Harley Merlin 4: Harley Merlin and the First Ritual

by Forrest, Bella

  “It’s a neat trick. But, like you said, it’d put the Mage Council in panic mode.”

  I pulled a face. “I just wish we could take my parents’ Grimoire out of here. I’m not sure if I can do a spell without having it in front of me. I think I need to be able to see it for it to work, if that makes sense?”

  He nodded. “That tends to be the way with these things. We can test it, if you want.”

  “How?”

  “Take a picture of this spell and go downstairs to try it out.”

  “Can we pick a different one?”

  He grinned. “Sure.”

  I flipped the pages and picked a spell that seemed to turn objects into animals. Getting my phone out, I snapped a quick picture of it and headed back down the stairs. Wade followed me to the top of the staircase, peering over the platform’s balcony as I took up my position and looked down at the image. This time, nothing happened. No whispers, no tug of power, no pleading for my voice.

  “Anything?” he asked.

  “Nope, nada.”

  “That’s a shame. It’d have made things so much simpler if you could have used pictures.”

  I nodded. “Tell me about it.”

  Brushing the experiment off, finding that it’d left a sour taste in my mouth, I trudged back up the stairs and sat back down at the reading table. Pushing the test Grimoire away, I pulled the Merlin Grimoire toward me. My chest constricted as I smoothed my hands over the cover again, sensing the fierce power inside.

  “Are you okay?” Wade asked, worried.

  “Yeah, just keep an eye on me, okay? You should do the reading.”

  He sat down next to me and began to flip through the pages. I fought with the urge to reach out and touch it for myself, but I knew what might happen if I did. Still, every single leaf of thick vellum made my heart lurch and my senses light up with intense need. Each word wanted to drag me down, coaxing me into speaking the spell aloud. It took every ounce of strength I had not to give into it, a trickle of sweat meandering down the side of my face as I fought against the urges.

  “There’s a summoning spell here,” he said, pointing to a familiar page. “It’s used to summon Erebus—is this the one from last time?”

  “Yeah, let’s not use that one,” I replied. “I’d like both of us to actually make it back to the SDC.”

  “Agreed. This stuff is terrifying. I don’t even want to think about what you could have done, if you’d managed to read it all out. Stupidity doesn’t even come close. It’s giving me chills just mentioning it.”

  Wait… what? What might I have done? “What do you mean?”

  “Erebus is always related to death,” he explained. “He’s known to be temperamental and can take lives as he pleases. He often takes a life in exchange for being summoned—at least, that’s what the old books used to say.”

  I gulped. “Oh… yeah, let’s not do that.” I thought of Santana, and what Erebus might have done to her if I’d succeeded in summoning him. I doubted he’d have taken my life; otherwise, none of those ancient people would ever have bothered summoning him. No, it was more likely that he’d have taken the life of someone close to me. I shuddered at the thought. It was a good thing she’d stopped me when she had.

  “There’s this, too,” Wade said, browsing a few more pages. “You can probably read this, since it’s not a spell.”

  “Let me see…” I glanced down to find a section about the Children of Chaos. It referenced that the Children of Chaos could be found in their respective dimensions. To travel there, they suggested a number of transportation spells, though they weren’t actually written in the Grimoire. The passage also mentioned a vague detail about drawing on raw energy first. Power seemed to be the main element in accomplishing this feat, but that wasn’t something you could just pick up from the local store.

  I reasoned that the National Council had probably seen this for themselves, but hadn’t thought much of it. It wasn’t like they’d be able to do this themselves, anyway. The process was too dark and terrible, crossing a whole bunch of moral lines. Although I know one person who has no problem with that.

  It also made me think about Jacob’s dad. He’d opened a portal to one of these places and had never come back. I wondered if he was still stuck there, trapped between the mortal world and these creepy otherworlds where the Children resided, or if something far worse had happened to him. I had a feeling that these deities didn’t like to be accosted in their own homes, so to speak. Not without an invitation, anyway.

