“No one can give me a straight answer.” I tried a bit of the tea and found myself pleasantly surprised. Sweet and refreshing, with a hint of spice at the back of the throat.
“That is because there isn’t one,” Tobe replied.
I switched angles. “Do you think they did the right thing? Do you think they should’ve kept it from me?”
“There is little use in dwelling on past actions, Miss Persie. When you have lived as long as I have, you come to learn that.” He put a paw on my shoulder. “However, that does not make it any easier to bear when everything is still raw. Your parents are also guilty of underestimating Leviathan, but fear was their greatest motivator. And fear has a way of clouding judgment and sense. They did not want you to live under a burden and have it mar your childhood. They wanted to bear that weight for you and try to resolve it themselves so you wouldn’t have to suffer under it.”
“But it affected everything.” I took another sip, letting it warm me. “It’s shaped my whole life.”
He gave my shoulder a squeeze. “Perhaps it may be easier to think of it from this perspective—your mother was forced into making the deal with Echidna as a means of putting an end to a great evil. She did not ask for it, and she has lived with guilt since the moment she learned about you. But know this: she had no choice.” He took away his paw and sipped some tea. “Your mother has always been the sort of woman who wants to fix everything in her own way, and she usually succeeds. Now she feels she has failed when it mattered most. More than ending Katherine, more than ridding the world of Davin, more than any challenge she has previously faced. Imagine how that must feel.”
Why’d you have to go and put it like that? I clutched my teacup in both hands and observed the birds that chattered in the trees. I noticed their nests, painstakingly put together with twigs and bits of Tobe’s fluff and anything they could find to make it homey. In a way, that’s what my mom had done. She’d layered the lies around me with tufts of half-truths and twigs of misjudgment to try to soften the eventual blow, but the winds of Leviathan had come and blown the nest right out of the branches. And now we just had the debris of what remained.
After a moment of letting me digest his words, Tobe went on.
“That is not to say that you have no right to your anger and confusion, or that it is insignificant. Your mother must also put herself in your shoes.” He looked at me fondly with those magical golden eyes. “For you are now in a worrying predicament, and you must work together to overcome it.”
“But,” I said, my fingers trembling around my cup. “What if I can’t control this?”
We could go back and forth forever trying to figure out who was right and who was wrong. But Tobe had hit the nail on the head—we were in a terrible spot. I had received a strange and terrible gift that I didn’t want: a curse. What would happen to me if I couldn’t get a handle on this ability? Would they really throw me in a box, like they did with Echidna? I didn’t want to believe it, but what if I became too dangerous? So many questions, so few answers.
Tobe leaned back in his chair, the whole thing straining. “I know a thing or two about Purge beasts, and I know a thing or two about people. I may overlook things at times, but there is not a great deal that evades my knowledge. Perhaps you might take a page from the book of professional monster hunters.”
“There’s a book on that?” A faint flicker of hope wafted in my chest, but the merest breath could snuff it out.
He laughed softly. “Not a literal book, Miss Persie, although there may be something hidden away in the library. What I meant was, think of yourself in that capacity: as a hunter of monsters—though I abhor the term ‘hunter’—instead of the person who brings these beasts into being. Learn to contain the monsters you create, and you may have an easier path to controlling the outcome of your… ability.” He downed the dregs of his tea. “Or, as your mother might put it: clean up after yourself, and no one will have anything to complain about.”
“You’ve heard that one, huh?” It usually came when I’d spent days in my room, hard at work on a painting, to the point where dishes and laundry had piled up around me. Maybe I’d been training for this my whole life, without realizing it.
Clean up my mess. Part of me liked the sound of it. My job, my duty, my way out of this, in my own hands. A way to loosen the leash around my neck and prove my independence. No, it was so much more than that. It was a way to prove that I could be just as much of a Merlin as my mom, and my uncle, and my cousins. Standing and fighting on my own two feet.
