I nodded. “No problem. I’ll be quick.”
Leaving them to their happy domesticity, I headed down the hall, only to freeze halfway. Seeing the front door from this angle brought back a wave of hideous flashbacks. The Ryder twins taunting me as Wade and I hid from sight, trying to figure out a plan of action that wouldn’t get my foster parents horribly murdered. Mrs. Smith screaming as the cuts appeared on her legs, making their way up her body, the blood soaking through her pants. Mr. Smith sobbing at the sight of his beloved wife, and not being able to do anything to help her.
Shrugging off the awful memories, I forced myself to continue down the hall and up the stairs, to my old room. As I stood in the doorway, nostalgia washed over me. I glanced at the magnolia walls and remembered putting up each and every one of the artsy black-and-white photos of James Dean and Springsteen in their glory days, and a bevy of leather-clad rock musicians, while the sweet smell of vanilla drifted toward me from the reed-diffuser on the windowsill. Mrs. Smith must have put it there, replacing the headier scents that I liked. I’d only stayed here for two years, but they’d been the happiest two years of my life. Prep school notwithstanding—they could go screw themselves.
My powers had made themselves known throughout my childhood, but back then I hadn’t known what they’d meant or where they’d lead. So much had changed in such a short span of time. I was better off now, knowing what I was and what I could do, but that didn’t detract from the fondness I felt for this place. The Smiths had been kind to me, and I would never forget that.
For the next ten minutes, I scoured the room, sifting through every closet and drawer for something that might have belonged to Jacob. The cleanup crew had done a suitably spectacular job of covering all magical trails, which meant finding a potential object was going to be harder than finding a very specific needle in a stack of needles.
I crawled over to the bed and looked underneath. Nothing but solitary boots and loafers that I’d left behind, a couple of shoeboxes, and a flurry of dust bunnies. Undeterred, I wriggled under the slats and hauled myself to the far side of the bed, with the windowsill just visible above me. My hands grasped in the darkness, searching for anything unusual. Delving into a pile of fluff and torn-up paper, my fingertips settled on a curious shape tucked between the wall and the edge of the carpet.
I’m going to need a gallon of Purell after this.
Digging the object out of its disgusting crevice, I struggled back out into the main body of the room and opened my palm to see what treasure I’d collected. A Native American beaded bracelet sat in the center of my hand. I’d never owned anything like it, and nobody else had used this room before me—it had been a study until they’d taken me in. The bracelet had to be Jacob’s. Evidently, the cleanup crew had missed it, considering where it had fallen.
I wonder where you got it from, Jake? I didn’t know anything about Jacob’s real parents, and he didn’t seem to know anything either. “Morales” was the name the foster home had given him. His true surname was lost, known only by the people who had abandoned him as a kid.
It reminded me of my own family. There were so many questions I still wanted to ask, and so many answers I didn’t have. Isadora was the key to my past, and perhaps the key to my future, too—she knew everything I needed to know, about my mother and father, the Merlin family as a whole, and, most importantly, about Katherine Shipton and her involvement in the murders that had left me an orphan.
Let’s hope this bracelet leads me to both of you, before dear Aunt Katie has the chance to strike again.
“Harley! Dinner’s ready!”
I pocketed the bracelet and headed out of the room, pausing to take one last look at the only place that had seemed like a sanctuary to me. Before the coven, anyway. It no longer held the same power that it once had. I was older now… wiser, perhaps. I might’ve spent some happy times in this room, but I would never be a Smith. The history of the Merlins and the Shiptons beckoned, the two melting pots from which I’d been made.
Right now, I was in a race against time to put the puzzle pieces together and stop Katherine from slotting the children into her grand plan.
Eight
Harley
The storm blew in with a vengeance, gale-force winds raging across the city. As a torrent of rain lashed down from all angles, soaking through my clothes in a matter of seconds while I waited for Dicky to pick me up, I got the call from the Rag Team that the evening patrol was off. Nobody would be stupid enough to wander around in this kind of weather, not even Katherine’s minions. They’d be holed up somewhere instead.
