Harley Merlin 3: Harley Merlin and the Stolen Magicals

by Bella Forrest

  I frowned, feeling offended on my dad’s behalf. “I take it you didn’t like him very much?”

  “Hard to like someone who used to look at everyone as though they were bugs under his shoe, Miss Merlin. Very hard indeed.” A weird smile crossed his face. “Not to mention the murders. Naturally, that’s the main reason he’s not liked around here.”

  “What about Hester? Did you know her well?” I couldn’t help myself. If he was going to keep insulting my dad, I at least wanted information.

  “She was a bit of a goody two-shoes, though she knew how to keep your father on his toes, which seemed to thrill him. I doubt he’d ever met anyone who’d told him no in his entire life. He chased after her like a dog after a bone. Hester was a favorite around here—'universally adored’ is a fitting term. Tragic, really, what happened to her. I might not have liked her much, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t saddened by her death. Not that I didn’t see it coming. Hiram was a black hole who sucked the life out of everyone around him and dragged them all into his pathetic nonsense. He’d have been a great man if he’d put his efforts into the right places.”

  “Should we get going? We’re on a bit of a tight schedule,” I said, through gritted teeth. One more insincere word out of him, and I’d shut him up myself.

  “I suppose so, now that you’re here,” he said. “This way, if you please.” He whirled around and stalked toward the main corridor. He walked fast, leaving Santana and me to sprint after him. Santana shot me a sympathetic look, but I was still wrestling with the desire to use my Telekinesis and make snooty Salinger trip over his own feet.

  We walked through gothic hallways draped in tapestries, with a thousand doors branching off. Lamplight flickered in silver sconces, casting shadows across the black marble floor. They were definitely going for a Transylvanian vibe, which seemed pretty fitting considering the witches and warlocks who lived here. Occasionally, through medieval-style arrow slits and stained-glass windows, I caught a glimpse of the city beyond. It seemed the New York Coven inhabited a similar interdimensional bubble as the San Diego Coven, though this one had been built within the sprawling grounds of Central Park.

  Heading down a spiral staircase that plunged us deeper into the belly of the coven, we stopped at the lowest floor and moved along a bleak corridor. There were no windows here, only an endless array of curved doorways that reminded me of a monastery, or a medieval castle.

  “Here we are,” Salinger said, pausing outside one of the doorways. “We don’t bring people here much, since it’s easier to forget that those miscreants belonged to our renowned coven. Anyway, this is where you’ll find everything you need to know on the Merlins and the Shiptons. Most of the files concerning them were never copied to the electronic database, so you might have to do a bit of sifting. If you’re that eager for the information, I’m sure you won’t mind.” That eerie smile tugged at his lips again, unsettling me. There was something dark and strange about Salinger that left a bitter taste in my mouth.

  Santana and I exchanged a glance, neither of us impressed. He pulled out a gigantic set of keys from his gray suit and slotted one into the lock.

  He led us into a medium-sized room filled to the brim with labeled boxes. It was a fairly plain storage room, which was a little disappointing. I’d been expecting the antithesis of a trophy room, where details on all the bad guys were kept. Not that my dad’s a bad guy. We don’t know that yet.

  We followed him down one of the aisles formed by metal bookshelves and stopped in front of a shelf at the back.

  Salinger sneered. “Merlins and Shiptons, side by side until the bitter end. Even in the Dewey decimal system. You’ll find all that you need here—mortuary records, family trees, details that were generally kept out of the magical public spectrum. I must ask that you don’t actually take anything out of here, but feel free to make all the notes you like and take some pictures. I can make some copies, if I must.”

  “Thanks,” I said tersely. I didn’t like his tone.

  “I’ll leave you to have a look and come back in ten minutes or so. As I said before, I should really have clocked out by now, but there are a couple of things that I still need to attend to. I’ll be back shortly. And, again, don’t take anything out of this room, and please leave everything as you found it.” With that, he turned on his heel and strode back out of the storeroom, leaving us to it.

  “I’m going to punch him, I swear,” I muttered, after making sure he’d really left.

  Santana whistled. “Definitely not a fan of your parents. I doubt he could have been less sympathetic if he’d tried.”

