Harley Merlin 2: Harley Merlin and the Mystery Twins

by Bella Forrest

  Yet both of them were incredibly dysfunctional, perfectly evidenced by their fraught friendship. Something had definitely happened between them—that much I knew. I had a feeling I was about to find out what, exactly, and I was on the edge of my seat.

  No way I’m finishing my cannelloni.

  “You two need to bring me up to speed here if I’m to mediate anything,” I interjected. “You promised.”

  Garrett gave me a brief sideways glance, then smiled. It irritated Wade. It was such a shame that I couldn’t feel Garrett’s emotions, too. I was willing to bet they spoke volumes.

  “As you probably know, Wade and I go way back,” Garrett said. “We were best friends at one point. Our parents are still close. Our dads are on the Texas Mage Council, after all. We were tight.”

  “Yeah, I’m aware of that,” I replied. “So, who screwed things up?”

  Wade and Garrett stared at each other, until Garrett laughed lightly, shaking his head. “That would be me.” He chuckled and nodded at Wade. “Go on. We had an agreement not to talk about it, but I’m dying to tell her what got you all riled up. But you should do it. I want to hear your version of events.”

  I groaned with frustration as another minute passed. Wade’s anger and shame were bubbling beneath the surface, poking me right in the head.

  “Oh, come on,” I grumbled.

  “Seven years ago,” Wade said, not taking his eyes off a slightly amused Garrett. “You should’ve told me…”

  “I kind of did,” Garrett replied, stifling his laughter.

  “Garrett is a Shapeshifter,” Wade said in a low tone, his jaw locked. I found myself staring at Garrett in pure disbelief. “I suppose you didn’t know that,” he added, and I shook my head, unable to look away. “Yeah. Shapeshifters tend to be secretive about it. I told you about that.”

  I nodded. “Who else knows?”

  “Just Wade, our closest family members, my previous coven director, and Alton,” Garrett replied. “Well, Astrid and Tatyana recently found out. I told them. Oh, and the other Shapeshifters in our coven. Alton introduced me to them, though I kind of knew about most of them. We can sense one another sometimes. It’s a bit hard to explain. Not that many people know, let’s leave it at that.”

  “We were best friends, and Garrett didn’t think I deserved to know the proper way,” Wade continued. “You know the proper way, right? Where you sit your best friend down, and you tell them you’re a Shapeshifter. No. Garrett decided to shift into Melanie Williams…”

  Garrett covered his mouth, struggling not to laugh out loud. He looked like a boy who’d just put a whoopee cushion on the teacher’s chair and was waiting for the poor guy to sit down.

  “Melanie was his crush,” he said, grinning at Wade. “He was thirteen, and Melanie was sixteen. She was tutoring him in Alchemy and Magical Chemistry. Once a week, every Sunday evening.”

  Wade exhaled sharply, doing a remarkable job of keeping his cool. He was boiling inside. I was going to hear a teakettle whistle, soon enough.

  “One Sunday evening, Melanie came over as usual,” Wade took over. “I’d been working up the courage to ask her out for ice cream. She showed up in a beautiful summer dress. I’ll never forget it. It had an orchid pattern on one side. Her strawberry-blonde hair was loose and perfectly straight. And she kept smiling at me. It took me an hour to finally pop the question. To my shock, she said yes, then gave me a peck on the lips,” he added, then frowned at me. “Just so you know, this information is strictly between the three of us. Tell no one, or I will skin you alive.”

  I held my breath, my eyes nearly jumping out.

  “Okay,” I managed.

  “It was my first kiss,” Wade said. That was such an endearing thing for him to say, but I braced myself for the reveal. Deep down, I kind of already suspected what was coming, so I focused on keeping a straight face instead. “It meant the world to me. Remember, I was thirteen, and girls weren’t really my field of expertise at the time.”

  “When were they ever?” Garrett croaked, before pressing his lips into a thin line. He was terrible at concealing his amusement.

