Harley Merlin 4: Harley Merlin and the First Ritual

by Forrest, Bella

  Unfortunately for them, they had no idea what they were dealing with when it came to me.

  Truth be told, I was the concerned one. After what had happened last time, terror and excitement mingled inside me. If I had Wade’s calming hand to guide me, though, then maybe I’d be okay. Maybe I could stop the same thing from happening. Either way, I was glad I had Wade with me. Even if I had to come clean about my last visit, I was happy not to be alone. Somehow, his presence shouldered some of the weight.

  Ten

  Harley

  “Wait here for a moment,” the blond-haired woman instructed as I came out of my interview. Leaving us in the hallway, she went into the room and closed the door behind her. I figured they were about to have a nice little chat about me. Maybe they’d share a laugh about the “audacity” of the SDC thinking we could solve something that they hadn’t managed to.

  “How did it go?” Wade asked, breaking me out of my irritation.

  I shrugged. “They said I could go and see it, as long as you came with me. It seems the Crowley name holds some weight here. Not so much the Merlins and the Shiptons, but I guess I can’t blame them for that.”

  He smiled. “Well done. You must’ve impressed them.”

  “More like got myself laughed out of the room. They don’t see us as a threat, which kind of works in our favor for this.”

  “Yeah, they’re a little… prejudiced here.”

  “I’d have gone for ‘up their own asses.’”

  He laughed. “Still, we’re getting what we came for. The rest doesn’t matter. Let them have their prejudices—it’ll make it even sweeter when we show them what we’re made of.”

  “See, this is why I like… uh, this is why we’re pals. On the same wavelength and whatever.” I fumbled over my words, quickly dropping my gaze.

  Little Miss Frozen saved my skin by exiting the interview room at that moment, a polite smile fixed on her face. “Here’s your pass and the keys to Special Collections—the smaller one is for the Grimoire case. If anyone asks why you’re here, or why you’re going into the Special Collections room, just show them the ID card.” She handed over an ordinary-looking lanyard with a card attached. “The big key will let you into the room.”

  “No password?” I asked, remembering the last time.

  She frowned. “The password is only for New York Coven residents. This ensures that visitors can only enter once, and at our discretion.”

  “Makes perfect sense, my bad. Thanks,” I said, taking it and looping it over my neck. Too eager to wait around, I started to move off down the corridor, only to be called back by the blond.

  “Don’t you need directions?” she asked pointedly.

  Idiot… Don’t give yourself away now!

  I made a show of smacking my forehead. “Yes, of course. Directions.”

  She gave us a detailed map of the coven’s layout, the Special Collections room helpfully circled. “Don’t try and take the map out of the coven, though. It’ll self-destruct as soon as you’re out of the coven’s perimeter.” Of course it will.

  With that, she sent us on our way. Wade glanced at me as we set off, a flicker of suspicion moving across his face. Had he noticed me trying to walk off without any directions? I hoped not.

  Fifteen minutes later, after traipsing through the echoing hallways of the New York Coven, we arrived in the dingy wing that I recalled from last time. The air was even colder here, wind howling somewhere in the high arches above us, my body shivering beneath my leather jacket. Does someone want to close the windows in this place? Geez! I rubbed my arms to coax some warmth back into me, half-daydreaming about what it’d be like to snuggle up to Wade and steal some of his heat.

  Once again, there was hardly anyone around. At every turn, I still expected a monster to come ambling out, moaning and reaching out clawed hands toward me. Heading past the Global Library that Salinger had guided our facsimiles around, I knew we were close to Special Collections, even without the map. Everything seemed familiar now.

  “It’s this one,” Wade announced, stopping beside the right door. I tried to remember the password that had let me in the last time, but it was lost in the back of my mind.

  “You sure?” I feigned ignorance.

  “Well, this is the room she circled.”

  I stepped up to the curved doorway and fitted the ostentatiously large key into the lock, turning it until it clicked. A spark of green light flashed out of the keyhole, before the door swung open of its own accord. Suitably creepy. I half-expected Igor to be on the other side, hunched and beckoning us into his master’s lair.