  “What is it?” Wade pressed.

  “It mentions that the Children of Chaos can be found in their respective dimensions. Nothing solid, just stories and suggestions. It’s not easy to get to them on their own turf, though, by the looks of it.” I showed him the page and felt his emotions sinking as he took in the lengthy process.

  “We can bear that in mind, if we need to track them down,” he said, though he didn’t sound too convinced. “Is there anything else?”

  I kept looking, but there was nothing else that related to the Children of Chaos. There were a couple of cool spells to do with improving strength, and one that seemed to allow a person to fly temporarily, but nothing that we could use against Katherine. The only one that seemed vaguely useful was a spell that mentioned being able to find things that were hidden, but if we couldn’t take the Grimoire out of the Special Collections room, then it was as good as useless.

  “There’s a persuasion spell in here that we could use to get Emily Ryder to talk,” I said. “Again, it’s complicated, but it might help us locate the kids if we can squeeze the info out of her.”

  “Yeah—which we can’t do if we have to leave the book here. There’s no way the New York Coven will let us take it out of here,” Wade replied grimly. “And even if we could, there’d be questions as to how you’d use it. Your secret would have to come out.”

  I slammed my hands down on the table in frustration. “This is ridiculous. My parents’ Grimoire should belong to me. What right do they have to keep it here, locked away?”

  “I’m sorry, Harley.”

  “Not as sorry as I am,” I muttered. “We come this close and then we have to give up. I’m sick of it. We’re getting nowhere! The longer Katherine has those kids in her grasp, the more chance she has to go through with her nasty little plan.”

  “We could explain to the covens what you can do, and see if they’ll relent?”

  I shook my head. “I’ll never see the light of day again. They’ll use me for what they want and then they’ll throw me in Purgatory, or somewhere just as bad. You know they will.” Isadora’s warning rang in my head—Don’t let the covens use you, or you’ll never break free of the cycle. I knew it was selfish to value my life over those of the kids, but I couldn’t bear the thought of spending the rest of my days in a gloomy cell.

  “Then what do you want to do?”

  “Let’s tell Alton about this ‘respective dimension’ angle, see if he can think of a way to expand it. If Katherine wants to become a Child of Chaos, chances are she’ll have to come face-to-face with one. If we can somehow keep an eye on these places, wherever the heck they are, then we might be able to cut her off before she can do anything.”

  Wade nodded. “Sounds like a good idea.”

  “And, while we’re here, I want to find a book by some guy named Chanticleer. Apparently, there’s a spell in there that can help with my Esprit, but The New York Coven can go screw themselves if they think I’m bothering with another application.” I got up and hurried down the stairs, realizing we were running out of time. Blondie would come and get us if we didn’t leave within the given hour.

  With me browsing the stacks on the right-hand side, while Wade took the left, we scoured the tomes. There didn’t seem to be much of an order to them, at least not one that I understood. Wade seemed to be faring better, however, his face set in a determined expression. He was only focusing on one area of the books, scrutinizing each title closely. />
  “Here it is!” he shouted, pulling a book from the stack.

  I raced over to him and took the book from his hands, placing it down on a nearby table with a puff of dust. Using the index, I quickly found the spell that I was looking for. The only trouble was, it was written in some form of archaic French. Then why write the index in English? Ugh! Undeterred, I snapped a picture of the spell and shoved my phone back in my pocket. From what I could make out, the spell required a lengthy list of ingredients. I just had to hope we had them in the SDC. That, and a French translator.

  “Don’t suppose you speak French, do you?” I asked, determined not to get downhearted.

  “No, but I know a spell we can use.” He flashed me an encouraging smile as he put his hand on my shoulder.

  “See, this is why I like you, Wade Crowley.” If only you knew how much.

  “Why—because I go along with your crazy ideas?”

  “Something like that.”

  After all of the last hour’s disappointments, I wasn’t going to give up on this. With my newfound determination to break the Suppressor, I needed my Esprit more than ever.