“Consider it,” Tobe urged. “I know you will feel the desire to flee from this, as is natural. But moving to another coven would not serve any purpose. As conflicted as you currently are, at least you are in a place where you are understood and loved. You are home, and a home is hard to find.”
I watched a sleek blackbird pluck a strand of dry grass with its orange beak and flap back to its nest above. There, the bird threaded it into the outer layer of a half-built nest. A poignant sign that, even if the nest fell apart, it could be rebuilt. And even if it was never the same as before, it would still be home.
Dammit, Tobe. The people I loved, the people I knew, the people I called family and friends were all birds of a feather, and we flocked together. This was my home, and I had it better than a lot of people out there. But didn’t birds also leave the nest eventually? Just because I left, that didn’t mean I couldn’t come back, did it?
I watched the blackbird a while longer, then exhaled as if I were pushing the whole day out of my lungs in one go. “I’ll consider it.”
Thirteen
Harley
It had been a while since I’d sat in the Alton Waterhouse Room, but the familiar prickle of tension was still in the air. I had so many memories in this room, including many with the people who were with me now: Wade, O’Halloran, and Astrid. I’d have taken a lengthier trip down memory lane if Persie wasn’t at the forefront of my mind. But while she was safe with Tobe, there were other dangers to distract my attention for a while. A double-edged silver lining, if such a thing existed.
“Two more have shown up in St. Louis.” Astrid swiped Smartie’s screen and holograms powered up. They displayed two figures, slowly turning 360°. A middle-aged man with extra chins and thinning hair and a young woman—more of a girl, really—with a pixie cut and a startled expression. The sight of the girl made the mom in me ache. She belonged to someone out there. I thought of my own daughter, and I ached for her too.
“Same symptoms as the others?” O’Halloran squinted over the top of his glasses to observe the turning figures. He’d gotten old. There was no gentle way to put it. He’ll have to step down soon. I shrugged the thought off. The SDC without O’Halloran was like bread without butter. Then again, I’d thought the same thing over twenty years ago, when Alton—the great man this room was named after—had been the director.
But O’Halloran still had the vitality of someone half his age when it came to matters of magical importance. And his trusty leprechaun, Diarmuid, still perched on his shoulder. The tiny man seemed to run on a mix of rage and lewd humor, and he hadn’t aged a day. Maybe that was the secret.
“Ach, what de ye think?” Diarmuid scoffed. “They’re goin’ te come wanderin’ back te spill all them beans te folks? Nah, they’ve got mush fer brains now, ye mark me words.”
Wade ignored the leprechaun. “You’re sure? They all have the marker of mind-wiping inside their brains? It’s definitely been checked?” He had become the primary expert on all things amnesiac. He’d even published several essays on it.
“For certain,” Astrid confirmed.
“See, what did I tell ye?” Diarmuid gave O’Halloran a nudge to the skull. “Mush.”
“Are they showing signs of having any memory at all—babbling, random muttering, that sort of thing?” I kept my tone hopeful. I needed some good news after the day I’d had.
Or maybe I just need to feel like I’m useful somewhere.
“Ach, would ye look at ‘em? It’s like the before and after ye don’t want te be seein’!” Diarmuid crowed.
I sucked air through my teeth. “They were beaten?”
“Tortured,” Astrid corrected.
Tortured. The word made my heart clench, like a fist had seized it. Missing magicals were one thing, but tortured magicals… As awful as it sounded, people with malicious intentions tended to kill witnesses and informants instead of leaving them alive. To keep them living and send them back out into the world, post-torture, suggested that someone was sending a warning.
“Stranger still, they showed up in St. Louis, but neither of them knows anyone there, and I don’t mean because of the mind-wipe. We ran a Chaos check with the Krieger Detector after they were found wandering by the St. Louis Coven. The young woman, Zara Gilchrist, is from Portland, Oregon. And the man, Howard Hickins, is a native of Bardstown, Kentucky.”
