He sounded bemused.

The pretty lights and the beautiful music. It’s… the most incredible thing I’ve ever heard. I watched the lights flow balletically through the air, moving in time to the slow, bittersweet song. I’d appreciate it if you could get out of my head so I can keep on enjoying it. Why are you in my head, anyway? Weirdly, I wasn’t upset that Leviathan had made contact.

The music is why I came. Your fascination with it. His tone carried a hint of concern, which annoyed me.

Oh, so I can’t be happy or angry or sad without you showing up unannounced? Are there any emotions I can feel without you butting in?

He chuckled softly. Your emotions are erratic. That is why I am here. There is something amiss. His laughter faded. Tell me about the lights and music.

I don’t know. They just appeared, but I’ve seen them before—they’re these gaseous, floaty orbs, a bit like small, colorful comets. There wasn’t any music last time, though, I explained. I wished he’d buzz off so I could hear the music properly without him taking up headspace.

Ah… A note of surprise punctuated the sound.

I rolled my eyes. Ah? What does that mean?

They sound like Will-o’-the-Wisps. I have heard of them, but they have never interested me enough to warrant my full attention. He paused. Now, however… Perhaps they have earned my curiosity.

I tried to hide my excitement in case Nathan noticed, but I quickly realized he was too transfixed by the lights to even remember that I was here. The hiding pixies had come out to slap some sense into him, the one in his hair tugging on his locks, but he didn’t pay them any mind. I didn’t blame him. Who would want to be distracted from such a remarkable display? I definitely didn’t, but I had a nuisance in my noggin that wouldn’t go away until he’d done whatever it was he’d come to do, and I was anxious to return to the light show.

Are you going to leave me hanging? I asked.

He laughed. You know I would never do that, my Persephone. Will-o’-the-Wisps are elemental spirits. The lights themselves are candles of the dead. The spirits hold the candles, and they are the ones who sing, but you cannot see the bearers with the naked eye. They may appear to some as hazy figures. I am surprised you are not able to see them. He made a sound, as though he was slightly disappointed by this fact.

Sorry that I’m not some almighty Mother of Monsters, I spat, becoming more and more frustrated by his voice. It was like hearing three songs at once, all the notes clamoring in my head and making my nerves bristle. Besides, last time we’d spoken, he’d told me about a Door to Nowhere, not elemental spirits or wisps. It sounded like he was making it up as he went along, trying to keep my attention.

Anyway, that is by the by, Leviathan continued. The candles of the dead and the song of the spirits hypnotize people in order to lead them astray. Usually, it is to lead them from safe paths into bogs and marshland, to claim more spirits for themselves. However, it seems they have diversified.

“Will you not listen to us?” whispered a soft voice, ethereal and sad. Almost as if they were pleading with me. “Please, hear our song. We sing it for you.”

I nodded slowly. “I’m listening.” The moment I spoke, the connection severed and Leviathan vamoosed out of my head, just as I’d wanted. Now, I could give all of my focus to the hypnotic wisps, just as they wanted. I’d come all this way; the least I could do was listen.

“Will you follow us, sweet lady?” the voice whispered again, gentle and warm. “Will you come to us? We can sing to you there. We sing for you.”

I smiled shyly. “For me?”

“For me?” Nathan parroted.

“Only for you. Will you follow us?” The lights floated toward the dense black of the new Repository sphere, and my feet did the talking. I stepped forward automatically, eager to go wherever the Wisps were going. Beside me, Nathan did the same.

“I’ll follow,” I replied dreamily, desperate not to lose sight of them.

I’d walked a few paces when Boudicca put her fingers to her lips and gave the loudest whistle my eardrums had ever heard. En masse, the pixies surged toward the Wisps. The pixies’ pulsating lights burned with blinding brightness for a few seconds, the sudden ferocity chasing the Wisps away down the central walkway of the sphere and into the darkness below. The moment they disappeared, taking their heartbreaking song with them, I snapped out of whatever trance they’d put me in. It was like waking up after a long, strange dream, and finding that you’d sleepwalked into the kitchen for no reason.

I blinked. “Nathan? Are you okay?”

“I was just about to ask you the same thing,” he replied, concerned. “Did they just… hypnotize us?”

I nodded. “And the pixies saved our behinds.” The pieces were slowly making sense. “I’ve got a feeling that, if we’d followed them, we’d have ended up in the same situation as the missing magicals. That’s why there were no signs of a struggle: no one did struggle. They came here of their own accord, because of the Will-o’-the-Wisps.”