  “Shut up,” Wade snapped, then shifted his focus back to me. “Thing is, that wasn’t Melanie who kissed me. I found out the hard way when, one minute later, she shifted into Garrett. He was laughing like an idiot, and I felt—”

  A chortle escaped my throat. I instantly covered my mouth with both hands. I felt terrible for him. It must’ve been a horrendously jarring experience. But, at the same time, being on the outside and looking in, I had to admit—it was hilarious.

  Wade’s icy glare made me swallow my laughter altogether.

  “Come on, buddy. Tell her everything,” Garrett prompted.

  Wade’s glare remained on me for another handful of seconds, before he swallowed hard and continued, “I had a bad reaction when I understood that Garrett was a Shapeshifter. I admit that I said things I wasn’t proud of, though he certainly could have found a better way of breaking the news to me.” His eyes snapped back to Garrett. “Regardless, it drove a wedge between us, and we’ve picked on each other repeatedly ever since.”

  “Basically, he never missed an opportunity to fry me like Southern chicken, and I kept shifting into his girlfriends,” Garrett said. “We were both kids at the time, but we managed to carry the flame well into adulthood, as you can see. Crowley’s ego is the size of the damn Bestiary, and I’m not one to say sorry more than once. So, there you have it, Merlin. The scoop.”

  A minute went by in awkward silence. I tried to measure Wade and Garrett against each other. Garrett had screwed up with the Melanie Shapeshifting thing. Wade had said some hurtful things. Then they just kept going after each other, until it became their second nature to sort of hate each other. I guessed I could see that happening.

  I sighed. Boys.

  “Well, I… I’m sorry that happened to you, Wade,” I murmured. His eyes still felt like they were drilling holes into my skull. “But you are both responsible for this mess you two are in, friendship-wise,” I added, looking at Garrett.

  “I said I was sorry! But he never apologized for the bigoted things he said to me,” Garrett replied.

  “I was angry and humiliated!” Wade spat. “I needed time to cool off, but you didn’t give it to me. Instead, you just kept shifting into even more people I liked! I felt I could never trust you again.”

  I guessed I understood where he was coming from, and all of a sudden, this wasn’t as funny as I’d initially perceived it. I had to put myself in the shoes of a thirteen-year-old boy to get that. Then, a different thought wandered into my consciousness and got stuck in the middle of my mental corkboard of facts and musings about the Ryders.

  “Plus, I was hurt that I had told you everything about myself, even things I didn’t tell my parents,” Wade added. “And there you were, keeping a massive secret like that. We’d promised each other to never keep secrets. You knew for more than two years at the time that you were a Shapeshifter, yet you chose to keep it from me. Not only that, but you decided to reveal it through a, might I add, very cruel prank. And saying sorry meant nothing when you kept impersonating the girls I was dating.”

  Garrett chuckled softly. I felt the urge to smack him—that was mostly Wade, but I had an itch of my own, too.

  “And you two seriously never talked about this?” I asked.

  “I guess we were too busy being angry at one another,” Garrett muttered, crossing his arms.

  “What the hell did you expect?” Wade asked. “You messed with my head in ways that would send normal kids straight into therapy!”

  “But you were never a normal kid. I thought you could take it. Besides, how many times did I have to draw my eyebrows on with a damn pencil because you burnt them off, you vengeful jackass?”

  “I was your friend, Garrett. Your friend. I deserved better,” Wade said.

  I lost my focus for a moment, as the thought I’d just had was coming back with a vengeance, s
ending a wave of alarm through my body.

  “Hold on,” I cut in. “Pause the bromance for a second. Garrett, you’re a Shapeshifter.”

  “Stating the obvious,” he replied.

  I looked at Wade. “I can’t feel him. Just like I couldn’t feel Finch. Who’s also a Shapeshifter,” I said. “Riddle me this. Is O’Halloran a Shapeshifter, too?”

  Wade straightened his back. He could clearly see where I was going with this. He nodded, and I broke into a cold sweat. “Very few people in the coven know, but yes. He’s a Shapeshifter.”

  “I can’t feel him, either,” I breathed, the realization smacking me over the back of my head. “Preceptor Bellmore?”

