I smiled, but his tone turned sad.
“We were married on Eris Island, on a beach in the middle of summer. She was wearing this flowing white dress with a red sash across the waist, and she had flowers in her hair. I can still smell them, if I close my eyes. Your mom always smelled good, like vanilla and cinnamon and cloves. I loved her, Jacob. We loved each other very much, beyond all sense and reason. Some days, I loved your mother so much that it actually hurt, right here.” He touched his chest, his hand passing through. “And you were born from that love.”
I dipped my head. “Did it change for you? I know it did for Mom, but I haven’t been able to find out as much about you.”
“My love for your mom?”
“No, your feelings toward the cult.”
He smiled. “I thought you were trying to say that you’d heard that your mom stopped loving me. That would have killed me all over again.”
My heart wrenched. I was still trying to come to terms with the fact that he was dead. Being here, speaking with him, it seemed ten times as impossible.
“As for the cult, both of our feelings toward it changed when you were born. Katherine kept demanding more and more from us, and the missions started to change in nature. Before, we’d been recruiting or gathering intel, but then she started to expect violence and subversion. Evil things, which went against the cult’s official purpose—the very reason we’d joined. We started to worry that we’d gotten ourselves into a bad situation. As soon as we started to refuse to do certain things, the threats came. Most of them were aimed against you.”
I struggled to fight back tears. I already knew this part, more or less. My mother had tried to protect me, and she’d died doing it. I was the reason my parents weren’t around anymore, and that would stick in my gut for as long as I lived. No matter how many times I heard what had happened, it never got any easier to swallow.
“We then realized that, not only was what we were doing wrong, it could also get you killed. Our son. Our boy. Our sole purpose.” My dad seemed to be struggling, too. “However, we were in too deep. We could never have gotten away without you being taken from us, not if we’d just up and left, anyway. So we came up with a plan. We agreed to perform a series of Katherine’s most dangerous missions, in the hopes of regaining her trust. During one of them, we planned to use the time to give your mom the chance to get away with you. I gave her an Ephemera with my power inside it. The idea was to get you as far away from Katherine as possible with the help of an old friend of your mom’s.”
“What did you do for Katherine?” I forced the words past the lump in my throat. At least I was more or less certain I could trust him now. The sadness on his face wasn’t a lie. I didn’t need Empathy to read that. He really had tried to break away from Katherine, but it clearly hadn’t worked out the way he might’ve hoped.
“We were sent to steal the Merlins’ Grimoire, but that failed. We couldn’t take it from New York because of their forces, and the death toll kept rising as we tried to get to it,” he replied. “I realized that we were getting ourselves in more trouble. We were in New York, standing in Central Park, and I told your mother to leave, right there and then. She refused at first, but I said she had to, for your sake. I said I’d tell Katherine she’d died, and you’d been killed. I knew, even then, that Katherine wouldn’t buy it, but I needed to give your mom a head start. I kissed her, and I kissed you, and I left. That was the last time I ever saw her alive. And, honestly, I never thought I’d get to see you again, but I was always content in the knowledge that you were alive somewhere.”
I frowned, trying to ignore the creeping agony in my chest. I couldn’t think about my parents’ last moment right now. If I did, that’d be it. One of these ponds might as well have dragged me down. “The Merlins’ Grimoire? Why did Katherine want it?”
“She’s scared of it.”
“But why? How come Katherine couldn’t get near it?”
My dad smiled. “Getting near it isn’t the problem, unless you’re Katherine. The Grimoire itself is warded against her. She didn’t know it at the time. Hester and Hiram charmed it, in the event that Katherine tried to get her hands on it. That was a dead end for Katherine. She couldn’t get close to it. She couldn’t destroy it. No one could destroy it, and we tried—well, we pretended to, but others really tried—to no avail. Then, she tried to make it disappear. She relied on us for that. That was our mission, just before we parted ways. We were supposed to snatch it, at all costs, but we secretly bailed and told the New York Coven about Katherine’s attempts. That was why I had to tell your mom to go that day, in case Katherine caught on to what we’d done. It was too dangerous to bring you back to the cult again. Anyway, ever since then, it’s been under special care.”