Nathan’s face was marginally visible in the light of the glowing pixies who’d come back to roost. “Pardon?”

“They’re Will-o’-the-Wisps,” I said, fixing him with a stern gaze. Weren’t we almost trapped like everyone else, and wasn’t he supposed to be a genius in this subject? “Do you know anything about them?”

“Yes. They are thought to be controlled by…” He trailed off, looking at the pixies on his shoulder.

“By?” I prompted.

He cleared his throat, his eyes wide. “Pixies.”

Boudicca leapt to the defense of her people, chattering loudly, jabbing and pointing like there was no tomorrow. I got the feeling she disagreed with Nathan, and I wished more than ever that I had a way to understand exactly what my Purge beasts were saying. It would’ve made this so much easier.

“Calm down,” I urged Boudicca. “Explain it slowly, so I can get the gist.”

She turned her pulsating spots to a sad shade of blue and began to act out the message she was trying to get across. First, she pointed at me and pretended to walk across my shoulder, shivering and hunched, her expression scared. Then, she pointed to herself and lifted up off my shoulder, gesturing and beckoning as though she were leading me somewhere. For her next act, she dropped suddenly to the floor, as if she were dead, and turned her spots purple. She rose up with her arms outstretched, like a resurrected mummy, and returned to her second performance of guiding me somewhere. Then, things turned bad again as Boudicca began snickering and tiptoeing through the air, leading me, presumably, down the wrong path.

“The Wisps are spirits of lost souls?” I said. Boudicca nodded vigorously. “Who haven’t been able… to cross to the afterlife?” She nodded again, flashing her purple spots. “But how did they end up like this, causing trouble? They aren’t poltergeists.” Boudicca grumbled something rude in pixie and flashed her purple spots more frantically.

Nathan cleared his throat. “I think she’s trying to say that they were brought into being with some kind of Necromancy. Purple is the color of Necromancy.”

Boudicca took off and hurtled toward Nathan’s face, landing a huge smacker on his nose. She flew back again, smoothing down her hair with sudden bashfulness. In fairness, poor Nathan looked stunned, and maybe a little horrified.

“I guess that means you were right,” I said, chuckling nervously. “Did you bring them into being? I didn’t know you were Necromancers.”

Boudicca gestured, and then swept her hands through the air in a cross.

I arched a confused eyebrow. “You were, but you’re not anymore?”

She grinned and nodded, before motioning in the direction of where the Wisps had disappeared. I tried to remember the rest of the scenes that she’d played out so I could put together a timeline of events in my head.

“So, you brought them into being with Necromancy and gave them the task that you’d been doing of guiding travelers? Only, they… stopped doing what you told them to, and started leading people astray instead?” I was really wading through some wild speculation here. “And that’s when you had your Necromancy abilities taken away from you?”

Boudicca punched the air and nodded effusively. She held up her index finger and added one last scene. Miming to perfection, she signed out a doorway, then pretended to get sucked through, shaking her fists as her spots flashed red with anger.

“They got trapped behind the Door to Nowhere because they were disobeying?” I guessed.

She grinned and gave me a thumbs-up. But she wasn’t quite done. Flying right up to my face, she tapped my forehead. And I had a horrible feeling I understood exactly what she was trying to say this time.

I lowered my voice, so Nathan wouldn’t hear. “I opened the Door to Nowhere by Purging you?”

She tilted her head from side to side and tapped my forehead again.

“I opened it by coming here?” I asked.

No matter which way I swung it, I was responsible for this. The pixies hadn’t stolen anyone directly, and neither had I, but our joint actions had caused a chain reaction that had opened up this mysterious door.

She repeated the head tilt.

I sighed, exasperated. “You don’t know why the Door is open?”

She nodded and pressed her bony finger between my brows.

“You don’t know, but you think it has something to do with me?”

Her black eyes widened in apology as she gave one last, slow nod. I really hadn’t wanted Leviathan to be right… about any of it. The Door to Nowhere was real, and I’d played a part in unlocking it so the Wisps could get out and wreak havoc. He might have had incorrect information about the Wisps, but he’d been on the right track. Maybe, if he wasn’t so arrogant, he would’ve paid attention to beasts who hadn’t warranted his attention, and I’d have been spared this lesson in advanced charades. But I couldn’t change that now. I couldn’t change any of it.

“Is everything all right?” Nathan stepped into my hazy view.