  I let out a heavy sigh. “Should we start looking?”

  She nodded, reaching for the first box labeled “Shipton.” I went for the box beside it, labeled with my family name. Taking them down, we sat cross-legged on the floor and sifted through the contents. A few moments later, Santana took out a folded length of cream vellum that had been scrawled on with curling black ink.

  I eyed it curiously. “What’s that?”

  “Shipton family tree,” Santana replied. “There’s not much to go on, by the looks of it. Katherine is on here, but there’s no mention of her being a Shapeshifter. No mention of any of her ancestors being a Shapeshifter, either. It’s just names, no abilities at all.”

  I grimaced. “Well, that’s annoying.”

  “Yeah, Finch isn’t on here either.”

  “Poor bastard can’t catch a break when it comes to family,” I said. “You know, I wonder what he’d have been like if he’d actually had a family to take care of him. Like, a real family, not just Mrs. Anker.”

  “With Katherine as his mom, I doubt it would ever have turned out good for him.”

  “I know what you mean, but Katherine can’t have always been like that, either. Something has to happen in a person’s life for them to turn into a monster. Nobody is born evil. At least, I don’t think so.”

  “Maybe she’s one of the exceptions.”

  “I guess.” I thought back to what Tobe had said in the Bestiary, about heartbreak tipping someone over into insanity. I doubted that could be the entire story of what had turned her evil, but it might have been the catalyst. The final straw.

  “I’ve got one here, too,” I said, finding the Merlin family tree and pulling it out of the box. It was the same as the Shiptons—just names, no abilities. One stark truth jumped out at me. “They’re all dead.” On my dad’s side, there were no grandparents, no great-grandparents, no cousins, no aunts, no uncles. All of them were deceased, aside from Isadora.

  Okay… that’s super weird. I’d expected a long-lost second cousin or something.

  “All of them?”

  I nodded.

  “Weird. It’s the same with the Shiptons.”

  Eager for more information, I reached for the mortuary photos. As I brought them out of the box, I could barely look at them. My father lay cold on a slab, his face drained of color and oddly bruised. Black, inky patches peppered his pale skin. I gripped the photos and tried to feel for any flicker of emotion coming from them. A faint whiff of love and grief drifted off, like the last notes of a sad song, but those feelings could well have been mine. I wanted to reach through the picture and touch him, as macabre as that sounded. He didn’t look like my dad, and yet he looked exactly like him. A horrible, changeling version of the man in my dreams.

  Tears brimmed in my eyes, a sob catching in my throat. The emotional trail was too cold for me to be able to pick up anything useful. Besides, by the time my dad died, I supposed nobody shed a tear for him. Everyone had thought he was a murderous psychopath. Isadora and Hester were the only ones who might have cared, and the latter had died a long time before this. At least she’d never had to watch him get executed. Small mercies.

  “Any sign of tampering?” Santana asked. “We’re looking for a rune on his neck and a small puncture wound, kind of like vamp fangs. Those are the telltale features of the Sál Vinna spell. Astrid sent me a picture.�
� She got out her phone and showed me an image of a previous victim of the Icelandic love spell. The poor woman had a small rune inked into the side of her neck, with two tiny holes beside it. It really did look like Dracula had sucked on her jugular.

  I looked over the mortuary images again, trying to find one of Hiram’s upper half. I peered at one of the pictures that focused in on his neck and head. Sure enough, a tiny rune had been inked below his earlobe quite far back, almost in the shadow of his hairline. Two small puncture wounds sat beside it. Comparing it with the coroner’s report, it said that my father had a small tattoo behind his ear, though it was written down as an emblem of Katherine’s cult. She was already starting all of this back then? Jeez, she’s really serving her revenge cold.

  Tears bubbled over as I realized what it meant. It had taken a moment for the facts to sink in. My father was under the grip of the Icelandic curse when he did all those terrible things—the things they’d listed with great relish in some of the other folders. He’d been under that curse until he died. He was innocent… He didn’t want to kill anyone. She made him do it. Then what was the hard truth that Isadora was keeping from me? If this wasn’t it… what was it?

