Harley Merlin 4: Harley Merlin and the First Ritual

by Forrest, Bella

  “Are you sure this is a good idea?” I asked, knowing how much it took out of Alton each time he did this. It drained him of everything, almost, and the recovery could be lengthy. Plus, he almost immediately went into a Purge state. This was a real person he was bringing back to life, not a cat.

  “I don’t have any choice,” he said solemnly. “This guy might be able to give us valuable intel on both Katherine and Quetzi. I will be punished for this, if we can’t get him back.”

  The group fell silent as Alton pressed his palms to the dead guy’s chest. He closed his eyes, his breathing slowing to a steady rasp. I watched, enraptured. I hadn’t actually seen him do this in person, as it had usually been me, cold on the proverbial slab. His eyes shot open, glowing a vibrant purple, mixed with black sparks that fizzed and crackled. The light ran through his entire body, and he pulsated with purple-tinged energy. Black fog rolled from within his chest, sweeping over his frame like dry ice. Everything in the room seemed to darken as the temperature dropped to below freezing. My teeth chattered, and I hugged myself to coax some warmth back into my skin.

  While I was transfixed by my father, I felt arms wrap around me. I glanced up and saw Garrett standing behind me. His gaze was fixed forward, but the gesture showed he cared. My stomach turned over in a sickening feeling. I was torn between enjoying the warmth of his embrace and wondering how I was going to broach the subject of the body cam footage. I had to tell him what I’d found, but now definitely didn’t seem like the right time. After all, given that the spy was on the table, it couldn’t have been Garrett. So, why doctor the footage?

  The black fog slithered toward the dead man, cascading down Alton’s arms. Reaching his body, the mist percolated beneath the pale, dead skin and lifeless limbs. Alton was chanting now, reciting words that even I couldn’t understand. Whatever he was saying, it wasn’t of this world.

  Alton’s entire figure shivered and trembled as he poured more and more of the black fog into the dead man. His chants grew louder, the room turning to shadow, my breath visible in the air in front of me. A sheen of frost covered my father’s bare skin, small icicles gathering in his hair. Turning to the others, I saw the same thing happening to them. Nobody else dared to move.

  Without warning, everything whorled into a vortex and snapped into nothingness, the purple and black disappearing as quickly as it had appeared. Alton staggered back, Wade sprinting over to catch him before he could keel over. I wanted to do something to help, but I remained frozen to the spot, Garrett’s arms still around me.

  A few seconds later, the dead man sat up straight, clawing in a breath that startled everyone. He grabbed at his chest, his eyes wide in panic. Glancing around, his panic only increased. I doubted he’d expected to wake up, let alone wake up to a room full of the people he’d been working against.

  “What the—?” he rasped, his eyes bloodshot. “That snake killed me. I felt him squeeze the life out of me. How can I be—what the hell is going on?”

  Alton heaved out a breath and approached the table. “Who are you?”

  A strange look flickered in the man’s eyes. “Call me John Smith.”

  “Who are you really?” Alton pressed, pushing through his obvious exhaustion.

  “Like I said… John Smith.”

  “Why did Quetzi kill you? Be very careful how you answer.” Alton’s tone held a warning.

  “I know how this works,” the man replied, his expression mocking. “You won’t get anything from me.”

  Before anyone could stop her, Marjorie stepped forward and gripped the dead man’s wrist. Her eyes turned milky white, John Smith’s face blanching as he tried to wrestle free. She was surprisingly strong for a teenage girl, her Clairvoyance somehow feeding her mightiness. “I can see him,” she said, in an odd, echoey voice. It reminded me of Tatyana’s voice when a spirit took over. “I’ve seen him before. It’s clouded, but he’s… wait, I see him in a mirror. He looks like… no, it’s gone again.”

  “Let me help you out,” the spy said with a bitter laugh, his body morphing into someone else. All of us stared in shock as he turned into Preceptor Jacintha Parks. “All this time, I was pretending to be one of you, and you didn’t even notice.”