  “Wow,” Wade breathed as we entered.

  “It’s cool, right?” A wave of mixed energies rolled toward me, cascading from the Grimoires and books that lined the walls. There was so much power in this place, even without my parents’ Grimoire secured in its glass case.

  Without waiting for Wade, I set off across the room and mounted the wrought-iron steps to the second-floor platform, striding straight over to the glass case that had been tucked behind the bookcases. Even with the protective charms that surrounded the case, the Grimoire began to whisper. It knew me now, more intimately than before. It was almost like an addiction, my palms itching to touch the leather bindings and trace my fingertips across the embossed designs. Mom, Dad, I’m here.

  Wade cleared his throat behind me, the sound making me jump. “Is this it?”

  “Yeah, this is it.” I couldn’t take my eyes off the cover.

  “How did you know it was here?”

  “Uh… I could feel it.” My mind was jangling all over the place, fixated on the Grimoire.

  He put his hand on my shoulder and forced me to turn. “You’ve been here before, haven’t you?”

  “No…” I muttered sheepishly.

  “You have! Don’t lie to me, Harley. I knew something was up when you started wandering off before blondie had even said where to look.”

  I was faced with a choice: lie through my teeth and hope he believed me or come clean about everything. Right now, there didn’t seem much point in lying to him. Judging by the expression on his face, he was already preparing to disbelieve anything I told him. True, I was scared of what he might say, and what he might tell Alton, but maybe he’d understand. Maybe, for me, he’d stay quiet about it.

  “Promise me you won’t get mad,” I said.

  “I can’t promise that.”

  I rolled my eyes at him. “Fine… Yes, I snuck in here with Santana the last time we came through to New York. Salinger was otherwise occupied, and we saw an opportunity that we had to take. We got him a little tipsy and he told us where to find the Grimoire. Since we were in this part of the coven anyway, we figured we’d take a look—see what all the fuss was about.” I didn’t want to mention the summoning thing, but I figured I was going to have to, if only for safety reasons.

  “You approached this thing without supervision?” Wade asked, before I could come clean.

  I shrugged. “Yeah.”

  “Did anything happen?”

  “Kind of. I sort of summoned something. Erebus, I think.”

  “Geez, Harley, you should’ve known better!” he barked. “You know what your affinities are like with this kind of stuff. Anything might have happened. And you had Santana with you, too—you could have put her in very real danger. We still don’t know the extent of what you’re capable of. You put both of your lives on the line by doing what you did. I hope you know that.”

  “Yes, I know that,” I shot back. “I know I’m this terrifying bomb that everyone thinks might go off at any moment. I’m well aware of my responsibilities… but I couldn’t walk past this place and not come in. I had to see it. I had to know what my parents had written. Don’t you dare tell me that, in my position, you wouldn’t have done the same.”

  “You could have been seriously hurt. Did you even think before you put yourself in that kind of danger?”

  I balled my hands into fists. “Yes,
I did. I weighed the risks and figured that discovering something in these pages was worth it.” My insides twisted with guilt as I thought about what had almost happened. That definitely hadn’t been worth it, considering the side effects Santana had experienced afterwards, but at least I now knew that I was capable of reading unfinished Grimoires.

  “And did you?” His eyes narrowed.

  “There are a couple of things about the Children of Chaos, yes. And that summoning spell that I performed—or at least that’s what we guessed it was.”

  He shook his head in disbelief. “Why wouldn’t you tell me about this?”

  “Do you really want to know?” My voice held a challenge that took him by surprise.

  “Of course I do. You should’ve told me.”

  “I didn’t say anything, and I asked Santana not to, because I was terrified of what might happen to me,” I replied.

  “What do you mean? Nothing would’ve happened to you. You’d have gotten a slap on the wrist, and that’d be it.”