  “Yup,” Garrett said. Wade seemed equally shocked by this revelation. Garrett smirked. “You didn’t know, huh, Crowley? Well, it doesn’t surprise me. We tend to keep a tight ship. We even have a support group,” he added, then looked at me. “I told you. There’s a stigma. This general consensus that we can’t be trusted. The likes of Emily and Emmett Ryder aren’t helping. Ever since it became public knowledge the other day, it’s gotten even tougher for us. Bad rep’s a doozy.”

  “Imogene Whitehall… I can’t feel her, either,” I said.

  “That, I don’t know, but I’d be inclined to say yes, since there’s clearly a pattern here,” Garrett replied.

  “You can’t feel Shapeshifters as an Empath,” Wade concluded. “That’s… interesting, to say the least.”

  “You can detect us, when others can’t,” Garrett added, his eyes widening as it sank in. “Oh, damn.”

  “Yeah,” I murmured, taking it all in.

  For some reason, my instincts tugged my mind back to Jacob in that moment. Given his abilities, the Ryders would’ve stopped at nothing to get to him. I figured I could check up on him a bit more often, just to make sure he was okay. After all, those Shapeshifters could literally be anyone.

  “We both blew this, didn’t we?” Wade asked Garrett. “Our friendship, I mean.”

  “I guess. Never thought I’d say it out loud,” Garrett replied.

  “Yeah, me neither,” Wade mumbled.

  They kept talking, somewhere in the background of my consciousness, probably addressing the Shapeshifter thing, but I was busy texting Jacob.

  He didn’t text back, so I tried calling instead. Five rings later, it went to voicemail. I called again. Five rings. Voicemail. It didn’t feel right.

  My instinct was now telling me to go check on him, and I never ignored it. I was incredibly uneasy about him and the Smiths in general, with the Ryders prowling.

  What if they’re already there, watching somewhere? Waiting to snatch him? They kill human parents. The Smiths are sitting ducks.

  My stomach churned, and I rose to my feet, surprising both Wade and Garrett.

  “Sorry, I have to go,” I said.

  “What’s wrong?” Wade asked, visibly concerned.

  “Nothing. I think. There’s something I need to check,” I replied, then put my hands on his and Garrett’s shoulders. “You two need to get over this animosity between you. Sure, Garrett withheld something important from you and chose the wrong way to tell you about it, then went and did it again and again, like the idiot that he clearly is,” I added, scowling at him, then shifted my focus back to Wade. “But you clearly didn’t give him a chance to properly explain his poor choice of prank, either. You said unforgivable things, and you never apologized. Instead, you indulged his grudge and made it worse, until your friendship was clinically dead. You were both dumb and proud kids. But you’re grownups now. So start acting like it. The past is the past, and you can’t change it. Let it go, already.”

  I left them there, gawking at me, and hurried out of the restaurant. That was all the time and energy I was going to put into a broken friendship.

  I had work to do.

  My Empath ability allowed me to detect Shapeshifters. That was incredibly important, because it could help me identify the Ryders, too, going forward.

  First and foremost, however, I needed to make sure Jacob was okay. I couldn’t let anything happen to my Smiths, and I certainly couldn’t let those Shapeshifting bastards take Jacob away from us.

  As I rushed out the door, I barely even heard Wade’s rushed reminder that I wasn’t advised to go anywhere on my own, thanks to my brush with the Ryder twins. I couldn’t let him or anyone else from the coven find out about Jacob.

  And I didn’t need a babysitter. Not when I knew that Isadora Merlin had an eye on me.

  Thirty

  Harley

  Dicky was a godsend for me, and I owed Isadora a bottle of something good for bringing him into my life. I had his card, and ten minutes after making the call, Dicky showed up outside Fleet Science Center.

  “Hey, Dicky,” I said, as I climbed into the backseat.

  He watched me in the rearview mirror and gave me a friendly nod. “Where to, Miss Merlin?”

  “Forty-ninth and Heller, please.”

  “Ah, Jake’s new place,” Dicky replied.