“That doesn’t explain why Harley had access to it,” I replied, still pushing down my feelings. “Two other friends of mine touched it, too. If it’s warded, then surely nobody should be allowed to touch it.”
He held my gaze. “Harley? Harley who?”
“Harley Merlin. Daughter of Hester and Hiram.”
He looked surprised. “They had a child?”
“Yeah, before Katherine murdered them both.”
“She must have had a difficult life,” my dad murmured, before giving a small shrug. “It’s a Merlin Grimoire. It would make complete sense that their daughter could touch it. Anyone can touch it, in theory, aside from Katherine, as long as it wants to be touched by them. And anyone can feel its influence, but nobody can perform the magic within it, because it’s unfinished and the Merlins were very sneaky. That’s why Katherine is scared of it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Turns out, there’s something in the Grimoire—something nobody knows about, but it’s dangerous enough to get Katherine worried. It’s hidden, by all accounts. She told us herself that she thought there were entire pages hidden in it, according to what she knew of her sister’s wily ways, and I’m pretty sure that there’s something in those hidden pages that might be able to end her. That’s the only reason she would be so frightened by it that I can think of.” He paused. “The only comfort she took in our failure was that nobody would be able to find those invisible pages, and nobody would be able to read the Grimoire because it remains unfinished. Anyone who browses through it wouldn’t know those secret spells are there; they’d only see what the Merlins wanted them to see. Even then, it’d be useless to them.”
A sudden thought dawned on me. “What if there was someone out there who could read unfinished Grimoires?”
My dad tapped his transparent chin. “Even if such a magical existed, they wouldn’t know where to find those pages.”
“What if that person was Harley Merlin?”
“If Harley could perform such a feat of magic, she may be a different story. Her Merlin blood might allow her deeper into the Grimoire, providing Katherine didn’t find out that she had the book. Katherine might not be able to touch it, but she could still get someone else close enough to take it from Harley.”
Fear gripped my chest. Harley was already on a mission to get the Grimoire. Under no circumstances could Katherine find out about that. Only a few people knew about it, which reduced the risk of a leak. I just hoped that’d be enough. Harley needed to stay under the radar. Way under it. And I had no way of telling her. Not while I was in the Land of Burning Retinas. One other thing was bugging me, but I didn’t know if my dad would have the answer.
“What if Katherine found out that Harley could read the Grimoire and cast spells from it?” I felt like I was missing an important piece of information.
My dad shook his head. “I don’t know. I can only hope that, if Harley goes after that book, Katherine doesn’t get in the way or find out what she’s doing.”
“Hopefully, she’s too busy with sacrificing Echidna and completing her next ritual to be worrying about Harley.” I had to convince myself that was true. Katherine couldn’t be in every place at once. And right now, her fo
cus wasn’t on Harley. That worked in our favor. In fact, Harley’s timing probably couldn’t have been better.
I glanced up at my dad. The light caught him in a way that made him look completely solid. I’d pushed down my emotions for long enough, for the sake of Harley and Suri and Katherine. But I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t walk next to my dad and not wonder why, and how, he was dead. I couldn’t be cold anymore. He didn’t deserve that, after everything he’d been through. My parents had made bad choices, and they’d paid the ultimate price. And, to be honest, I’d forgiven them a long time ago. If this was the last chance I might ever have to speak with my dad, I needed to make the most of it. I needed to hear him out. And, more than that, I needed to know…
“How did it happen?” I murmured, my throat tight.
My dad dropped his chin to his chest. “After I told your mom to go, I returned to the cult and told Katherine that you’d both died in a firefight with the New York security magicals. For a while, she let me think that she believed me. And then she hauled me into her office one day and told me she knew I was lying because she’d just had your mom killed, though they hadn’t been able to find you. I collapsed. I thought my world had ended. I’d been so sure that I’d convinced Katherine, and then she took it away from me. My one consolation was that you were okay, but I was broken into pieces that day.” He paused, crystal tears falling onto his cheeks. “She had her security force me into opening a portal to an otherworld. This one. She was preparing the groundwork for the rituals and needed to know if a Portal Opener could take her there. I didn’t want to lift a finger to help her, but she forced me to open the portal nonetheless.”