I was kind of glad, now that I had the bracelet Jacob had accidentally left behind. If we could get a tracer spell going, at least we could find Jacob and Isadora and tick one thing off our seemingly endless list of things to do.
Dicky drove me back to the Fleet Science Center, though nobody else was around at this time of night. A few security guards manned the foyer. I wasn’t too worried; they were undercover magicals, on the coven’s private roster. They nodded to me as I headed through the back way, into the coven itself. Kid City was seriously eerie at night. The playgrounds and jungle gyms just felt weird without the actual kids playing on them.
Once inside, I made a beeline for the banquet hall, hoping I’d find a couple members of the Rag Team there. We’d made a tentative plan to meet in Astrid’s room at nine o’clock, but nobody had replied to the group chat yet, and I wasn’t in a waiting mood. We’d blown off the evening meeting with Stella and Channing, too, since none of us had anything to report and the storm had cancelled any investigative plans. The bracelet was burning a hole in my pocket.
I paused on the threshold, my gaze settling on two figures at the farthest side of the right-hand table. Wade and Stella looked like they were in the middle of some deep conversation, Stella toying with a strand of her dark hair. Very cozy. They sipped coffee, a ripple of laughter slipping from Stella’s lips every couple of minutes. Oh, come on, he’s not that funny. He’s got the stand-up routine of a kindergartener. Another laugh erupted, echoing down the hall toward me. Seriously, you’re embarrassing yourself.
A sudden stab of jealousy pierced my chest, taking me by surprise. Well… that’s new.
Shrugging it off, and outright refusing to be the kind of girl who fawns over some dude because he’s chatting with another girl, I readjusted myself and strode down the aisle toward them. They fell silent as soon as I approached, which left me a little suspicious about what they’d been talking about.
“Hey, can I have a word?” I asked bluntly, staring Wade straight in the eyes.
He shrugged. “Sure. What’s up?”
“I need to talk to you in private.” I flashed a faintly apologetic look at Stella, who seemed taken aback by my abrupt interruption.
To be honest, I was a little embarrassed by my behavior, cutting in on their conversation like that. But this was important information that couldn’t wait until he was done flirting.
“Yeah, okay… Do you mean now?” Wade asked.
“No, I mean in about a year or two. Maybe three, if you’re more comfortable with that—of course I mean now,” I replied, giving Stella a “can you believe this guy” kind of look.
He pushed his coffee cup away and got up. “Thanks for the talk, Stella. It’s always nice to get to know LA Coven people a bit better. I guess the cover doesn’t always do the book justice.”
She smiled at him, revealing perfect teeth. “Anytime. I know Channing isn’t all that eager to make friends, but I’m a bit more chilled out than he is.”
Yeah, I bet you are. I quickly shoved away the fresh stab of jealousy that weaseled its way into my mind, to stop it from twisting any more of my generally sane thoughts into stupid ones. Green really wasn’t my color. And besides, Stella was only trying to be nice. It wasn’t easy to be the fresh meat in a new place, no matter how tough you were. I knew that better than anyone.
“Come on,” I said, heading for the opp
osite door. Wade followed after me, the two of us striding side by side down the main corridor beyond the banquet hall. I had no plan past this. Yeah, I needed to tell Wade about the bracelet and the potential tracer spell, but I’d made it sound way too urgent. I could’ve let him finish his coffee.
Panicking a bit, I shoved him through the nearest door on the left-hand side of the corridor. He staggered backward through it, regaining his balance in the center of a dingy, super-narrow plant nursery. Shelves were stacked right up to the ceiling on both sides, taking up every inch of wall space. Each plank was filled to the brim with cases and trays and pots of fragrant herbs and flowers, all of them recoiling as a hint of light glanced in from the hallway. I guessed they had to be light sensitive, if they were tucked away in a place like this.
Seeing the glint of Wade’s eyes in the gloom, I realized it might have been a little rash to pick the first door I came to. The shiver of nervous excitement coming off him wasn’t exactly helping matters, either. Clearly, he thought I had some ulterior motive in shoving him in here, with all these dimmed, atmospheric lights. But I couldn’t back out now. I’d made my weirdly romantic bed, and now I had to lie in it and hope he didn’t get the wrong idea.
