“You’re insane.” I wanted to punch her so hard it’d make her head spin.
“The good thing about Imogene is I get to see and hear everything, but the bad thing is I can’t act straightaway. If I’d arrived and that detector had suddenly gone missing, you’d all have gotten on your suspicious high horses. And if I hadn’t let you finish it, I’d have been out of a detector.”
“Where’s the real Imogene?” I had to wonder how long Katherine had been pretending. When had she switched with the real one?
She snickered. “Kid, you’ve never even met the real Imogene. None of your band of do-gooders have. I’ve been playing that part for years, putting everything in painstaking place for so long, so I could move unseen, with nobody suspecting a damn thing. Now that is dedication. I’m pretty proud of it, to be frank. It takes a lot to pretend to be someone so disgustingly sweet. My teeth are starting to rot.”
I couldn’t wrap my head around it. “But Harley told me she read your emotions once. That couldn’t have been you.”
“A simple trick, Jakey. Easy when you know how.”
“They’ll figure you out,” I hissed.
“No… no, I don’t think they will. That’s the beauty of the work I’ve put into Imogene—I ensured that she appeared infallible. A saint amongst ordinary folk. Everyone trusts her. I made it that way.” She smiled and retrieved the scalpel. I watched in disgust as she dragged the blade along her forearm, and across her cheek. Blood trickled across her skin. I knew she had healing powers, but she could clearly pick and choose when she wanted to use them. She shuddered in sick delight and tossed the scalpel to the ground. “Now, Imogene still has work to do. But it requires patience. I’m good at that, as you may have guessed. That doesn’t make it any less infuriating, though. I’d love to do a bit of swooping in and getting what I want right away, but I must wait.”
I knew what she was getting at.
“You see, now Harley has that Grimoire.” Her eyes darkened. “I’ll be honest, I really didn’t see that coming. A rarity for me. I’d call it refreshing if it wasn’t so annoying. She’s a devious little bitch, isn’t she? And I definitely didn’t think she could read from it and perform the spells. Although, I suppose it makes sense now. Summoning Erebus, for example—that had Hiram and Hester written all over it. I should’ve smelled that Merlin stench when we were in Tartarus.”
“She’s going to kill you, Katherine.” Venom dripped from every word.
Katherine threw back her head and laughed. “I’ve got a heads-up on it now, which is handy. But I thought this whole Grimoire business was done with, since nobody could get at it or read it. Clearly, it’s not, so more work for me. And I’m just thrilled about that.”
“You’ve got no idea what you’re dealing with.”
“Oh, you’re so very wrong, Jacob. It’s sweet, really, to see how naïve you are. Knowledge is power. Now that I know what Harley can do, I can stop her before she does it. Although, I’m interested to see what’s in there. Who wouldn’t be? There might even be some tidbits I can use for myself. I just need to get past the Grimoire’s defenses first; let it loosen up a little and unravel a bit, to the point where it stops blocking me out. A very annoying little addition by the Merlins. Nevertheless, once Harley unlocks its secrets, it’ll be fair game. I’ll just get her to do the hard work for me and read out a couple of those delicious spells on my behalf. The threat of a loved one dying if she doesn’t can be a very potent persuader.” She clapped her hands together. “So, Jakey, change of plans. You’re going to be useful later, but I can’t have you blabbing about this, not while I’m busy making Harley fail… again. And she’s going to be so crushed. I can’t wait.” Before I could react, Katherine smacked me on the back of the head. “Usque ad vos enim misit stare,” she said. I winced, waiting for something to happen, but felt no discernible change in my body.
I wanted to lunge at her, but that same unseen force held me back. Still, she saw my head jerk forward and the snarl of my teeth.
She tutted. “Shame on you, Jacob. You should know better than to want to hit a woman. Now, you’re going to sit here like a good little dog, where I can keep an eye on you. When the time is right, you’ll come to me. You won’t be able to stand the grief, and you’ll beg me to take it away. And I will, Jacob… I will.”
“Why not kill me now?” I rasped.
