Harley Merlin 4: Harley Merlin and the First Ritual

by Forrest, Bella

  “I mean, it’s not working. Quetzi has done something to keep it shut.”

  “Are you saying we’re trapped down here?” Santana gasped, clutching her chest as she got her breath back.

  I nodded. “I don’t know if he whacked it with his tail, or did some weather spell on it, but until someone comes to rescue us, we’re stuck here.”

  Wade slammed his fists into the door. “There’s got to be a way out. Dylan, Harley, one of you use your Earth to break it.”

  “And cause a cave-in?” Harley shot back.

  “Air then,” Wade urged.

  I shook my head. “That would do the same thing. If you tear this door out, it’ll cause the rocks around it to crumble in. If we use Fire, we’ll smoke ourselves out.”

  “Does this mean…” Dylan muttered, distracting me.

  “Does this mean that Quetzi has escaped? Yeah, I think it does,” Harley added bitterly. “He’s managed to get into the coven and, if he gets his way, he’s going to get out into the real world.”

  “No, someone will stop him before he can do that,” Raffe said, though he lacked conviction.

  “Who’s going to do that?” Harley asked. “Nobody knows we’re down here. Nobody knows we came to get Quetzi. Unless… Astrid, did you text Garrett the same thing you texted us?”

  “I did, but he didn’t come.”

  She sighed. “Right, then he might be our only way out of here. We’ve just got to hope he figures out something’s up before that slimy little bastard gets out.”

  “Does anyone have a phone signal?” Tatyana asked.

  “No,” chorused the rest of the group. We were too deep beneath the coven for that.

  “Great,” Harley muttered. “So, Quetzi’s going to get out into the human world, and we can be sure he’s going to cause a little mayhem when he does. I mean, the guy’s been locked up for so long that he must be in need of a bit of old-fashioned god-stuff. He’ll be stretching his magical muscles before we even get out of here.”

  “Oh, yeah, there’ll be some news reports tonight! Giant friggin’ snake causes electrical storm over San Diego and demands all the gold in Fort Knox to make it stop,” Santana agreed, sinking onto the floor.

  Wade turned to me. “Why did he single you out like that, Astrid?”

  My heart began to palpitate furiously. “I don’t know.”

  “Come on, Wade, that was clearly just a distraction technique,” Harley said. “And it worked. Man, how did we let that happen? We should have brought backup.”

  “What’s done is done,” Raffe replied. “We just have to fix it when we get out.”

  Tatyana shrugged as she sat down beside Santana. “At least we really know it wasn’t Quetzi who killed Adley now. Maybe we can use her death to get Finch to talk. I know it may sound cold, but if he finds out that Katherine ordered Adley’s death, he might be more willing to speak. Silver linings.”

  “I still can’t figure out why she kept Finch alive, when she killed everyone else in the Shipton and Merlin clans. My aunt is the only other exception, and Katherine would have killed her if she could have. Unless she was already planning on using Isadora’s powers for her own ends,” Harley said, as she paced the floor. “Regardless, she just let Finch live. Do you think she couldn’t do it, because he’s her son? It’s been bugging me for ages.”

  “That sounds like a logical reason,” I replied. “Another question would be, why did she kill all the Shiptons in the first place? They weren’t part of the Sál Vinna spell. Not that we know of, anyway. So, why would she have them all murdered?”

  “My money’s on vengeance,” Raffe said.

  Tatyana nodded. “Katherine evidently despised Hester, and if her family sided with Hester over Katherine in the Hiram triangle, then maybe she thought they deserved to die. It might have seemed like justice to her, albeit warped.”

  “Yeah, because she’s a total crackpot who doesn’t take kindly to rejection,” Harley spat. “But she can’t be doing all of this just because my dad wouldn’t love her, and her sister stole her man. That’d be complete insanity.”

  “She’s a psychopath, Harley. It might not be because of that, but that may have been the catalyst—the stressor that triggered the monster that was always lurking inside her,” I suggested. “You hear of people who just snap one day and go on killing sprees, but that bad seed was growing inside her for a long time. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was that break that led her toward what she’s doing now; it opened up that new, dark world of psychopathy for her. It might have given her the… freedom isn’t the right word, but you understand what I mean. Maybe, after that, she changed forever, and has no desire to ever change back. Now, she is who she was always meant to be, from the moment that first seed got planted.”