“Aye, but that don’t mean a kitten’s whisker.” Diarmuid hopped down onto the workbench. “These folks don’t want ye knowin’ where they snatched the goods, so te speak.”
I cocked my head. “I think you might be right. Just because these two are from Kentucky and Oregon, it doesn’t mean that’s where they got taken. We should dive deeper into bank transactions and locations from before they went missing.”
“Way ahead of you.” Astrid flicked up an image of a blank bank statement. “It’s been wiped. Phone records, too. Just like the other magicals who’ve reappeared. We’ve only got their names because you can’t wipe the slate clean on Chaos signatures.”
Diarmuid pulled a grim face. “Aye, not yet anyhow. Ye just wait ‘til folks start turnin’ up without a sniff o’ Chaos in ‘em. Drained dry as a kipper.”
“We’re trying to be optimistic,” O’Halloran muttered.
Wade lay his hands flat on the table where we’d come up with a thousand schemes. “I’d like to take a look at them myself, if the UCA will allow. And I’d like to take Jacob along with me since he’s helped a lot with my research. I’m not saying we’ll be able to reverse what’s been done to their minds, but we’ve been developing a new method, which might work better than past attempts.”
O’Halloran gave a nod of approval.
Diarmuid did the opposite. “It ain’t right, pokin’ at brains.”
“Well, it has to be done, if we’re ever going to make some headway.” Wade gave the leprechaun a sharp look, which said, Please, for the love of Chaos, shut up.
“I’ll send a message now. See what can be arranged.” Astrid tapped the screen at lightning speed. “I can’t imagine why they’d disagree, since they’re as stumped as we are.”
“How many does that make?” I asked, trying to shove down the fear and uncertainty I felt inside. Persie is with Tobe. She’s safe for now. You still have a responsibility here.
Astrid opened another window on her beloved device. “Over the last five years, somewhere in the region of 150. An estimate, considering not all of them have reappeared, and some might have vanished for their own reasons.” She peered more intently at the screen. “If my graph is right, the first two years we had an average of two disappearances a month, and that upped to five a month in the last three years—give or take.”
I considered the data. “And, whoever they are, they’re still keeping the numbers relatively low so there’s less chance of messing up and getting caught. That’d be my guess, anyway.”
Astrid nodded. “I’d be inclined to agree.”
The question remained: why? With every missing magical that reappeared, we asked that same question. But whoever these people were, they’d completely evaded magical authorities. Leaving no trace behind.
“And we still have no leads.” With visible frustration, Astrid pushed her glasses back up onto the bridge of her nose. “Five years, and we have nothing.”
“Someone ain’t haulin’ their weight,” Diarmuid remarked unhelpfully. Everyone was working hard on this, but the invisible enemy provided little by way of clues. Besides, Melody had worked eighteen years to keep Leviathan away from Persie and look how that had turned out. All the preparation in the world didn’t mean success.
No, don’t think about that now. Focus.
“Any connection between the latest victims and those we’ve seen before?” I grasped for fresh hope. Astrid crushed it with a shake of her head.
“No similarities in appearance. No connections between victims. No apparent target age range, abilities, locations. Nothing to help us narrow the search. It still seems like random selection.”
Diarmuid stopped his pacing and lifted his head sharply. “Hobbies? Jobs? Bad haircuts?”
“There are commonalities here and there, but it isn’t enough to make an assumption with,” Astrid replied. “Everyone who has disappeared seems very… ordinary. Unless that’s the common denominator, that they’re all ordinary?”
Diarmuid snorted and looked at me playfully. “Unlike that daughter o’ yours, eh?”
“What did you just say?” I felt my throat constrict. It was hard enough returning to work after everything, without the little twerp casually bringing it up.
“Diarmuid!” O’Halloran’s voice held a warning. “Rein it in, before I hand you back to Tobe.”
“Pfft. I’d like te see ye try,” Diarmuid muttered. “I’d smash yer hands before ye got ten steps.”