  Of course he knew Jacob, since they were both tied to Isadora somehow. There was still a lot I didn’t know about her and her connections, but I had to admit, I was a little more at ease knowing there were eyes on Jacob at all times—or, so I hoped.

  Dicky was an excellent driver, too. I wished I had his reflexes behind the wheel as we darted through the city and made our way to the Smiths’ place.

  I tried calling Jacob again, but still no damn answer, just that automatic voicemail.

  The lights were out when we got there. Everybody was probably asleep already, since it was past ten p.m. and they all had an early start in the morning. I probably shouldn’t have been surprised they didn’t pick up the phone.

  The neighborhood was equally quiet and dark, which was one of my favorite aspects of living in the area. I was a bit of an old soul, and my eyes got droopy by eleven p.m. I’d certainly enjoyed the tranquility during my last two years as a ward of the state.

  I was still wound up tight, though, worried that something might’ve happened to Jacob and the Smiths—or that something was about to happen. The Ryders were out here, on the loose and pretending to be other people. The potential danger was all too close to home.

  Dicky pulled up outside the Smiths’ house and turned the engine off.

  “You know, I checked on him this morning. Everything was okay,” he said calmly, just as I opened the car door. It didn’t mean Jacob was okay now.

  I waited for a second before replying, genuinely befuddled by the man. “Out of curiosity, how are you so cool and totally not freaked out about us?” I asked.

  Dicky chuckled. “I get where you’re coming from, but you should know… Not everybody would flip out if they found out about the existence of magicals. Sure, there would be an adjustment period. Some extremists here and there. But the people, Miss Merlin, the people are inherently good and understanding. It’s the government you want to be afraid of.”

  “Fair enough. How’d you get involved, then?” I asked. Dicky was chattier than the night before—perhaps he was warming up to me—and I wanted to take advantage of it.

  “Isadora was in trouble. I helped her. I begged her not to wipe my memories. I proved myself useful. We’ve been working together ever since,” Dicky replied. “I love driving, I’ve got no kids to worry about, and I want to help her. It’s a no-brainer for me.”

  “How long have you been helping her?”

  “I lost track. Maybe twenty years.”

  I nodded, then got out of the car. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  “Take your time. I’m here.”

  I couldn’t help but smile as I snuck around the house. It was good to know that there were people like Dicky out there, who did the job and didn’t ask questions. Most importantly, it made me feel as though I wasn’t really alone in the world—granted, I had the coven, but I lacked the family connection to them. Isadora’s reemergence, along with Dicky, an impressively chi
ll human, somehow made everything better. I had a hard time explaining why, even to myself. It just felt right.

  During my two years at the Smiths’, I’d learned to expertly climb in and out of my first-floor bedroom. I used to go out a lot, at night, to try and better understand my abilities. I needed a more secluded green space to do that, where I didn’t have to explain why an oak tree had suddenly popped out of nowhere, for example. I didn’t have full control over my Earth Elemental ability then, and frankly, I was still getting the hang of it now.

  I climbed the rugged masonry siding of the house, pulled myself up, and made my way across the slanted slate roof, careful not to make any sound. Jacob’s room (previously mine), was dark and seemingly quiet. I moved closer to the window and peered inside.

  I could see him sleeping, sprawled across the double bed. His emotions were soft and fluid, like everyone’s while in a dream state. I got a sense of longing and fear, but also happiness and relief. The mixture was something I, too, had experienced at his age. It came with the territory as a foster kid. Heck, I still felt that way sometimes. The life spent hauling a black bag from one home to another tended to leave a mark on us. We never outran that kind of loneliness, no matter how good the foster family was. We’d always feel unwanted, mainly because our own parents couldn’t or didn’t want to raise us.

  Pleased and incredibly relieved to see that he was okay, I sent him another text, reminding him of our six p.m. meeting the next day. We’d agreed to hang out and hash a few things out about where he came from and what he knew about Isadora. Or, at least, what he could tell me about her. I was dying to find out more about this aunt, since the other one had turned out to be a raging psychopath.