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It seemed I was due to get my answers sooner than I’d thought. The very next day, a hunter came knocking on my door, disturbing me from the oblivion of Purge-battered Persie. Hair sticking up, eyes bleary, mouth like sandpaper, and every muscle throbbing like I’d run a marathon last night, I answered after his third impatient rap.

He reeled back in horror at my disheveled appearance before gathering himself. “Uh… Victoria has asked to see you in her office as soon as possible. I can give you ten minutes if you need it, though?”

“That bad, huh?” I leaned against the doorjamb, feeling woozy. It was far too early for me to be awake—I didn’t care that the clock read past noon. This body had Purged a freaking Grendel, and I felt the burn of every Chaos atom I’d put into making that gargantuan beastie. The medics had run a myriad of tests, prodding and poking my tender skin, adding some inky bruises to go with the rest of my aches and pains. Having given the all clear, they’d sent me packing to my room to sleep it off, with Genie acting as my wheelchair chauffeur. She’d been way too enthusiastic about it, whizzing me through the Institute like we were racing in the Grand Prix.

The hunter, whom I vaguely recognized, gave an apologetic laugh. “You gave me a bit of a fright, that’s all. I’ll just wait out here until you’re ready. Please, take your time.”

Charming. I closed the door on him and set to work on making myself presentable. He must’ve thought I was under attack again as I made all manner of gasps and sharp “ouches” as I forced myself into a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and pulled my hair into a messy ponytail. I didn’t even bother to tie my shoes; I just shoved my feet into a pair of sneakers and jammed the laces inside. Dragging my ass to the bathroom, I splashed some cold water on my face and rushed through the fastest tooth brushing of my life before puffing a quick spritz of deodorant under the old pits.

Looking and feeling slightly less like a cavewoman, I headed out. A fleeting expression of relief crossed the hunter’s face as he saw me, prompting part of me to wonder what Victoria would’ve said if I’d rocked up to her office in my PJs, looking as though I’d just been dragged backward through a hedge.

“Lead the way.” I gestured down the hall. I knew where Victoria’s office was, but she’d evidently sent this guy to escort me. Not in a you’re-under-arrest kind of way, but more in a she-might-keel-over-at-any-moment kind of way, which I appreciated. If I got hit with another dizzy spell on the walk, I didn’t fancy faceplanting on the marble.

He nodded and offered me his arm like some kind of Regency gent. “You can hold onto me, if you want. I heard you had a rocky night.”

“Thanks. And yeah, that’s putting it mildly.” I looped my arm through his, leaning on him as we set off. Chivalrous as it seemed, I didn’t feel at all comfortable being this close to someone I didn’t know, and immediately regretted linking arms. After last night, I wasn’t sure I’d ever trust a stranger again. The unsettled feeling from the night before remained, making me shiver even though I wasn’t cold.

“You’re probably still in shock. Here.” The hunter took off his black blazer and draped it over my shoulders, another kindly gesture that had the opposite effect on my addled brain. All I could think about was the blanket that my abductor had draped over me in the same way. But I was too polite to hand the blazer back, so I left it, a reminder of my trauma.

“Did Charlotte and the rapid response squad manage to catch the Grendel?” I asked. After getting checked out in the Infirmary and being Formula One-d back to my room, it’d been lights out the moment my head touched the pillow. Nathan had promised to update me, but I’d left my phone back in my room. I imagined he looked a lot worse than me right now, after pulling an all-nighter to care for the pixies.

I knew it wasn’t right to play favorites, but that mischievous trio were, of my Purges, my pride and joy. If that sneaky bastard had hurt them, I’d be the one wielding the jumper cables next time. And he wouldn’t get a blanket to warm him from my bitter wrath.

The hunter shook his head reluctantly. “Not yet. Last I heard, the Grendel had gone underground.”

“Literally?” The Grendel didn’t look like a ground-dweller, but it certainly had big enough claws to dig out a hiding spot.

He chuckled. “No, I mean the monster has gone off the radar. Charlotte and the RR team, plus two other squads, are still out looking.”

I didn’t bother voicing my wish for the Grendel to be brought in alive—I’d be preaching to the wrong choir. Nathan and I had been vocal about our position, but the safety of my Grendel relied on its perceived level of threat. So, I supposed it was a relief to find out that he’d decided to hide instead of rampaging across the island. The moment he hurt a civilian, I knew Charlotte and the hunters would have carte blanche to use lethal force.

“What about the man who kidnapped me?”

The hunter shrugged. “Same news on that front. Whoever they are, they’re keeping a low profile. And they were smart, as well—they didn’t leave anything behind for us to track and trace.”

I already knew that. That had been the strangest part about returning to the fishery last night. My abductor had been meticulous—staying, or returning, to clean up after himself, even after a brutal fight with my Grendel.

I thought of a quote from Fyodor Dostoyevsky as we walked on in silence: People speak sometimes about the “bestial” cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts. No animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel. It struck a poignant chord within me, bringing back the conflict I experienced every time I brought another monster into the world. The Grendel had charged into the fray with no thought for his own safety and without knowing if he could trust me. He’d heard my plea and acted, and I was alive and back inside the Institute because of that. And yet, even having harmed no one, he was being hunted down right that very moment. Once captured, all it would get as a reward for saving me and going against his hungry instincts was a lifetime in a glass box. Just another log on the furnace that kept our world running. If that wasn’t artfully, artistically cruel, I didn’t know what was.