  My heart dropped like a stone. We’d been needlessly watching the Shapeshifters, when this Shapeshifter had come from the outside. He wasn’t from the coven, after all. He’d come in and posed as Jacintha Parks, and who knows how many others. Behind me, Garrett flinched, his grip on me tightening. I could feel his anger radiating out of him, even without turning to look at his face.

  John Smith sneered. “You put cameras on the wrong people. I could wander around as free as I liked, and none of you batted an eyelid. As for your stupid interviews—you think someone can’t lie their way through something like that? The systems you’ve got here are primitive. A monkey could hack them.”

  Did this guy set Garrett up? He might have heard about Garrett’s defensive attitude surrounding the body cams and decided to use him as a scapegoat. I felt embarrassed and angry that I hadn’t been able to tell the difference between the Jacintha I knew, and the Jacintha he’d pretended to be. I should have seen it in her quieter manner, or the way she’d been more distant than usual.

  “Where is she?” Alton growled. “Where’s the real one?”

  John Smith smiled coldly. “No loose ends.”

  “What do you mean?” Alton looked about ready to pummel the man.

  “She’s dead, Director Waterhouse. I killed her. You should’ve seen the way the knife slipped in, buttery soft. Shame you couldn’t have done this little trick with her, eh?” He gestured to himself, before morphing back into the body we’d found him in.

  Alton lunged for him, grabbing him around the neck and dragging him off the table with a thud. “You’ll pay for this, whoever you are. I’ll see to it that you suffer, the same way you made Jacintha suffer. You can count on that. Nobody lays a hand on my people and gets away with it—do you understand me?” he spat in the man’s ear. “Everybody out! There’s a spell I need to do, to discover what this man knows. Dylan, help me strap him down!” he barked, lifting his weary head.

  Dylan darted to John Smith’s side, yanking his arms behind his back. Under Alton’s instruction, the two of them tied the spy down using a set of entrapment stones. The spy writhed, laughing bitterly. One thing was for sure: the Mage Council would have to hear about this. Justice would have to be served for our fallen preceptor.

  “Are you sure? Do you want us to stay?” Harley asked, tears running down her face.

  “No—I don’t want you around the spell I’m going to use,” he replied firmly. “If it residually hits any of you, then it’ll be bad news.”

  “What are you going to do to him, exactly?” Santana frowned.

  “Use some old skills to interrogate him.” A flurry of uncertainty moved around the room, but nobody felt like cutting the spy any slack. This was a job for the coven director.

  Tears sprang to my eyes, as we exited the Reading Room and headed into the hallway beyond, with Dylan following behind. I’d known Jacintha well, and she’d always been kind to me. When I first arrived at the coven, to stay here for good, she’d been the one to make sure I had everything I needed. She’d always brought in cakes and treats, artisan coffee and sweets, and anything else to perk me up. Everyone thought highly of her, and her death would be a huge blow to all those who had known her—her students, her colleagues, her friends. I couldn’t bear the thought of her, alone and most likely caught off guard, while that vicious cretin murdered her in cold blood. I hadn’t seen her as much in the past few weeks. Now, I understood why.

  I’m sorry, Jacintha. I should’ve known—I should have seen that it wasn’t you.

  “She’s dead. I can’t believe she’s dead,” Wade murmured.

  “He must have trapped her soul, too,” Tatyana said softly. “Otherwise, I would have sensed her near me. He must have put a spell on her, to keep her soul locked aw
ay. There is no fate worse than that, to be denied the ability to cross over.”

  I shook my head. “He killed her. How could we have been so blind?” A sob wracked my chest, prompting Garrett to put his arms back around me, holding me even tighter. He still didn’t say a word, but having him close was a comfort.

  “I think it’s time for me to go,” Marjorie whispered, her body shaking.

  Harley glanced at her. “What do you mean? Go where?”

  “To the LA Coven. I can’t be here anymore. It’s not what I signed up for.”

  “Hey, no one said it would be easy, but…” Harley replied, “…you’re safer here than anywhere else. You’re surrounded by people who care about you.”