  “She might have felt trampled on,” Dylan said. “Now, she’s doing the trampling. Like, maybe it started off as a revenge thing, and it’s just snowballed into this whole other thing.”

  Harley smacked her hand into the door. “What, like this Cult of Eris bullcrap—so she can feel all high and mighty and do some leveling of the playing field? So she can feel real good about herself, in her freaking astral, pure-Chaos form? Astrid, tell them what you found out about this Eris person. I think it’s only right that we all hear just how insane Katherine is getting. You’ll start shaking in your boots once you hear who she’s modeling herself after.”

  I swallowed a nervous gulp and told them everything I’d told Harley, about the mythology of Eris and the worrying quotes I’d found out about her. They all listened in silence, their expressions morphing into identical masks of fear.

  Santana raised her hand. “I just have one question.”

  “I’ll do my best to answer it,” I replied.

  “If this is her game plan, to become this almighty, destructive force of war and discord, what part does Quetzi have to play in it?”

  That, I couldn’t answer. I had no idea.

  Twenty-Two

  Astrid

  Over an hour later, a loud screeching distracted us from talk of Katherine and Quetzi, the iron doors pulling apart slowly. Through a gap in the center, Alton appeared with Garrett at his side. I wanted to be glad to see him, but concern lingered at the back of my mind. Where were you? Regardless of his absence, he’d evidently gotten my text. My message to him had been more specific than the one I sent to the others, and it was lucky I’d been more detailed. If I hadn’t, I wondered how long it might have been until they found us down here.

  “Thank goodness you’re here,” Alton said, letting us all out of the tunnel. “What happened?”

  I explained everything to him, though I struggled to look him in the eyes in case it gave the others reason to put two and two together. Quetzi had almost exposed the truth about Alton being my father, and I didn’t want to add fuel to any remaining fire.

  Harley was the one to speak up. “We found Quetzi, but, uh… he got away from us.”

  “Quetzi is loose in the coven?” Alton’s voice sounded strangled.

  I nodded. “He broke the Crypt door on his way out.”

  “How long ago?”

  “An hour, maybe.”

  “That’s plenty of time for him to escape into the human world,” Alton muttered. “I’ll speak with security and see if anyone has noticed anything. Meanwhile, you should all get ready to go out in the field. If Quetzi has escaped the coven’s perimeter, we’ll need to go after him.”

  “No problem,” Wade replied. “We’re on it.”

  “Good, I’ll call you when I know more.” Alton turned and left, barely acknowledging me with a goodbye. I wasn’t upset; he had other things on his mind. Besides, my attention was fixed on Garrett.

  “Where were you?” I whispered.

  He frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Before, when I texted you about Quetzi. Why didn’t you come?”

  “I was busy.”

  “With what?”

  He shrugged. “Other stuff.
I figured you didn’t need me right away if you had the rest of the Rag Team with you. Good thing I didn’t come down; otherwise, we’d all be screwed right now.”

  I couldn’t let go of my nagging doubts. “But where were you? What were you doing?”

  “I told you, I was busy.”

  Thanks to Quetzi, we now knew that the Shapeshifter was a man. Garrett hadn’t been there initially when we’d all hurried to help with the collateral damage in the Bestiary. He’d turned up later—a good while later. And he hadn’t been there when I told him to meet us in the prison corridor, sharing my suspicions about Quetzi’s whereabouts. Had he been worried that Quetzi might give him away? I needed to tick him off the suspect list. It filled my focus entirely. Until I did that, I wouldn’t be able to rest.

  “You won’t tell me what you were doing?” I pressed.

  “It’s not important. Just check the cameras if you’re really bothered about it,” he replied. I couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t just say what he’d been up to. Why the secrecy? We’d come so far, yet he was shutting me out.

  “I don’t want to do that,” I said.

  He shrugged. “Then trust me.”

