Page 13

With midnight nearing, the evening’s twists and turns had mostly been put to bed. Nathan had managed to slip the pixies away, right under Victoria’s nose, and put them back in the Repository, though I doubted he planned to get any sleep tonight. There was something very wrong with my little critters, and if I knew Nathan, he already had a list of books in mind to search for remedies.

Victoria had insisted on taking me back to the scene of my brief captivity, with a full army of hunters in tow. The fishery was in an even worse state than it had been when I’d left, with planks of wood smashed to pieces, old barrels busted open, and rusted machinery scattered around like metallic corpses. They were the fallen victims of my captor and the Grendel, though there was no sign of either fighter, or any indication of who’d won. I supposed I should’ve been a shaking, quivering mess, returning so soon to the scene of my abduction, but I was too numb and too exhausted by the Purge to be as petrified as I should have been. Perhaps that was a good thing, at least in terms of being able to recount what had happened.

“What can you tell us about the man who kidnapped you?” Victoria folded her arms behind her back, looking around the dank fishery with a hint of disgust. A few of the hunters had already withdrawn, retching, because of the stink. “Any discernible features that could help us track him down?”

I tried to find a comfortable sitting position on a rickety crate, but my body ached all over from the Purge and I gave up, sinking into my discomfort. “He had dark hair and dark eyes. He had an Irish accent, pretty thick, and he’s…he’s tall and… um… well-built.”

“Anything else that might be of use?” Victoria pressed. She looked like she was focused on me, but I could tell she was scanning the area out of the corner of her eye. The moment I’d told her there was a Grendel on the loose, her nostrils had flared. For her, that was as emotionally explosive as howling in frustration.

A memory floated back into my exhausted brain. “Maybe.”

“Go on…”

“I remember my mom telling me, once, that there might come a time when some evil people try to take me away, to use me against my parents. The Merlin name being valuable and all that jazz,” I said, aware of everyone staring at me. Fortunately, I had Nathan and Genie flanking me to shield me from most of the intensity. Nathan had arrived as soon as he’d slipped the pixies back into the Repository, and I guessed Genie had persuaded him to bring her as my moral support. “And here I am, freshly abducted, albeit safe now.”

Victoria arched an eyebrow. “And how might this be of use? Do you think your kidnapper is tied to your family in some way?”

“No, that’s not it. Sorry, I know I’m babbling—it’s hard to get my thoughts in line.” I gripped the damp edges of the crate. “The abductor had eyes on me because of my name, but that wasn’t why he snatched me. He took me because he’s desperately searching for answers to a curse that’s been put on him. He thought I could fix it for him.”

Victoria’s mouth twitched, ever so slightly, into the ghost of a grimace. “Despicable,” she murmured, clearly furious that magicals were being targeted by these people.

Nathan crouched to look me in the eyes. “Did you say he’s been watching you?”

“That’s what he said. He mentioned something called the Veritas. I think they’re the ones who ordered him to keep an eye on me.”

He glanced up at Victoria. “It could be witch hunters. It wouldn’t be the first time they’ve sniffed around the Institute.”

“You’ve met people like this before?” My gaze flitted between the two of them, trying to read something more than concern on their faces. He’d said it so casually, like I should know the term. And I did, but not in a modern sense. In American history, “witch hunters” brought images of Salem and the gruesome, biased trials that no “witch” could ever win. By the time they were accused, their accusers were already measuring rope, building pyres, and preparing contraptions to drown those poor souls.

“I’m going to make some calls.” Victoria turned to Charlotte, leaving my questions unanswered. “I will leave you in charge of the hunt. Please report back to me as soon as the beast has been retrieved, and I would like updates on the status of this criminal who tried to hurt one of our own.”

Charlotte dipped her head. “Yes, Ms. Jules.”

“Who are these people?” I asked, trying to stand. My knees buckled, and I plopped back down onto the crate, thoroughly spent.

Victoria gave me a rare smile of encouragement. “We will talk about this again soon, Persie, once you’ve had the chance to recuperate from this traumatic experience. I am profoundly sorry that you were put in harm’s way. Rest assured, I will get to the bottom of this. No one terrorizes my people and gets away with it.”

Before I could pry any further, she drew a chalk-door in the nearby wall and vanished through it. What her calls would entail, or what avenues she was going to investigate, I had no idea. I supposed I would find out when we next spoke. After all, we’d agreed to mutual honesty, and I had a right to know what she planned to do about this.

“So, let’s get back to business.” Charlotte took over, squaring her shoulders as she shifted into action mode. “What else can you tell us about this guy?”

I looked around at the debris of the fight, trying to find any sign of my kidnapper. A torn bit of clothing, or his lighter—anything that confirmed he’d been here. But even though the fishery was in a state of annihilation, it seemed like he’d cleaned up after himself. The blanket and the food were gone from the corner where he’d tied me up, and even the fragments of Atomic Cuffs had vanished. Almost as though he knew if he left something behind, one of us nasty magicals could trace it—a sure indication that he’d encountered tracking spells before.

And yet… a certain sensation lingered in the fishery. A residual bad vibe, just like the one the man had created before. It prickled my skin and slithered into my belly, putting me on edge. Sure, it might have been the building itself, which was creepy and old and thrummed with haunted-house energy. But I had a feeling there was more to the wrongness of this place than that. I’d been sucker punched by the red mist that had rolled off my abductor in smoky waves. What lingered in the room was a diluted version of that sudden, illogical terror that had pulsed off of him.

“I know this is going to sound like a weird thing to say, but does anyone else feel spooked? In a way that doesn’t make sense?” I addressed the entire group of hunters, who shuffled awkwardly. Apparently, none of them were willing to admit that they were scared, at least not in present company. But one or two had a wide-eyed stare, like spooked horses, that made me wonder… I couldn’t be the only one feeling this, could I?