“Kill you?” She grinned. “Why would I want to do a thing like that when I can watch you crumble instead? I could’ve just taken you sooner, if I’d wanted to, but I needed you for the magical detector. How else am I supposed to find the abilities I need for my future domain? Chaos doesn’t just come out of one’s ass, Jake. It has to exist to be used. Don’t they teach you anything about energy in school?”
“Screw you!”
She clutched her chest. “Ooh, you wounded me with that one, Jakey. Although, I’m more offended that you cut me off while I was monologuing. A villain should always get her soliloquies in where she can. Anyway, I need to make sure I have all the good stuff, when the time comes. Can’t make more Portal Openers if I don’t have a template to work from.” She snapped her fingers suddenly, making me flinch. She chuckled. “What, did you think a bunny was going to appear? Nothing so fluffy, I’m afraid. I’m just dealing with surveillance. Wiping it, to be exact. Wouldn’t want any pesky recordings of what happened here, now, would we?”
I didn’t know if it was the click of her fingers or what, hitting me like a hypnotist, but I found myself falling to the ground. My mind turned blank. I was slowly fading out. Just as my eyelids slid closed, I saw Katherine launch into her best performance yet. She turned back into Imogene Whitehall a split second before Astrid walked in.
“Katherine was here!” Imogene gasped, her eyes wide in panic, clutching her side like she’d been injured. “Katherine was here! I tried to stop her… I tried to stop her, but she was too strong!”
Damn… Even I’d have believed her, if I didn’t know the truth.
“Jacob? Jacob, are you okay?” Astrid sank down beside me, but I couldn’t speak.
Everything faded away to a living nightmare. My friends were in trouble, and I couldn’t do a single thing to help them. They were right in the middle of the lion’s den, and they didn’t even know.
Forty-Eight
Harley
I stared at the mini-me with about a thousand questions racing in my mind. I wanted to ask her what she knew about my parents and Katherine and how all this Grimoire stuff had come about, but I didn’t know how much time I had. So I had to keep things simple and hope I got the answers that I wanted from this irritating, vague little imp.
“What’s in there? What’s in the Grimoire that Katherine is so terrified of?”
Mini-me smiled. “You’ll have to find that out for yourself once you understand everything within its cryptic pages.”
“Cryptic is putting it lightly,” I muttered.
“Your parents designed it to be complicated, for the sake of keeping out unwanted eyes and to ensure that you were thoroughly tested. It is a trial, in and of itself. It will prove whether you have the means necessary to take Katherine on. It is not a simple case of power here; it’s about opening one’s soul and mind and truly giving everything to fight her. It will take more than strength to defeat Katherine, but you already knew that.”
Was mini-me taking a swipe at me? I knew we’d failed a bunch of times, but that reminder wasn’t exactly useful right now. I was about to ask what she meant by that, when the could’ve-been nursery disappeared. I was back to reality, sitting in the same dusty chair with the Grimoire in front of me. Only, Wade and Finch were shaking me violently by the shoulders, and the room definitely wasn’t in the same state I’d left it in when I’d been zapped into the weird dreamworld. The abandoned classroom was collapsing at the seams, fragments crumbling away in big, oily blocks that burst into a silvery dust. Cracks splintered across the floor, spreading wider into gaping crevasses that gave way to black
oblivion. It was like the Bestiary incident all over again, only this seemed to be the speeding up of the coven’s natural decay.
Is this because of me? I didn’t have time to ask, as Wade grabbed me by the arm and yanked me toward the door, with Finch chasing after us.
“Wait! The Grimoire!” I darted back and snatched it off the desk, with the room falling apart around us. Sprinting like heck for the door, the three of us dove into the hallway beyond, just as the room came tumbling down. The door slammed shut behind us automatically. A bronze shimmer rippled up the doorway and turned it into a solid wall, as if the classroom had never actually been there. The Bestiary appeared to have compensated for the decayed room, cutting it right off and repairing the gap, now that it had fallen away of its own accord.
“That was way too close!” Finch rolled onto his back, panting heavily. “You picked a crappy time to go all cuckoo on us, Sis. It was like trying to wake the dead.”