Wade put his hand in mine and held my gaze, centering me. “Ignore him. You know he struggles with verbal diarrhea.”
Diarmuid folded his arms huffily. “It ain’t like it’s a big secret no more.”
“That cat may be out of the bag, Diarmuid, but that doesn’t give you the right to speak about one of our own like that. She deserves respect, not derision.” O’Halloran swiped up the obnoxious creature and plonked him back on his shoulder.
“And if ye ever pick me up like that again, I’ll deck ye!” Diarmuid protested, but he didn’t try to get down again. He just sat there, scowling. His default setting.
O’Halloran shook his head and looked over at Wade and me. “I’m sorry about him. Personally, I think it’s for the best that everything’s out in the open. At least this way, Persie knows what to expect.”
“Aye, she’ll be a right ol’ Puff the Magic Dragon, spewin’ up smoke.” Diarmuid chuckled to himself.
Say one more word, and I swear to Chaos. I gripped Wade’s hand tighter. I’d had no time to process what had happened with Persie, and Diarmuid seemed intent on pushing all the wrong buttons.
“Of course that’s not how we see her,” O’Halloran continued, casting a sharp sideways glance at the leprechaun. But when he turned back to us, his face was pained. “However, I do have concerns. This monster ability isn’t something we’re familiar with. After that hydra… we don’t know what else she might Purge.”
“Sounds like you and Diarmuid are pretty much on the same wavelength.” Bitterness dripped from my words and Wade squeezed my hand again, trying to keep me calm. “The coven isn’t at risk, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
O’Halloran’s lined face softened. “She’s one of us. We’re not against her; we’re here for her. I only meant to say that everyone will need to be vigilant to address the concerns that people are going to have.”
Everyone’s going to be scared of her, you mean. It broke my heart to think that Leviathan had made Persie a pariah. She was quiet enough without that nasty viper adding to it. I’d been so afraid of her retreating from us, her parents, that I hadn’t stopped to think about her retreating from everyone.
“We’ve been through worse,” Wade chimed in to restore my opt
imism. “This is nothing we can’t handle.”
Diarmuid threw his head back in a cackle. “Ye say that now, but ye’ve never had a monster-spoutin’ bairn before. Ye shouldn’t be so cocky. Who’s te say this ain’t worse than what ye’ve dealt with before?”
“Because I won’t let it be.” My palms shot up and spat a line of Telekinesis at him. I was sick to death of the munchkin and his attitude problem, talking about my daughter that way. The threads wrapped around him, and I closed my fist, making the lasso squeeze around his ridiculous little body. Anything to shut him up, just for a second or two.
O’Halloran intervened with a sharp bang to the table. “Harley! Enough!”
I released the leprechaun, albeit reluctantly. “Don’t tell me he didn’t deserve it.”
“I’ll rip yer ginger head off and toss me gold coins down yer neck, ye—” Diarmuid lunged for me, but O’Halloran got there first. He grabbed his tiny companion and held him tight, not taking his eyes off the creature.
“I think we should bring this meeting to a close, before war breaks out.” O’Halloran gripped Diarmuid tighter as the irritating cretin wriggled, trying to get free. He hurried to the door. “Astrid, keep me in the loop, okay?”
“Always, director,” she promised. He exited rapidly just as Smartie pinged. “Oh. Just got the reply. They say they can send the returnees to us in the next hour for interviews, so Jacob and Wade won’t need to go to St. Louis.”
I exchanged a knowing glance with my husband. “In other words, they want to palm the responsibility off to someone else?”
“They’re a small coven.” Astrid shrugged. “At least here, we know they’ll get the right care.”
Wade got up. “Then we should get to the infirmary and help Krieger and Jacob prepare for the new arrivals.” He took my hand and ushered me to the door, where I could still hear Diarmuid yelling up the corridor. It riled me up all over again.
Harley Merlin 18: Persie Merlin and Leviathan’s Gift Page 11