  “I do trust you.”

  “Really?” He arched an eyebrow. “You really trust me?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then promise me you won’t look at the camera footage,” he said.

  “I… I promise.”

  “We’ll see.” His tone was cold, bringing me a wave of discomfort. “Anyway, now that you’re all out of the Crypt, I’ve got some stuff to do. If you need me, call or something.”

  “Garrett…”

  “What?”

  I opened my mouth, but the words wouldn’t come out. “Never mind.”

  He walked away, leaving me to wonder where this sudden change had come from. Maybe he was hiding something, after all. My fingers itched to bring out Smartie and check the cameras, precisely the way I’d promised not to.

  I waited until he’d vanished from sight before I did it, hating myself for breaking his trust. I’m sorry, Garrett. I have to know. The others were heading up the hallway, too. Harley glanced back, her brow furrowed as she saw the tablet in my hands.

  “You coming with us?” she asked.

  I nodded. “I just want to check the security system for any sign of Quetzi,” I lied. “I’ll catch up with you in a bit.”

  “Okay. Do you want me to grab you something from the Banquet Hall? If we head out, we won’t have any time to eat. I don’t want you starving yourself because you’re working too hard.”

  I smiled at her kindness. “A coffee would be great, and a sandwich if they’re still out on the buffet table.”

  “No problem. Coffee and a sandwich. I’ll text where we’re at, okay?”

  “Thanks.”

  Left alone in the corridor, I opened Smartie’s interface and searched for the Shapeshifter body cam footage from the afternoon that Quetzi had been taken. I’d reviewed the footage a few times and never found anything, but perhaps I hadn’t been looking close enough—namely at Garrett’s individual frames.

  The footage rolled smoothly enough, showing him asleep on his bed, the camera turned up toward his face. He looked sweet, breathing softly, his eyes closed. Nothing unusual immediately jumped out at me. He was asleep when the Bestiary was attacked… I know that’s why he didn’t show up right away.

  I was about to turn it off, feeling satisfied that he wasn’t involved in Quetzi being taken, when I noticed a flicker in the bottom-right corner of the screen. The shadow of an object, maybe a bird flying past the window, moved across his chest. However, a few seconds later, it did the same thing again, the pattern repeating over and over. I shifted to the footage from an hour or so ago, but the same thing seemed to be happening. He was lying on his bed, fast asleep, revealing a similar glitch. His right eye twitched subtly in his sleep, only to twitch again and again and again. I scrolled forward to find that the first repetitive clip lasted an hour, while the other one lasted closer to two hours.

  There was no mistaking it: the footage had been doctored, playing on a loop to make it look as though he’d been sleeping the whole time.

  No… this can’t be true. Not Garrett.

  All my fears and doubts crept in. I couldn’t disagree with cold, hard facts, no matter how much I might have liked to. However, before I revealed this newfound information to Alton, I wanted to confront Garrett about it first. I wanted him to tell me his reasons before I threw him to the lions. Part of me hoped there was more to this than met the eye. Garrett couldn’t be the traitor… could he?

  I hurried down the corridor and clambered up to the main body of the coven, running through the hallway toward Garrett’s room. I was so focused on what lay ahead that I almost didn’t notice the slumped figure in one of the corridor’s darkened recesses. Their chin rested on their chest, their neck bent, their legs sticking forward like a rag doll. A livid bruise wrapped around the exposed skin of their chest, where their shirt had come away slightly, spiraling all the way up to that unsettlingly bent neck.

  Coming to a halt, I approached the figure. “Hello?”

  Silence answered.

  Tentatively, I ducked down and pressed my fingertips to the spot where a pulse should’ve been beating. There was no beat to be found. It was a man I didn’t recognize, his lips blue, his bloodshot eyes looking down in a glassy stare. His skin was ice-cold to the touch. Whoever he was, he was dead.

  My gaze flitted to the exposed line of his chest, where the buttons of his shirt had come undone, likely due to whatever had caused the bruising. A golden mark shone from the center of his sternum, surrounded by scarred flesh—the Apple of Discord, thrown amongst the SDC to cause chaos. The symbol of Eris.