“And you got stuck here?” My heart thudded with hope. If he was trapped somehow, maybe he wasn’t quite dead. I’d seen Alton bring Astrid back from the brink of death. Maybe he could do the same for my dad.
He shook his head. “I was so desperate to escape her, and to stop her from performing the rituals, that once I portaled through to this place with Katherine, I… I threw myself into one of the pools. I felt its hypnotic pull and I went with it. Deep down, I knew what it would do to me, but I did it anyway. I knew I’d die in there, but it was better than the alternative of being Katherine’s personal gateway to the otherworlds.”
He killed himself… That was even harder to stomach. The tears finally came as I heard the agony in my dad’s voice. I couldn’t even imagine the pain he’d been in, to do something like that. And yet, I understood why, in a way. He’d wanted to stop Katherine, same as us. And he’d done everything possible to do that. He’d taken his own life to thwart her. My dad was braver than I’d ever be. In his position, I didn’t know if I’d have been able to do the same thing.
“It worked, for a while.” I wanted to comfort him.
“The look on Katherine’s face was almost worth it,” he replied. “She was so shocked and angry, she had no choice but to slip back through to the real world before the portal closed. She couldn’t risk getting trapped here, not without a living Portal Opener. I’m guessing she found another one? Tell me it wasn’t you… Tell me she didn’t force you to do that.”
I shook my head. “She used Isadora Merlin instead, Hiram’s sister.”
“I suppose I knew she’d find someone.”
“Although, now she can do it by herself,” I admitted bitterly. “I’m guessing that’s how she pulled me in here, though she sent her lieutenant to do the dirty work.”
“She has increased in power.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yeah… but how come you’re stuck here? Why haven’t you moved on?” I wiped the tears from my eyes. Harley had told me a little bit about her encounter with her mom’s spirit. She’d told me how hard it was. Now, I understood. This was painful beyond words. To have him near, and not be able to hug him. That was torture. All I wanted was for him to be reunited with my mom. He deserved to be with her again. So they could be happy together.
He cast me a sad smile. “I’m a spirit, Jacob—not alive, and not a ghost. I could never move on because I died here in an otherworld. Chaos doesn’t like that, for some reason. So, I’ve been here, lost and waiting, ever since. There’s nothing I can do about it.”
I thought of the underworld myths Louella had read to us. In Tartarus, people who’d done bad things in their life were made to endure hard tasks for eternity, to pay for that. Was this my father’s version in Lethe? Was this his punishment? I hated the idea of it. I didn’t want him to have to suffer through this lonely existence for the rest of eternity. But, then, he had killed and stolen and betrayed an entire community of magicals for the sake of the Cult of Eris. That had to come at a price. And my dad was evidently paying it. But he wasn’t the one who should be paying… Katherine was.
Anger sparked in my chest. I had to stop Katherine, like my dad had tried to. If she was here, right now, then I needed to find a way to portal Echidna out of this place, to stop Katherine in her tracks. That, and get Suri out. Katherine wasn’t getting any more pawns in her sick game of chess.
“What’s the matter?” My dad peered at me with concern.
“I need to get to Echidna. Now.”
He nodded. “At least there’s one thing I can do for you. It may be the only thing.”
“I’m alive because of you,” I said. “I’m alive because you and Mom sacrificed yourselves. You’ve already done enough. More than enough.”
“She would be so proud of you, Jacob. As proud as I am, to see the young man you’ve become.” His voice sounded choked. “It’s not every young man who’d risk everything to save an innocent. Nor would any person go after Katherine the way you are, trying to hit her where it’ll hurt. Not only that, but I can tell that you’re surrounding yourself with good people—people who will guide you through life, the right way. You have no idea how much comfort that brings me. You’re brave, and kind, and strong. Just as we’d hoped you would be. And maybe you’ll make better choices than we ever did.”