“You should’ve called for Alton,” I replied, smiling. I knew I didn’t have much to be glad about, but my last meeting with the creepy, alternative me had given me a few more answers to figuring the Grimoire out. Vague ones, for sure, but it was something, and until I’d gotten sucked into the Grimoire, I’d been clutching at straws. Plus, thanks to mini-me, I knew it was only a matter of time before I cracked the code in this book. After all, my parents would never have set me up to fail…
Finch had opened his mouth to make some other wisecrack, most likely, when footsteps made us turn. They were approaching fast, like someone was running. O’Halloran skidded around the corner, his face white.
“O’Halloran? What is it?” Wade jumped to his feet, with me and Finch following suit.
“You need to come to the infirmary.” His voice was shaking uncontrollably, which was a terrifying thing to see in a man normally so composed. “Something’s happened… something terrible.”
Forty-Nine
Harley
I sprinted into the infirmary, with Finch and Wade flanking me.
O’Halloran had gone to speak with the rest of the security magicals and hadn’t told us what had happened; he’d just told us to get to the infirmary, ASAP. There hadn’t been time for more explanation, but I could tell something awful had happened the moment we stepped into the room.
Blood pooled out from under Krieger’s closed office door, and scarlet footsteps led all the way across the infirmary to one of the empty beds. Only, it wasn’t empty. Imogene was sitting on top of it, propped up with pillows, blood streaming from a gash in her cheek and on her forearm, staining her cream suit crimson. She looked like she’d been crying. Krieger sat on the bed beside her, preparing a syringe with something clear inside. I watched as he slid the needle into her arm, administering whatever was inside the canister.
“Krieger?” I could barely force the word out.
“I’m just giving Imogene a mild sedative,” Krieger replied solemnly. He’d been crying, too, which threw me completely. “She’s been through a lot, and she needs to rest.”
Louella and Astrid were sitting on the bed opposite, Astrid’s arm around the younger girl, who was shaking like a leaf, her hands covering her face as a wrenching sob tore out of her throat.
What’s going on here?
The rest of the Rag Team members were standing around the main section of the ward, grouped together in a frieze of despair. Garrett stood close to Astrid, his hand resting on the rail of the bed, his chin dropped to his chest. Tatyana was wrapped up in Dylan’s arms, her face splotchy and her eyes rimmed with red. She buried her face in his chest when she saw me. Dylan had tears in his eyes, too, but he was clearly trying to keep up a ruse of strength for Tatyana. Santana had her head on Raffe’s shoulder, her face contorted in an expression of intense pain, both of them holding each other as they wept. Alton was facing the wall with his arms folded across his chest, not wanting to show how much pain he was in, but I could feel it flowing off him in heartbreaking waves. I could feel it from all of them. Even Tobe, who stood guard in front of Krieger’s office door, his golden eyes glittering, his feathers shaking as though he was struggling to hold it together.
“Can someone tell me what’s going on?” My voice cracked, my gaze continually drawn to the blood spilling out from under the office door. There was so much of it, and there were two people missing—Isadora and Jacob. My stomach sank. Where are they? I spotted Jacob lying flat on the bed behind Astrid and Louella, but that left one person unaccounted for.
Krieger made to stand, but he sank back down onto the edge of Imogene’s bed, his head sagging as his body began to shake. Nobody seemed to be able to speak, making my panic hit the roof. Every time they looked at me, it seemed to make things worse, rendering them all silent with a grief I didn’t yet understand.
In the end, Tobe was the one who stepped forward, taking my hands in his massive paws. “Isadora is gone, Harley… Katherine was here, masquerading as Rita Bonnello. Imogene saw her and tried to stop her, but Katherine murdered your aunt in cold blood and appears to have done something to Jacob. From what Imogene has said, we believe it’s because Jacob pointed the detector at Rita, revealing her to be Katherine. He is currently in a magical coma, and not even Dr. Krieger knows how to awaken him. He has tried, but he is weary in body and soul.” He held my hands tighter, urging the warmth of his fur into my trembling fingers. “Suri is also dead. Katherine murdered her as well. And the magical detector has been taken. It will take a great deal of time to rebuild, if we wish to replicate it.”