  Marjorie scoffed. “Am I really safer here? After what we just found out—which, by the way, happened right under your noses? No, I’m sorry… I’m sorry to have to do this, but I can’t be here anymore.”

  “You’re ignoring the part about being surrounded by people who care,” Jacob shot back. “You won’t get that in LA.”

  “I’m willing to give it a try. Too much bad stuff happens here. I need to look out for myself, for once. I’ve had enough.” Marjorie shook her head.

  After everything that had happened since her arrival, I couldn’t exactly blame her.

  “Can you at least sleep on it before you talk to Imogene?” Harley asked, seemingly clinging on to the hope that she might be able to sway Marjorie in the end.

  “I’d rather be with the other kids. Maybe, after this whole Katherine mess is over, I can come back, if the SDC will have me. Call me a coward if you want, but—”

  “I wouldn’t!” Harley cut her off, trying hard to keep her cool. “I just… I just don’t want you to rush into something you might regret later.”

  Marjorie gave her a soft smile, though the sadness in her eyes didn’t go away. “Harley, I care about you. I care about all of you. But I have to care about myself more right now.”

  Looking around the hallway, I sensed the colossal blow of her decision and the news of Jacintha’s death. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house. Even Tatyana’s eyes were damp with tears. We’d failed Jacintha and Marjorie. We’d lost them both, with no chance of making it better.

  Twenty-Three

  Harley

  Two days later, Alton stood at the altar, in the center of the Crypt, barely holding it together. His voice kept cracking as he committed Jacintha to her tomb, his gaze fixed on the paper in his hand. “From Chaos she was born, and to Chaos she will return, the essence of her being running free in the river of Gaia, where she will become one with the Earth once more. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust; may Chaos guide her back to where she belongs,” he concluded, mopping his brow with the back of his jacket sleeve.

  Sniffles and choked sobs peppered the stilted silence that followed. Only the Rag Team and the rest of the preceptors were here to witness Jacintha’s burial, with the general memorial service having already taken place that morning. That had been even worse, my Empath senses going crazy as they picked up the sadness of an entire coven, joined in mourning for one of their own. The details of her death hadn’t been released, but I knew the rest of the coven could guess what had happened, since the interviews had been called to a halt. The truth was, she’d been found dumped in another one of the tombs, hidden in a sarcophagus with a hundred-year-old skeleton.

  Her body lay on a plinth in front of the altar, wrapped in silk of green, blue, white, and red, to signify the four Elements. She almost didn’t look real. Alton and the security teams had been the ones to do a sweep of the coven and find her body. Anger pulsed in my veins at John Smith’s disgusting disrespect. Killing her was bad enough, but to just dump her body like that… I wanted to wring his neck, but he was already dead. Alton had told us that he’d Purged violently while he was interrogating the spy, and the beast had killed John Smith on sight. It would have killed Alton, too, had Tobe not come to the rescue. A few scratches remained on Alton’s face, where the creature had slashed at him.

  “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust; may Chaos guide her back to where she belongs,” the group repeated in an eerie chorus.

  “Why didn’t they do this for Adley?” I murmured to Wade, who stood beside me, his face stoic. He was doing his best to hold it together, too, though I could feel the overwhelming sadness inside him.

  He cleared his throat. “She betrayed the coven. She isn’t allowed to be buried here.”

  “So did Emmett Ryder, and he’s here.” The words came out colder than I’d intended.

  “The top row is for criminals. Their souls are bound to them for fifty years after their death, so they can’t escape to the other side. It’s an insurance policy, in case they need to be questioned,” he explained. “And anyway, the LA Coven claimed her as their own. She’s buried there now.”

  “You think that’s fair? Didn’t she get a say in it, like a will or something?”

  “No— no will. That’s just the way it is.”

  I sighed and tried not to look at Jacintha’s unmoving body. “Are we heading back out after this?”

  He shook his head. “We need to keep looking for Quetzi, for sure, but all coven activity is suspended for the rest of the day. Magical mourning protocol.”