  Eleven

  Harley

  After handing back the pass and the keys, we returned to the SDC and headed straight for the Luis Paoletti Room. The picture of the Esprit repair spell was pulled up on my phone. With the door closed behind us, I braced myself against the workbench. Memories of the other night came flooding back, but I tried hard not to think about them. My feelings for Wade could wait a while.

  “So, what’s this translation spell, then?” I asked.

  “I’ll find it while you write out the repairing spell,” he replied.

  “Wait—can’t we just use the Internet?”

  He laughed. “Apps are notoriously unreliable for this kind of thing. I doubt it’d even be able to read script like this—it’s too close together and faded. Trust me, the old ways are the best ways for a reason.”

  “All right, Granddad,” I said.

  Setting to work, I grabbed a piece of paper and a pen from a nearby drawer and started to write out the words from my phone. The handwriting in the book was old and cursive, but I managed to do a decent job of getting it into clearer lettering. Meanwhile, Wade rummaged around in some of the Grimoire boxes on the top shelf. Finding the book he needed, he brought it to me and sat down at my side. His closeness made it hard to concentrate, but I was determined not to let my emotions get in the way of this. I’d ended up in Wade’s room because Jacob had done just that; I wasn’t about to make a similar mistake.

  “Here it is,” he said, turning to a page near the back. “Have you written everything out?”

  I nodded.

  “Good—then hand it over.” I slid the paper along the workbench to him. He held out his hands and pressed them to the page, his ten rings lighting up with a soft, blue glow as he began to mutter the words from the Grimoire. My eyes were fixed on the paper, wondering what was going to happen. I found out soon enough, as the letters scrambled like a kaleidoscope, before settling into a pattern I could recognize. He had only translated the spell. The writing was still old-fashioned, with a lot of extraneous vowels on the ends of the words, but it was definitely English.

  “I like that spell a lot,” I said with a smile, as I browsed the list of necessary ingredients. It was long, but nothing stood out as being particularly hard to find. “Do we have all of this?”

  Wade took a look at it and nodded slowly. “I think so: wolfsbane, devil’s eye, three snowdrop bells, quicksilver, wild honey, red pringrape, maple sap, hartshorn, liquid gold, willow bark, spider’s silk, and eye of newt.”

  I stared at him. “It doesn’t say eye of newt.”

  “It does. See.” He pointed to the words.

  “What, like ‘double, double, toil and trouble’? Should I get a cauldron and a stick? Should I be warning Macbeth about moving trees and stuff? Defy gravity, maybe?”

  He chuckled. “No, but we will need a cast-iron pot.”

  “And we have one of those?”

  “We should.” He got up from his seat and wandered about the room, plucking things off shelves and placing them in the middle of the workbench. I watched him work, feeling a bit useless. Making potions wasn’t exactly my strong suit.

  “Do we have it all?” I asked, as he came back and sat by my side.

  “Not quite. We’ll have to do some gathering.”

  “Where do we start?”

  “Bellmore.”

  We spent the next hour running around the coven like headless chickens, gathering all the ingredients on the list. Some were in the Luis Paoletti Room, including a diamond and an emerald from a janky piece of jewelry that had been stuffed in the back of a drawer, but the majority weren’t. Bellmore had a lot of what we needed, which she gave to us with a suspicious but willing air, both of us scrambling to explain that it was for a spell to fix my Esprit. It technically was, but she didn’t need to know the details. However, the rest of the items had to come from the various storerooms that were located all over the place. We split up, searching for our given ingredients, before reconvening in the Luis Paoletti Room once we’d both gotten everything on our list. By the time I got back, I was sweating, wondering if I’d even have the energy to get the spell done. Who am I kidding—I’d do this on my freaking deathbed.

  “Now, do you want to come back and do this later, or are you okay to start now?” Wade asked, catching his breath.

  “Now.”

  “Okay, then take it away. I’ll be here, if anything goes wrong.”