“So, what’s this urgent matter that can’t wait?” he asked, leaning awkwardly against a shelf. He stood sharply a second later as a barbed plant, similar to a Venus flytrap, lunged for his right butt-cheek.
So smooth, Wade Crowley… so smooth.
I stifled a laugh. “I need help with something, and since we’re not on patrol tonight, I figured you could use a distraction.”
“You want to be a little more specific? I was having a good chat with Stella, and I want to know if this was worth abandoning her for.” He eyed the barbed plant warily. “She’s not so bad, you know. Way cooler than Channing. If she had her way, I think she might actually join in with the rest of us, but he’s not so open and she sort of has to stick with him.”
“They come as a pair?”
He shrugged. “Something like that.”
“Well, actually, this is definitely worth abandoning the new girl for,” I said, struggling to keep the sour tone out of my voice. He’d only rib me for it later. “I found something of Jacob’s at the Smiths’ place, and I need you to help me put a tracer spell on it—the same one we used to weed out Finch.”
“Why just me?”
Oh, I dunno, to get you away from Stella Chan? Touché, Crowley.
“I don’t want to go after them with a huge team, in case we spook them, and they take off,” I replied, barely missing a beat. It was half true. “Plus, I’m still worried about this mole. If the spy finds out about Jacob and Isadora’s whereabouts, we’re totally screwed. The last thing we want Katherine getting her greedy mitts on is Portal Opener powers. I know I had to tell the rest of the Rag Team about Alton’s orders, but not everyone needs to know that I’m actually in the middle of tracking them. Does that make sense?”
He paused for a moment. “You don’t trust the Rag Team?”
“I do! Of course I do. But we don’t know who else might be listening, through some magical or non-magical, but equally nosy, method. I’d rather stick with just you, for now,” I said. “Plus, Garrett’s still a bit rogue for my liking. It’s annoying that I can’t sense what he’s feeling. I can let him in on some of our secrets, but I don’t have to let him in on all of them, right?”
“I guess that makes sense,” he replied with a shrug. “But how come you’re trusting me with this? How can you be sure Katherine hasn’t gotten to me?”
I grinned. “Because I can read you like a book.”
“Only when I let you.”
“Yeah, keep telling yourself that.” I plucked the bracelet out of my jeans pocket and held it out for him to see. “Anyway, I thought it’d be better if we just kept this between you and me for now. Alton, too. I’ll have to tell him what we’re doing, since we’ll be using a forbidden spell again.”
A flurry of intense excitement rushed through me, feeding off Wade’s sudden flood of emotion. “Cool, then count me in. When were you thinking of doing the spell?”
“Tomorrow, maybe?”
He shook his head, flashing a wide grin. “Since we’re not doing anything right now, and nobody’s expecting us to patrol in this kind of weather, why don’t we do the spell tonight? We can follow wherever it leads in total secrecy, because nobody would be stupid enough to head out in a storm.”
“Except us?”
“Exactly… except us.” He paused, jittering with anticipation. “So, what do you think?”
“I think we need to get everything together and get this done,” I replied, his excitement melding with my own. I couldn’t wait to speak to Isadora again. “Speaking of which, is everything still in the Luis Paoletti Room?”
He frowned. “I’m not sure. We’ll need to check it out.”
“Please tell me we’ve still got some of Quetzi’s venom left over, because there’s no way I’m asking Tobe to risk his life again,” I said, remembering the near miss that had almost ended in a dead Beast Master. Quetzi had been moments away from sinking his fangs into Tobe’s wing when I’d begged him to stop and give us the venom of his own free will. In the end, he’d given it up reluctantly, but I didn’t feel like chancing it again, no matter how important this was.
“There was plenty of it left after last time. If it’s anywhere, it’ll be in the Luis Paoletti Room with everything else.”
“Then we should probably start there and figure out what else we’re going to need.” A flicker of anxiety wormed its way into my head. “Ah man, I just thought… this isn’t going to be as easy as it was last time. We can’t just go to Preceptor Gracelyn and ask for wolfsbane, and we can’t get Santana to help crush the jasper and diamonds into powder.”