Genie put her hand on my shoulder. “You might just be reliving what happened. And this place isn’t exactly a day spa.” She gestured around at the creepy warehouse.

“Maybe.” I wasn’t totally convinced, but she did have a point. It had barely been an hour since I was last in this dripping, stagnant place, seconds away from being hooked up to a car battery. Naturally, I wasn’t going to feel comfortable here.

“Do you want Victoria to let your family know about all of this?” Nathan added his concern to the mix.

“NO!” The word exploded out of me. “No, Chaos no! I know Victoria will want to handle it all in-house, and I happen to agree. My mom would freak out, and she doesn’t need the added hassle. Then she’d want to get involved, and she wouldn’t be allowed, and that would just cause way too much drama.”

There were things that I didn’t mind telling my parents, but this couldn’t be one of them. I already knew about the difficulties of international relations, and telling her about my kidnapper would do nothing but frustrate her. She’d be stuck in the States, wanting to help me but constrained by red tape and Victoria’s jurisdiction. Even if Victoria wasn’t dead set against external interventions, we didn’t have time for bureaucratic hoop-jumping to find out who these people were. I’d asked for independence, and this was it.

“I think that’s wise,” Charlotte agreed. She lowered her voice to a murmur. “And if Harley were to get embroiled in this, she would bring that brother of hers.”

It appeared the Finch-Basani feud was still alive and well, even though Finch and the twins hadn’t seen each another since the Mapmakers’ Monastery. I didn’t have much to laugh about right then, but the idea that the Basani twins had passed the bad blood down to Charlotte made me smile in spite of myself. How could Charlotte have a vendetta against my Uncle Finch when she had never even met him? My mind turned briefly to thoughts of Family Weekend, and I wondered if my uncle would dare set foot in the Institute again. Maybe he’d burst into flames.

I took a breath to push away the black spots in my vision. “Now that we’ve got that sorted, I’m not sure there’s much more I can tell you about the guy. He spoke about a curse that turns him into a red misty creature—a Fear Dearg, if I understood him right—and he mentioned a group called the Veritas, as I said. He tried to pass it off as a nickname, but I think that might be the organization behind this.” I carried on, telling them everything else the captor had said to me, from his insistence that this was all my fault, to his pleas and the possible damage his curse was inflicting on other people. “Do you think the Veritas might be these witch hunters?” I finished with the most burning question, directing it at Nathan, since he’d brought them up. In my periphery, I watched Charlotte’s reaction, but she didn’t seem fazed by anything I’d said—not “witch hunters” and definitely not “Veritas.”

“I’m sure Victoria will speak to you about possibilities another time,” she replied, flashing Nathan a warning look. He bowed his head slightly, and I knew I wouldn’t get my answers that night. “Nathan, Genie, you should take Persie back to the Institute and stop by the Infirmary. The medics should evaluate her to make sure she’s okay.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but Genie put her hand on my arm. “You need to rest, Pers. You’ve had a crazy-long night and you’re going to feel that Purge in the morning.”

Admitting temporary defeat wasn’t the conclusion I was after, but it was the best I was going to get for now. Still, if Victoria thought she could evade my questions forever, then she’d sorely misjudged our agreement. There was something going on here, and Charlotte clearly knew more about Veritas and these witch hunters than she was letting on. At the very least, she’d heard the terms before. I contemplated telling her more about my mother’s investigations into the missing magicals, in case she thought it was connected to the Veritas. But I could already hear her party-line response: “It’s above our paygrade.” “It’s none of my business.” “Victoria will handle everything.”

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” My eyelids were getting heavier by the second, but I couldn’t go yet.

Charlotte wore an exasperated expression. No doubt she thought I was going to keep harassing her about this witch hunter stuff. “What’s that?”

“The Grendel. It’s still out there somewhere, and it’s not a small, timid thing.”

Nathan jumped in. “They are notoriously volatile, and they do have a tendency toward destruction, as evidenced by the mayhem it caused here.” He laughed uncomfortably. “Take extreme caution and don’t creep up on it, whatever you do. When spooked, Grendels have lightning reflexes, and they can deliver a bite that will turn your blood to jelly in less than a minute.”

Once again unfazed, Charlotte wafted a casual hand at the squad of hunters. “You heard O’Hara—watch your backs and be careful out there. Let’s just make sure we find it and bring it back to the Institute.”

“Preferably alive!” Nathan and I cried in unison.

Charlotte smiled coolly. “I’m sure we’ll do our best.” With that, she led her squad out of the fishery, leaving the three of us to make our own way back to the Institute.

Nathan took charge, sketching a chalk-door into the same wall where Victoria had exited. Meanwhile, Genie stayed at my side, the two of us staring out at the fishery together. The mystery was thick here, on all sides of this triangle. My captor had his secrets, and the Institute seemed to have knowledge that was on the down-low, and my parents were buried beneath endless NDAs. And yet, part of me felt certain that this troubling trifecta was connected.

Genie side-eyed me. “Are you sure you don’t want to tell your mom?”

I smiled, realizing we were thinking the same thing. “Until I figure out without a shadow of a doubt that all these things are linked, I don’t think there’s much point. I’ll just end up pissing people off, and that’s not what I want. Things have been going well for me, aside from the kidnapping. I’m not about to screw that up now.” I met her gaze, flashing her a conspiratorial glance. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t do some investigating of our own. Technically, if we look into it, that’s still keeping it in-house. And if I find something useful, I’ll give my mom the intel, if only as a fresh lead.”

“I like your style, Persie.” She helped me to my feet, grinning. “Why, it’s almost like you read my mind.”