I tried to rally my nerve, for his sake. “I think so. Those Wisps were trapped beyond the Door to Nowhere, and now it’s open. They’re leading people off the path and through the Door, because that’s what they do. It’s real, and it’s here, and I’m guessing it’s down at the bottom of the sphere, since that’s where the Wisps went.”

“But… there has never been any connection between Will-o’-the-Wisps and the Door. Both show up in ancient texts, but never together. And, like I said before, the gateway has only been mentioned once as being anywhere near here.” He scratched his head. “This doesn’t make any sense.”

“It doesn’t have to. Not everything is written down in books, Nathan. Sometimes, there are things in this world so great that they have to be kept secret at all costs.” A lump formed in my throat as the feeling of responsibility built in my chest, the pressure immense. “All I know is, something happened here. Something stirred this place into reacting.”

Nathan’s eyes opened wide. “It’s the construction! If the Door is down there, it must’ve been unearthed when they started building the foundations. They didn’t begin on the sphere too long ago—maybe a week before you arrived—so, if we add a bit of wait time for the gateway to gather energy from… some unknown source, then the timeline would fit!”

Nathan O’Hara. You really are one of the good ones. In the space of one theory, he’d managed the impossible—he’d taken the weight of all of this off my guilt-ridden shoulders and displaced it elsewhere. Thanks to Leviathan—and Boudicca, to a lesser extent—I’d been so sure that this was my fault. Instead, it appeared this might be a hideous coincidence, after all. The Door needed bestial energy, that was what Leviathan said. Well, the Institute had an entire Repository just waiting to be sapped as an energy source. And all of that would’ve begun a week before I arrived. Sure, I might’ve added a little bit of juice, but only once the ball was already rolling. Tentative relief washed over me as I hoped, with all my heart, that Nathan’s theory was right.

“Can I ask you one thing?” I straightened, dragging my confidence with the rest of me.

Nathan nodded. “Of course.”

“Have any of the beasts in the Repository seemed sluggish or weird lately? You know, around the time the foundations for the sphere were dug?” I wanted one last piece of evidence to exonerate me.

He rubbed his stubbled chin in thought. “Now that you mention it… yes, they’ve been more lethargic, and less inclined to emerge from their mist. I thought it had to do with the changing seasons and the particularly awful weather we’ve been having, as Purge beasts can be very sensitive to atmospheric pressure.”

“Do you think the Door might’ve been sapping their energy?” I put it out there and prayed.

He squinted, thinking. “I don’t see why not. It certainly fits the timeline.”

Thank Chaos! Thank freaking Chaos! That meant it wasn’t the pixies, it might’ve had very little to do with me, and I could stop feeling like everyone who’d gone missing had marched off to a terrible fate because I’d had the audacity to come to the Institute. A nagging thought in the back of my head reminded me of the other missing magicals, the ones out there in the wider world, disappearing each month. The Door couldn’t have had anything to do with that.

“Then let’s find this Door.” I steeled myself, letting the pixies light the treacherous path down the central walkway. They didn’t provide much light, the equivalent of cat’s eyes reflecting at the side of the road, but it was enough to avoid tumbling to a tragic death.

Nathan followed me toward the middle of the sphere only to veer off and pause at the sheer lip of the suspended walkway, staring into the abyss below. A pole, which would one day have glass orbs clinging to it like in the Repository, stood within arm’s reach, though we’d have to lean out at 45-degrees to grab it.

He cast me an anxious smile. “I wanted to be a firefighter when I was little. I guess now I’ll finally find out if it would have worked out.”

“You’re going to go first?”

He gulped and reached for the pole, his toes barely hanging onto the walkway. “Looks like it.” He grabbed onto the pole and swung his torso toward it, and his legs followed. He clung koala-style for a moment, frozen. A second later, he whooshed downward, with a horde of pixies hot on his heels, and disappeared from view.

Taking a deep breath, I approached the spot where he’d stood. Boudicca plopped onto a sitting position on my shoulder and gripped my T-shirt with both hands. Why she didn’t fly down with the others, I had no clue, but I liked having her with me.

“Hold on, Genie,” I whispered, wishing my words would somehow find her.

I leaned out past the point of no return and grabbed the pole, then froze, half on the walkway and half off. Finally, I wrapped my legs around the pole, as Nathan had done, and clung there for a few seconds. It was always a mistake to look down, but the fact that I couldn’t see a damn thing down there made it ten times worse. Genie had saved my behind more than once. Now, it was my turn to reciprocate.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I loosened my grip and plummeted into the unknown.