I couldn’t breathe. I kept trying to get my lungs to work, but they’d turned to two blocks of ice in my chest. My heart felt like it had actually stopped, though everything seemed surreal and impossible. Was I in another one of my dad’s visions? Was he just trying to show me what might happen if I didn’t find the secrets of the Grimoire? I hoped so, with all my heart. Never in all my life had I wished for a nightmare to get me out of an equally horrifying reality.
Alton turned toward me. “We don’t have the time to build another one, even if we wanted to, and we certainly can’t extract Jacob’s Chaos without his permission. It won’t work unless given willingly, due to Chaos rules.” He moved closer. “The upper echelons of the magical society are under the cult’s influence, without a doubt—some of them, or more of them, or all of them. We’re not sure as of yet. But it is enough that we can’t go public with what has happened here, for the same reasons as before—mass panic and potential absconders to Katherine’s side. There are new reasons now, however. These influenced individuals might come after us with a vengeance. Both matters will only make your job harder, Harley.”
Why was he talking about the magical detector and the influenced authorities? Why was he focusing on that, when I’d just been told my aunt was dead and Jacob was out cold and Suri had been killed, too? Did I not get a moment to let this sink in, without having to think about the rest of the freaking world? It was borderline cruel, even if this was his warped way of dealing with what had happened. Not that I could say anything about it—my throat had sealed shut, my brain fogging over, my hands shaking as they gripped Tobe’s comforting paws so hard my nails were digging into him.
“We’ve got no choice but to play up to our public roles, with Imogene, Remington, and the rest of our handful of trusted allies to help us defeat Katherine. And we must be careful what we discuss in front of O’Halloran and the rest of the security magicals. We know they’re almost certainly under the cult’s influence, so they can’t be trusted. At least until we can figure out how to stop Katherine’s influence.” Alton was all business, and I hated him for it. Tobe had just delivered a knife to my heart, and now Alton was battering me with punch after punch after punch of bad news. I wanted to scream at him. I wanted to lunge at him and tell him to care, but I couldn’t even move.
Tobe looked into my eyes, a tear falling onto his furry cheek. Without a word, he drew me into his arms and pulled me to his broad chest, his embrace a vain attempt to stop me
from falling to pieces. I turned over my shoulder to look at Wade and Finch, but they were just as frozen as I was. This didn’t seem real at all. Please, please, please, let this be a nightmare. Please, let me wake up. Please!
“And Katherine has taken the children that we saved before. She snatched them from the LA Coven while Imogene was away, unable to prevent it.” Alton delivered the killer blow, and I fell apart. Micah, Marjorie… I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. Isadora… I’m so sorry. Suri, Jacob… I had no words. I just broke. I sagged in Tobe’s arms and let him set me on the ground as a bestial scream shattered my throat. It wrenched out of me, making my ribs ache and my throat scrape, my whole body shaking violently as another and another followed, tears flowing down my cheeks in hot, angry, devastated streams.
Katherine had warned me. She’d freaking warned me. Through blurry eyes, I stared at the blood pooling under Krieger’s door and knew it belonged to Isadora. Hunching over, a roar of pure, unadulterated grief thundering out of me, I let my fury and grief take over. I let it come, because what else could I do?
Isadora had been my last real link to my dad, the only person who knew him better than anyone, and she’d been everything to me. She’d been a friend, a mentor, an aunt, and someone who’d given me so much hope when I’d thought everything was lost. And now she was gone, she was really gone, and that made no sense to me at all.
“Bring them back,” I rasped.
Alton shook his head. “I can’t, Harley. I already tried to resurrect them when I arrived, but their bodies have been tampered with. I can’t sense their spirits at all. They’ve been chased away—it can happen in tragic, shocking circumstances such as this. The spirit is almost catapulted from the body, unable to be retrieved.”
Harley Merlin 7: Harley Merlin and the Detector Fix Page 40