I wished I could’ve shared in my dad’s hopefulness. Instead, all I could think about was the massive danger I was walking into. I was about to go and save Suri and make a last-ditch attempt to steal Echidna away from Katherine. One man’s brave was another man’s stupid. I didn’t know which side I was leaning toward. Stealing Echidna was a long shot, but if I didn’t do it now, I knew I might never get another chance. Levi would be all over me the second I got back, and he probably wouldn’t listen to a word I said. Plus, doing this came with a huge risk of death. And I didn’t want to die here.
But if I did die here, at least I’d have gone out making a noble sacrifice, like my parents had.
Sixteen
Harley
“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t call security on you right now.” Remington scraped back his chair and got up, his eyes narrowed. Garrett, on the other hand, was still sitting down, looking totally confused. We’d literally appeared out of nowhere, and he had no clue what was happening, but at least he didn’t look as angry as Remington did right now.
“We wanted to speak to you about Echidna being stolen, to see what the National Council is actually doing about this huge mess.” I held my ground. He was way taller than me, with those tats running up his neck giving him a hard edge, but I wasn’t about to let him intimidate me.
He froze. “What did you just say?”
“We want to talk to you about Echidna being taken.”
“What do you mean? When did this happen?” He frowned. “Did this just happen—is that why you’re here?”
I shook my head. “No, it happened a couple of days ago.”
“What?” The sound came out as a gasp.
I stared at Remington, my shock reflected in his face. Was he trying to say that he had no idea about any of this? That couldn’t be right. How could a member of the California Mage Council, one of Levi’s own people, not know about Echidna being taken? I was surely getting my wires crossed somehow… but then, this was Levi we were talking about. All
bets were off when it came to him.
“Did nobody tell you?” Wade stepped into the room, with Finch closing the door behind us. The door itself was camouflaged into the rock walls, and as soon as he’d closed it, there was no sign of it even being there. I could see how Remington might have gone all this time without knowing it existed. I couldn’t see it, and I was standing right in front of it, more or less.
“No… No, they didn’t.” Remington’s mouth curled up in a grimace. “And you’re sure she was stolen, not just moved to a more secure facility?”
“Yep, Katherine Shipton definitely took her,” I replied.
“Who else?” Finch said. “She almost took the Bestiary down while she was at it.”
Remington visibly recoiled. “So you’re saying Katherine Shipton almost destroyed the Bestiary and took Echidna while everyone was distracted? This really happened? I’m sorry to keep asking, but I’m trying to wrap my head around this. We heard there’d been some sort of glitch caused by a cult attack, and we felt the ripples of it here for a short while, but I had no idea that Echidna had been stolen. We were told it’d all been resolved, and the perpetrators had all run off.”
I sighed. “Nope. Katherine took Echidna. I saw the empty box with my own eyes.”
“That son of a bitch.” Remington slammed his fist onto a nearby shelf, almost knocking it off its perch.
“You going to tell him not to swear, too?” Finch cast me a wry look.
“You really didn’t know?” I was more concerned about that, right now.
“I really didn’t,” Remington replied. “Like I said, we were told there’d been some kind of glitch, but that it’d been fixed and there was nothing to worry about. I should’ve known that worm was up to something. You can’t trust a single word that comes out of his mouth!”
Wade frowned. “Why would he be trying to keep a lid on this, though—the part about Echidna being taken?”
Remington gave a bitter laugh. “If only you knew him the way I do.” He shook his head in disbelief. “Levi will be keeping this theft a secret because it happened on his watch. Even people who don’t know why Katherine needs Echidna, which isn’t that many beyond the authorities, would be running scared. There’s a reason she’s been kept on ice, all these years. Just the idea of her being on the loose would cause mass hysteria, and Levi would instantly be fired for his incompetence.”
Harley Merlin 7: Harley Merlin and the Detector Fix Page 13