  I took a breath. In for a dime, in for a dollar. “No, if I’d told you the truth, all hell would’ve broken loose. Truth is… I can read from unfinished Grimoires. My parents’ isn’t complete. I go into a weird trance and the words come out. Garrett’s seen me do it before, too. If I’d explained that to you, and you’d gone to Alton, and it had somehow got out—the Mage Council would’ve thrown me in a cell for the rest of my life. You really think they’d let someone with that ability just go free?”

  He stared at me. “What? When did this thing happen with Garrett? He didn’t say anything to me.”

  “We were in the Luis Paoletti Room. I did it by accident.”

  “Why the hell wouldn’t you have told me that?”

  “Same reason I didn’t tell you about my last visit here.”

  He shook his head. “You can really do that—read unfinished Grimoires?”

  “Yep. Lucky me, huh?” I ran a hand through my hair. “Santana thinks it has something to do with my heritage. I’m descended from the Primus Anglicus—the first magicals. Because of that, my roots are tied closer to the raw core of Chaos, and, with everything else I have going on inside me, it seems I got a few extra skills that haven’t been seen in hundreds of years, such as unfinished-Grimoire reading. Apparently, mixing Shipton and Merlin blood is a really bad idea, if you don’t want to end up with a potentially dangerous kid. Ticking timebomb, remember?”

  “Why did you think I wouldn’t keep your secret?” He sounded hurt.

  I shrugged awkwardly, feeling flustered. “You love rules and authority, Wade. I knew you’d probably go to Alton about this, and I couldn’t let that happen.” I cast him a shy glance. “And, right now, I need to know that you won’t go to him with this information. I don’t want to sound dramatic, but my life might rely on it. My freedom, at the very least.”

  “I won’t say anything to him,” he promised, without missing a beat. “I won’t put you in harm’s way. I thought you’d have learned that by now. Rules and regulations are useful, but sometimes there are situations where they need to be bent a little.”

  “Do you mean it? You won’t say anything?”

  “I won’t say anything.” He smiled, though the feeling of disappointment lingered. “Just… don’t go reading anything out loud while I’m here, okay?” The joke felt forced, but I was glad of the slight break in tension.

  “You’ll have to read it instead,” I replied. “I don’t exactly have control over it.”

  “You can stop that.”

  I arched an eyebrow. “What?”

  “The self-deprecation. I know you do it to be funny, but you’re good at what you do, Harley. I doubt anyone could have overcome the challenges of the Suppressor the way you have. You have more control than you think you do—take the fight with Katherine, for example. When it mattered, you stepped up to the plate. We’d probably all be dead if you hadn’t.”

  “Was that a… compliment, Wade Crowley?”

  He grinned. “Don’t get used to it.”

  “So, you forgive me?”

  “Give me a couple of hours, and I’ll think about it.”

  That was good enough for me.

  “Let’s take a look, then,” I said, using the smaller key to open the padlock. A shimmer of gold rippled across the case, loosening the charms so I could take the book out. It felt good to hold it in my hands again, the soft leather smooth against my skin.

  “Wait—I’d like to try something first,” he said, taking the book from my hands and setting it down at one of the nearby reading tables. A spike of jealousy shot through me at the Grimoire in Wade’s grasp, but I forced the sensation down. It’s just the weird effect these things have on you, that’s all. Already, I was struggling against the pull of the pages. The words wanted to be read—I heard them begging for my voice.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You’ll see.” He disappeared down the stairs and returned a few minutes later with a book in his hands. By the looks of it, it was another Grimoire. As he brought it closer to me, the whispers grew louder.

  “What’s that for?”

  He set it down on the table and gestured for me to sit. “If you can really do what you say you can, I want to test the limits of it. Might as well use the opportunity while we have it. I know there are some unfinished ones back at the SDC, but we’re here now. This is another unfinished Grimoire—I want to know if it’s only your parents’ that you can read from, or if it’s any unfinished one.”

  “I told you, I read from another one in the Luis Paoletti Room.”