  “Is it there?” Santana asked quietly. I could sense her anxiety.

  Slowly, I nodded. “It’s here.”

  She scooted over to me and wrapped her arms around me. “I’m so glad.”

  “Me, too,” I whispered, burying my face in her shoulder.

  Twenty

  Harley

  “Sorry to interrupt.” Salinger’s voice cut through our silent moment, cold and unfeeling. “I must say, your conversation was rather intriguing. I couldn’t help but hear from the hallway. If I’m not mistaken, I heard someone mention a very specific Icelandic love curse—very dangerous, very illicit, very illegal. I hope you’re not planning to execute such a spell? Not that either of you would be capable. These sorts of curses are not for the beginner.”

  Santana bristled at my side. “Actually, if you must know, we just discovered that Hiram Merlin was under a spell called Sál Vinna when he died,” she explained, as I wiped my eyes. I didn’t want this asshole to see me cry. “It’s a powerful love spell that binds a person to another person’s will. They can’t fight against it. We believe Katherine Shipton put him under it, and that’s why he ended up doing the things he did.”

  Salinger snorted. “You think I don’t know what Sál Vinna is? I’m the preceptor of International Cultures. It’s my job to know about this sort of thing,” he said curtly. “That spell hasn’t been used in centuries. It’s forbidden, as I said. To use it would mean one individual going to extraordinary lengths, not to mention the fact that they’d have to find the spell in the first place. It’s been tucked away at a secure facility in Reykjavik for generations.”

  I shook my head. “Katherine used it, and we have proof. If you know about it, then you know about the rune and the puncture wounds, right?”

  “Naturally.”

  “Then look at this.” I shoved the picture at him.

  He looked over it for a moment, his black eyebrows pinching together in a sour frown. “Impossible.”

  “Perhaps you should call Reykjavik, see if that spell has been tampered with.”

  He shot me a cold stare. “If you would excuse me for a moment. Stay exactly where you are.”

  He stalked out of the room and closed the door behind him. I looked at Santana, the two of us equally irritated by the arrogant, cold preceptor. Turning back to the boxes, worried that Salinger was listening in again, I distracted my angry brain by compiling a stack of documents that I wanted copied from the Merlin files, while Santana set to work on the Shipton files.

  “I’m going to smack his smug smirk off his face,” I muttered.

  She flashed me a grin. “Not if I get there first. Ignore him. It’s this place—New York seems to go to everyone’s heads.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Salinger returned. He looked pissed, a dark cloud hovering over his head as he strode back into the room. I knew as soon as I saw him that he was about to confirm exactly what I’d told him, but I wanted to savor the moment of knowing that I was right. He was going to have to apologize in some capacity.

  “Well?” I prompted.

  “The spell is gone,” he replied evenly. “Nobody knows how it was taken, but it is gone from the vault. Other spells have been taken, as well. I am having a list of the missing items sent over. I find it rather remarkable that you would know of such a curse, however. How did you come by this information?”

  “An inkling that Alton had,” I said. “He wanted us to check it out. He’s got this theory that Hiram might have learned to live with the effect of the spell, because he didn’t kill me when he could have. Instead, he tried to raise me and keep me out of Katherine’s reach. As you can see, it worked. I’m living proof.”

  “You’re very full of yourself, aren’t you?” His gaze was stony. “A Merlin trait.”

  “Now that I know my dad isn’t a murdering psychopath, I’ll take that as a compliment. I prefer to call it self-assurance.”

  “Call it what you want, it’s an unpleasant attribute. Don’t think we haven’t heard about you here in New York, Miss Merlin. We know how powerful you are, but that doesn’t grant you immediate superiority. Respect has to be earned—it doesn’t come from a name.”

  Seriously… don’t test me. If he wasn’t one of the only people who might be able to help us, I’d have let fly with my emotions by now. And then some.

  I shrugged, suppressing my anger. “Well, I plan to bring respect back to the Merlin name. You say you’re familiar with this spell, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “So, can someone live through it? Can someone fight against it?”

  He paused for a moment. “If it’s done properly, then no. Hiram was extremely powerful, but that doesn’t make him almighty.”