  I nodded and began to work through the list of steps. First, I added the three snowdrop bells, upside down, to the cast-iron pot. Three drops of the honey, the liquid gold, the quicksilver, the hartshorn, and the maple sap went into each bell, the curved flowers holding the fluid like little containers. Next came the pringrape, the tiny buds sprinkled into the mix, alongside the wolfsbane and the willow bark. I was careful to keep the measures exact. The devil’s eye went in next. After that came the eye of newt, which I wasn’t looking forward to. Reaching out for the small glass jar that held them, submerged in a viscous, amber liquid, I grimaced and took out three. Each one nestled in the basin of the snowdrop bells, sinking into the fluid that was already in each one. The last step, before putting the broken Esprit into the bowl, was the spider’s silk. I took up the coil of it and wrapped it intricately around the three snowdrops, binding them together.

  Reluctantly, I slipped off my Esprit and placed it in the bowl, the dead, empty sockets facing upward. Please let this work. Picking up the two new stones I’d pried out of the old relic in the drawer, I put them on top of the empty fixtures.

  Turning back to the spell, I felt myself sink into a similarly trancelike state, though it wasn’t as intense as with the Grimoires. I was still aware of Wade at my side, and nothing in the room disappeared—it simply went out of focus for a moment.

  Taking a deep breath, I recited the words on the page: “As Chaos binds you to me, let yourself be bound to Chaos. What is broken in you, may my spirit heal. What is damaged in me, may your Chaos nurture. We are one piece, let us be one piece once more.” I repeated it nine times, as instructed, my voice steady and even.

  As soon as I was finished, I closed my eyes and hovered my hands over the top of the bowl. Drawing on my abilities, I struggled against my lack of control to pour small amounts of Air and Earth into the pot. The bowl shook as Air swirled, and the sides trembled as Earth rose up around it in a tangle of vines that gripped the table, creeping out of the floor like tentacles.

  Come on, Harley… make it work. Remember, you’re in control. You can do this.

  The moment enough of my energy had been poured into the pot, I snatched my hands away, careful not to overdo it. I was breathing hard, cold sweat glistening on my skin.

  Nothing happened.

  “Did it work?” I whispered.

  Wade shrugged. “I don’t know. Look inside.”

 
I reached for the bowl, only to draw my hands away as a surge of blinding silver light ripped out of the pot. It spiraled upward in a column of powerful energy, twisting like a tornado in a Kansas field. Hold on to your stilettos, Dorothy. In the very center of the spiral, I saw my Esprit, the new gemstones fitting back into place with the help of the spell’s power. Gold energy mingled with the silver, a steady pulse emanating from within, like a heartbeat. The fine hairs on my forearms were standing up on end, the room crackling with electricity.

  Wade lunged for me, knocking me off my chair and onto the floor. And not a moment too soon, since the minute we landed on the ground, an enormous explosion burst outward. A second blast erupted straight after, sending a pulse of raw energy over our heads and through the walls of the room. Déjà vu hit me as the interdimensional façade of the coven shook for a moment, the forcefield shivering and sparking. An expletive lingered on the tip of my tongue as I watched in horror, praying the Bestiary would restore it, the same way it had with Jacob’s slip-up.

  Two minutes later, the forcefield was still crackling sporadically.

  Come on, come on, come on… Please, don’t say I’ve broken the pocket. I watched it intently, willing it to come back to full force. If this place crumbled because of me, they’d lock me up even without knowing about my extra skills.

  A wave of bronzed light surged across the walls; the Bestiary had done its job. Everything was settling back to normal. Although, with it being daytime, there was no way it would have gone unnoticed.

  “Thank God,” I murmured. Cursing under my breath at the near miss, I hastily scrambled to my feet and brushed the dust from my jeans. “What the heck was that?”

  Wade stood. “I’m not sure. If the spell does what I think it does, then it requires the binding of Chaos to an object. When the new stones slotted into place in your Esprit, it might have caused a power surge of sorts. That would explain why there were two blasts, anyway.”