“Are you feeling all right?” the hunter asked.

I blinked, remembering where I was. “I’ll survive.” It was more than could be said for my Grendel.

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, my exhausted body got some respite after I sank into the comfort of the cream-colored wingback armchair in Victoria’s office. She sat opposite me in an exact imitation. I’d already downed the two full glasses of water she’d offered, which took the edge off my arid throat. Fortunate, considering I had a lot to say. She’d asked me to go back over the details of last night, leaving no stone unturned, no matter how small or insignificant it might’ve seemed to me. I’d rattled through most of it, struggling to piece it together in a linear fashion.

“Um… he said someone had called him a Fear Dearg when they’d seen him turn, because of this curse. He mispronounced it, but I knew what he meant. It starts as this thick red mist that tumbles over him. The mist kinda sparks with embers, and… when the mist touched me, I felt this overwhelming sense of terror and dread.” I neared the end of the recounting, my third refill of water at the ready. “That triggered my Purge, I puked up a Grendel; they fought, and I ran away. That’s when I bumped into Nathan and Genie, while they were waiting for backup.” I hadn’t forgotten what Genie had whispered to me on the walk back to the lookout point—that they’d been instructed to stay put and had been flagrantly disobeying when I’d run into them. I wasn’t about to throw my pals under the proverbial bus.

I remembered the abductor’s clumsiness, his small gestures of humanity, and decided to throw caution to the wind. “This might not mean anything, but I don’t think it was super planned. It felt like he was acting out of… desperation, on behalf of these Veritas people,” I added.

Victoria sat there in stiff silence for an eternity. I tried to read her expression, but she was chillingly good at maintaining a poker face. She was like a majestic swan gliding effortlessly across a lake, while its orange, webbed feet paddled frantically, invisibly, underneath. Watching her, I realized that her silence said more than she wanted it to: she was trying to figure out what to say, and how to say it.

Which meant something in my tale had rattled her.

What aren’t you telling me? There was something undeniably fishy going on. Neither Charlotte nor Victoria seemed surprised by the existence of Veritas or witch hunters. It stank of the same need-to-know secrecy that my parents employed. Perhaps it hadn’t been a big deal before now—a backseat problem that had never come this close to the Institute’s borders. Something to keep a lazy eye on, which now called for their full focus. I could understand that. Why worry everyone needlessly? And he’d only targeted me; he hadn’t made a threat to the Institute as a whole.

At last, Victoria cleared her throat. “Thank you for going through all of that again. I know it could not have been easy, and I am, once again, truly sorry for what you have endured.” She sat up straighter and steepled her fingers. I noticed them trembling slightly—another sign that not all was as well as she wanted me to believe. “My most elite hunters and myself will take care of everything, and I will continue to make inquiries. In the meantime, I think it best for your welfare and your recovery if you stay inside the Institute. I must insist that you do not venture out on your own again.”

I’d already expected her to hand me a not-so-veiled order like this, but I hadn’t dragged myself into daytime clothes and wrangled my hair into a ponytail just to hear that. I’d come for answers to my questions, too—AKA her end of the honesty bargain. But I had to be subtle about it.

“Are the witch hunters Nathan mentioned the same as the Veritas, maybe?” I took a gulp of water to stop my voice from cracking. “Do you think they might be linked to what’s happening in the States? The guy who captured me didn’t seem like an expert in torture, but he had the basic idea and equipment. And the missing magicals that my mom is looking into have been tortured.”

Victoria fixed me with one of her most intense, obsidian stares. “Everything will be investigated. It’s in the right hands now.”

“Has something like this happened before?”

“No,” she said simply.

Frustration bristled up the back of my neck. “Okay, so this might be a new turn of events here, but they might’ve done it before in other countries. They could even be the ones who took Charles Burniston. It could all be linked.”

“We will be thorough in our investigation, Persie.” There was a curt note in her voice, warning me not to keep flogging this particular horse. “I have heard your account, and it will be correlated with other evidence. We are hunters. Tracking things down is what we do, whether that be a monster or an answer.”

I leaned forward, scooting toward the edge of the armchair. “Are witch hunters a commonly known problem, or are they more of a local thing?”

“Nathan was theorizing, using a term that encompasses many things.” She brushed the question off. “You shouldn’t trouble yourself any further. We will look into every possible angle. Leave it in our capable hands.” Part of me itched to keep fighting until she relented, but that would’ve been like chipping away at a boulder of solid diamond with a toothpick. It was clear that she had divulged all she was willing to.

Still, it felt wrong to just bow my head and accept her word on the matter. I was the one he’d captured. Didn’t I deserve to know more? Apparently not. At the same time, I knew if this had happened in the outside world, I would’ve left it to detectives to figure out the truth, because that was their job and not mine. This was no different. I lacked the experience and the skillset to be useful on this. I was a trainee, not a seasoned hunter.

I was still trying to figure out my place in the magical world, and right now, my mind was a blur of burning eyes, car batteries, and the fuzzy warmth of a clean blanket. That made me even less useful to Victoria and her hunters. The best thing I could do was follow her orders, leave it to the pros, and wait patiently for news.