  With shaky hands, I dialed Harley’s number. She answered on the second ring.

  “Hey, I was just about to text and say we’ve got your coffee,” she said brightly.

  “Forget the coffee,” I replied. “You need to come to the main hallway, just outside the Escher Reading Room. There’s a body. I think… I think it’s the spy.”

  A long pause followed. “We’re on our way,” she said, her tone dark. As soon as she hung up, I phoned Alton and told him the same thing.

  Less than five minutes later, the Rag Team appeared around the corner, hurtling toward me at full pelt. I was surprised to see that Tarver was with them, or rather Jacob. I supposed Harley had gone to fill him in on what had been happening.

  As soon as they saw the body, and the golden emblem on his chest, they stood around in awkward silence, none of them knowing what to do or what to say. This had been a very trying day for all of us, and there were still many hours to go. It was only when Alton arrived, a minute later, that some kind of sense started to be made of this event.

  “Does anyone recognize him?” he asked firmly.

  A “no” made its way around the group.

  “No, me neither.”

  Jacob eyed the body. “I think he might be a Shapeshifter.”

  “How do you know?” Alton replied.

  “Uh… well, I don’t know for sure. It’s just a guess.” He eyed Alton curiously. “Should I say?”

  Alton nodded. “It’s okay. Since it’s just the Rag Team here, they might as well know who you really are. Everyone, Jacob has been masquerading as Tarver, for means of protection.” A ripple of surprise moved around the gathered group. Although not quite as much as I expected.

  “Yeah, I kind of already knew,” Santana said sheepishly.

  “You knew?” Harley gasped.

  Santana laughed. “Of course I knew; I can spot a mask like that a mile off. Plus, my Orishas sniffed it out and couldn’t stop whispering about it.”

  “Me, too,” Tatyana admitted. “I thought you must have had your reasons, given the current climate surrounding powerful magicals.”

  “Tatyana told me,” Dylan added.

  She nudged him in the arm. “Dylan!”

&n
bsp; “What? It doesn’t matter now.”

  Raffe nodded. “Yeah, Kadar spotted it, too.”

  “I didn’t tell him, I swear!” Santana raised her hands in mock surrender.

  “Well, then, you might as well take your mask off,” Alton said to Jacob.

  He peeled it away and threw it down. “Thank God. Do you have any idea how hot it gets in that thing, especially out here?”

  “Well, aren’t we all just full of secrets?” Garrett muttered, flashing a dark look my way that unsettled me.

  “So, yeah… hi. Nice to meet you all for real this time. Anyway, subtle skills like Shapeshifting are harder to feel out, if that makes sense,” Jacob explained. “But I can sense a similar thing in Garrett, so I’m guessing they have the same ability. I don’t know for sure, though—I’m not exactly up to speed with the whole Sensate thing.”

  “Okay, well, the body seems like it’s in good condition, and he couldn’t have died too long ago. We might get lucky,” Alton muttered, more to himself than anyone else. He scooped the dead man into his arms and kicked open the door to the Escher Reading Room, carrying him inside. Fortunately, there was nobody else within. “Clear a space on that table,” he instructed.

  Wade and Harley ran forward and swiped the books and papers off the long, wide reading table. Alton plonked the dead man down and tore open the rest of the guy’s shirt. My father looked worried, scraping his bottom lip with his teeth in a tic of anxiety as he took off his own jacket.

  “What are you doing?” Dylan asked.

  “Bringing him back to life,” Alton replied. “I’m not too late, which is good.”

  Jacob frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “I have to reach people before a certain cutoff point, when the spirit leaves the body. Once it’s gone, there’s nothing I can do to bring them back.”

  I shuddered. I knew the basics of Necromancy—that was what he’d meant when he’d said he almost hadn’t reached me in time, on one of my encounters with death. My spirit had almost abandoned my body, before my desperate father had snatched it right back.

  Tatyana’s eyes turned white for a moment. “The spirit hasn’t left yet,” she confirmed, the light dwindling as she came back from the place I liked to call the Phantom Zone. That usually made her laugh.