  We’d spent the past three days searching half of the San Diego area for Quetzi, with no luck as of yet, and I had too much frustration building up inside me to stay cooped up for the rest of the day, doing nothing but thinking about the woman we’d lost. Well, women. I needed justice, not only for Jacintha, but for everyone whom Katherine and her minions had targeted. Plus, I’d been dealing with my own guilt while scouring the city and its suburbs. Even though I hadn’t known her well, I was ashamed I hadn’t noticed that Preceptor Parks wasn’t all she appeared to be. We all were. It showed on every single one of our faces.

  “There’ll be a feast in the Banquet Hall, in her honor,” he went on.

  I shook my head. “Do we all have to be there?”

  “Mourn in your own way,” he replied simply. “If you don’t want to go, nobody’s going to force you.”

  I needed to blow off steam. If I sat around, eating and being around people and their emotions, I’d snap. My own emotions were in total chaos, making it difficult to control my Empathy around others. I picked Nomura out of the congregation and decided to ask him if he’d spend a couple of hours training me. Even with my Esprit fixed, I was rusty and lacking confidence in my abilities. Somehow, these darker stones seemed to take more energy to use. It was like switching to a stick shift after having an automatic for years, and I couldn’t afford to mess up.

  As the group dispersed, I moved through the crowd toward him. He glanced at me as I approached, showing no surprise at all. I could’ve sworn this guy was psychic; he always seemed to be able to preempt people, figuring them out in a way that nobody else could. Myself included.

  “Harley,” he said, dipping his head in a polite nod.

  “Preceptor Nomura, I was wondering if you were free to train for a while?”

  “You don’t want to attend the banquet?”

  I shook my head. “I’m not good at being around people in situations like this.”

  “Me neither,” he replied, with a solemn smile. “Shall we go to the training room?”

  “That’d be good.” I breathed a sigh of relief.

  Following the rest of the group out of the Crypt, leaving Alton to make the final preparations with a couple of the coven staff, I made my excuses to the Rag Team and trailed Nomura to the preceptors’ training room. Marjorie had hung around for the memorial service, but she was due to leave for LA that afternoon. I’d already said my goodbyes to her, but I couldn’t face seeing her off. If I had to be there when she went, I’d spend the whole time trying to convince her to stay, which was pointless. She’d already made up her mind and, frankly, who could blame her? I wanted to believe that we could protect her. I was convinced we could have at least tried. She’d been spared until now, aft
er all. But maybe this was for the best.

  Entering the familiar space of the preceptors’ private training room, I felt the rest of the world melt away for a moment. Here, I could pretend that nothing bad had happened outside these doors. Here, there was nothing but magic and focus—the perfect antidote for my scrambled brain.

  “I thought we might start with Air and Earth, as they’re your weakest,” Nomura said, wasting no time. “Stand behind the white line and send a controlled burst of Air toward the wooden post.” He moved to the far side of the room and grabbed a training post, bringing it into the center.

  I did as he asked and stood behind the line. Lifting my hands, I took a deep breath and let Chaos flow through me. It raged in my veins, feeling hot and spiky in a way it never had before. Holding tight to my concentration, I gritted my teeth in determination and sent out a pulse of Air. It shot out of me wildly, sending me sprawling backward, a tornado appearing where I’d been standing. It tore toward the wooden post, twisting violently. It dragged the post straight up and slammed it into the ceiling. Rubble fell from the roof, and the stones hit the ground with a tap-tap-tap.

  I jumped up and struggled to take control of the tornado. My nerves jangled, my mind racing with a million other thoughts, the glow of my Esprit flickering. Nomura stepped in, using his Telekinetic abilities to cut through it until the winds scattered and it fizzled away.

  “You must concentrate,” Nomura warned. “Let everything else disappear.”

  Easy for you to say, Captain Zen.

  “I’ll do better,” I promised, taking up my position again. However, as I lifted my palms to try and hit the post that he’d replaced, the same thing happened. Only, this time, the swirling vortex took on a mind of its own. It rushed out of me with unexpected force, colliding with the far wall with a resounding boom that shook the floor. More rubble fell from the spot I’d hit in the ceiling, the face of a magical warrior now reduced to dust. Ashes to ashes…