Wade rubbed the back of his neck. “Let’s just see what we’ve got, and then figure the rest out from there. I might have a way around those things, if it comes to that.”
“You do? What?”
“Patience, Merlin, patience.” He moved past me to reach the door, the narrow width of the room bringing us a little too close together. I tried to step back against the nearest shelf to give him space, but another of the vicious plants reared up, preparing to launch itself at my shirt. Stumbling forward to get away from the savage beastie, I wound up pressed against him, bracing my palms against his chest to keep from toppling over.
Man, I’d forgotten how great you smell, Crowley.
I looked up into his eyes. “You know, you could’ve just let me leave first.”
“Yeah, but where would the fun be in that? You robbed me of my coffee date. Call this payback.” He squeezed the rest of the way past me and let himself out the nursery door, leaving it open for me to follow. I fought a smile. Asshole.
Ten minutes later, we stood outside the double doors of the Luis Paoletti Room. Wade put his hands on both doorknobs and murmured the spell that opened them, his rings glowing white as Chaos worked through him. A soft click echoed down the hallway, and the doors swung wide. Beyond them lay a familiar room, the walls covered with shelves, each one loaded with labeled antique boxes. It reminded me a little of the nursery we’d just left, though there were no biting plants here, only whispering Grimoires that had a nasty habit of sucking me in.
I made it my goal to ignore the allure of the boxed Grimoires, up on their forbidden shelf, as we crossed to the far side of the room and pulled down a waxy scroll—the same one we’d used to discover who was letting the gargoyles out of the Bestiary.
“Diamond powder, mercury, wolfsbane root, dried cypress leaves, ground yellow jasper, feathered serpent’s venom… yep, this is the one,” I said, my eyes continually drawn to the Grimoires. The last time I’d been in this room, I’d almost read one of the spells aloud. Something about a “Dragon’s Kiss,” if memory served me right. I still had no idea what I might have done if I’d finished reading it out loud, since Garrett had stopped me. I guess that’
s one thing I can thank the guy for.
Wade sifted through a small box that sat beside the scroll on the dusty shelf. With a smile, he untied the label and handed it to me: Keep out. No, really… keep out. Love, Astrid. P.S. If you ever need to use this stuff again, please be careful. Please. Okay, thanks. Try not to hurt yourselves.
“Always looking out for us.” I chuckled, handing it back. “So, what’s the damage?”
He lifted out each item, one at a time. “We’ve got everything except the dried cypress leaves, the wolfsbane, and the mercury. There’s enough powder left, and half a vial of Quetzi’s venom, so at least we won’t have to go bothering Tobe again.”
“Is that stuff easy to get?”
“It is, if you know where to look.” He grinned wolfishly and put the box back up on the shelf. “We’re not usually supposed to get supplies outside the coven repositories, but it’s all available. Plus, it’s not like we’re trying to get our hands on super rare stuff.”
I laughed. “No, ironically that’s the stuff we’ve already got.”
“Precisely,” he said, a mischievous glint in his deep green eyes. “So, grab your jacket, Merlin—we’ve got places to be.”
Nine
Harley
Wade parked his Jeep in the parking lot of the Maritime Museum and killed the engine. It was still a bit of a walk to the secret entrance of Waterfront Park’s magical underworld, but there was nowhere closer to leave the car. Torrential rain hammered the windshield. I wasn’t looking forward to getting drenched in ten seconds flat.
“So what, we make a run for it?” I asked.
“Looks like it.”
On the count of three, I flung open the Jeep door and slammed it behind me, before tearing off down the street. Rain battered against me as I sprinted down West Ash Street, on the south side of Waterfront Park. The park was empty of the usual parents and toddlers, the playground shining in the downpour. See, I was right—really freaking creepy. I half expected a terrifying clown to appear in the shadows of the distant trees, holding up a red balloon and telling me I’d float too. It was definitely the weather for it.
Harley Merlin 3: Harley Merlin and the Stolen Magicals Page 9