  “Are you sure that one was unfinished?”

  I frowned. “No, but—”

  “Then we need to experiment.” I’d never seen him so excited. The disappointment and surprise of discovering my new talent was par for the course, but this eagerness was a different aspect of Wade altogether. One I hadn’t witnessed before.

  I sat down at the table and flipped open the book. My impulses took over, filling me with a need to read what was on the pages. It felt like a physical tug, pulling me forward. Settling on a spell that seemed harmless enough, I let my eyes drift over the words. Suddenly, everything else fell away, leaving me in a strange bubble of darkness. I couldn’t even see Wade anymore, only the book and the spell, brought to life in front of my eyes.

  I heard myself saying something, but it sounded distant and echoey. “Heart to heart and blood to blood, let you be me and I be you, and share and share alike,” was all I could hear myself speak, though I knew words had come before it. A bright spark of white light shot out from the book, enveloping Wade and me. The darkness receded, bringing me back into the Special Collections room, the trance broken as the spell had come to an end.

  Only, I was now standing where Wade had been, staring at myself in the seat a short distance away. Wondering if I’d performed some sort of teleportation spell, albeit it a small one, I frowned at my other self. I was still moving, my shoulders shaking as though I was laughing. What the…

  “Well, this is weird,” my seated self said, turning to look at me.

  “What happened?” My voice came out way deeper than normal, startling me.

  My other self smiled. “Look in the glass case over there.”

  Curious, I turned to check my reflection in the long pane of glass that held a series of ancient-looking books behind it. My mouth fell open as Wade’s face stared back at me. I was in his body and he was in mine. Oh, the possibilities…

  I smoothed my hands—or, rather, Wade’s—over the taut abs of my stomach and admired how toned they were. I couldn’t hear any of his thoughts or get into his head, but then I guessed that had transferred over to me.

  “Don’t even think about it, Merlin,” he warned, as I glanced down.

  “What—I wasn’t going to do anything!”

  He chuckled. “It’s tempting, though, right? Haven’t you ever wondered what it might be like to be the opposite sex for a day?”

  “Maybe�
��but not you!” I was starting to freak out, hoping I could reverse this. I might’ve wanted to get closer to Wade, but this wasn’t exactly what I’d had in mind. Although it’s a quick and painless way to get into his pants. I flushed at the lewdness of my own brain.

  “Well, now I know what it’s like to be in Harley Merlin’s shoes. It’s weird. So much extra stuff buzzing about.” I stared at him in horror. I didn’t want him feeling too many of my hormones.

  Determined not to let him embarrass me, I hurried over to the table and glanced down at the Grimoire, finding the reverse spell on the page beside it. Without waiting for Wade to say anything, I dipped back into the strange, trance-like state. Everything disappeared as my voice rang out, saying the words to undo what I’d done. “Heart to heart, blood to blood, let me be me and you be you, and share no more of joined hearts.”

  A blinding light burst outward, bringing me back into the room. Fortunately, this time, I was back in the seat at the reading table, with Wade looking over my shoulder. He looked far too pleased with himself.

  “Let’s never do that again,” I mumbled in embarrassment.

  “I don’t know; I kind of liked it.”

  “Not a word of this to anyone!”

  He laughed. “Okay, okay, I promise. Man, I never thought being a woman could be so—”

  “What did I just say?”

  He lifted his hands in surrender. “Sorry. My bad. Not a word.” He drew his fingertips across his lips like a zipper, though mischief still twinkled in his deep-green eyes. “Well, at least we know it’s not just your parents’ Grimoire you can do this with.”

  “Yeah, thanks for that.”

  “It’s got to be what Santana said—there’s a power ingrained in you and your heritage that lets you do this with unfinished Grimoires, no matter who they belonged to.”

  “She told me that magicals used to be able to do it all the time, in the early days of magic. Since then, they’ve been sort of watered down. Thanks to my combined bloodline, and the links it has to the first magicals, it must have triggered that ability in me.”