  “Well, he did it,” I said stubbornly, losing my cool for a moment.

  Salinger tapped the side of his temple. “There is a logical possibility.”

  “There is?”

  “Maybe it’s because you lived that he was able to resist the spell’s true power,” he mused, his expression changing to one of personal intrigue. “You see, I’m not sure how much you actually understand about it, but this curse requires great sacrifice to perform the spell. Specifically, it requires the lives and the blood of all those who are closely related to the spell’s target. With that in mind, it stands to reason that your presence prevented the completion of the curse. His blood ran, and still runs, in your veins. Without it being harvested by Katherine, there would have been no way for her to finish the job. In this instance, he may have been able to muster the strength to fight it, although he would never have been able to do so forever. Even unfinished, it would have worn away at him eventually.”

  I glanced at Santana. That made a lot of sense. I was the reason my father could resist the pull of the curse. I was the reason he hadn’t killed me. Had I saved myself from the effects of Sál Vinna, without even realizing it? Maybe, if there wasn’t one other Merlin still breathing. A Merlin that Salinger doesn’t know about.

  Isadora, I mouthed to Santana. She nodded, while Salinger looked over the image once more. Isadora had never been found, though presumed dead. If Katherine hadn’t been able to kill Isadora, then my aunt was the one who’d rendered the spell incomplete. Her survival must have given Hiram the slight relief he needed to learn to live with the spell’s grip on his mind. Although, I realized it must’ve eaten him up inside, to keep battling against a force like that. Salinger had said as much.

  Oberon? Santana mouthed to me. Immediately, I understood the connection. Ever since Oberon Marx had taken over Tatyana’s body and tried to kill us all in the name of Katherine, it had been clear he’d been under the same spell. Katherine would have had to kill all of Oberon Marx’s family to make it happen. Maybe he was the test run, before she tried it out on my dad.

 
“Might I suggest we leave this room and take our conversation to the Flying Dutchman?” Salinger said, unexpectedly. “We are supposed to make guests feel welcome, and there is much I should like to speak with you both about. I have been remiss, I suppose. You will forgive me—your arrival was unprecedented.”

  “The Flying Dutchman?” I asked.

  “The New York Coven’s bar.”

  Santana nodded effusively. “Yes, that sounds perfect!”

  “I can see to your copies first,” he said stiffly.

  “Great.” I forced a smile onto my face as we followed him out of the archives.

  We sat around a table in the far corner of the bar, which reminded me of an old-timey smoking room, with dark mahogany furniture and dark green wallpaper printed with black fleur-de-lis. A few other patrons sat around, sipping tankards of ale and glasses of wine, with a few grizzled gentlemen partaking in crystal tumblers of amber whiskey. The ice cubes clinked as they lifted the drinks to their lips and set them down again.

  Salinger was four drinks in. He’d tried to refuse and stick to water, clearly wanting to grill us on what we knew and what we thought about all of this, but Santana had been plying him with whiskey sours and tequila chasers since the moment he sat down, evidently hoping he’d loosen up a bit. She’d claimed it was part of her Mexican culture, guilting him into accepting the drinks or risking insulting her. Being a preceptor of International Cultures, he clearly knew not to cross a fierce Latina, especially not one who wanted to ply him with booze.

  However, the plan had worked a little too well, and now we were struggling to shut him up.

  “You know, I always thought Hester and Hiram were a handsome couple, and both were good friends of mine for a while, but we had ourselves a falling out.” Salinger pulled me out of my thoughts. He twisted his features into a comical face as he downed a chaser that Santana had pushed into his hand. “Always the way, when a bro finds himself a… girlfriend. Suddenly, they don’t have time for you anymore, and it’s ‘Hester this’ and ‘Hester that.’ And then things start to get ugly, as they always do, and Hester’s running through the hallways in tears. That was Hiram’s problem: he toyed with too many women’s hearts—Katherine’s included. Me being a doting friend, I went to Hiram to try and talk some sense into him, but he thought he was this rock star amongst men. He thought he could keep doing what he was doing, have all the cake and eat it too. Saving none for the rest of us, I might add.”