Harley Merlin 7: Harley Merlin and the Detector Fix

by Forrest, Bella

  “Not without turning her brain to mush.” Krieger smiled at her kindly. “I will be keeping an eye on her, so she is no harm to anyone. Besides, just because the world may be ending doesn’t mean we can’t appreciate good company. That is all Jacob is asking for, and I happen to think it may be a good idea.”

  Louella rolled her eyes. “Has everyone gone mad here? Seriously, where’s the tea party and the Cheshire Cat?”

  “The decision has been made, Louella,” Krieger said softly.

  She turned to me. “Well, if you’re intent on being a fruit loop, just… just be careful, okay? As long as Katherine is out there, you’re not safe. You witnessed that for yourself. And neither are the people close to you. I’m not saying this to be mean, I just don’t want you, or Suri, getting into something you can’t get out of. Lethe was a near miss. I don’t want you to be in that kind of situation again.” She drew in a shaky breath. “We were so worried, Jacob. We were so worried that you’d… just, be careful.”

  My initial anger toward her subsided. She didn’t mean any harm. She was just concerned for me and for the rest of us. I understood that. But she had to understand that I wanted a few days with Suri to remind myself why we were doing this. Because it wasn’t just magicals who stood to lose their lives if Katherine succeeded. It was humans, too. Suri would strengthen my resolve to fight for what was good in the world.

  “I was about to start looking more into this weird behavior from O’Halloran and the others, Louella. You’ve done some good work, getting the ball rolling.” Isadora defused the tension. “I’ll take it from here and see what I can find out.”

  “You will?” She sounded relieved.

  “Of course. There’s some kind of voodoo at work here, for sure, and I’m not going to stop until I get to the bottom of it. Having an egomaniac as a leader is one thing, but if he’s using magic to influence the minds of the security team in some way, that’s a direct violation of the magical Geneva Convention.” Isadora took a breath. “And I need to find out if we’re dealing with a simple narcissist or an actual criminal.”

  Twenty-Five

  Jacob

  A few hours later, I sat at Krieger’s workbench, elbow-deep in metal bits and pieces. Krieger and I were taking the magical detector apart, as promised. It was proving to be trickier work than I’d anticipated. Not that I wasn’t enjoying it. I liked using my hands for something useful. But I was sort of distracted. Suri sat beside me, up close and personal. Watching us work.

  “Thank you for sticking up for me,” she said. I almost dropped the cog I was working on.

  “Sorry?”

  She smiled. “I overheard some of your conversation with… uh, Louella, is it? I’m terrible with names.”

  I nodded.

  “She was talking pretty loud, so I couldn’t help hearing some of it… and I was sort of listening to what you were saying. I wouldn’t say eavesdropping, but pretty close. Anyway, I just wanted to thank you for sticking up for me and letting me stay. I appreciate it.” She glanced down at the screwdriver in her hands. She was acting as surgical assistant to our disassembly of the detector. “Things aren’t great at home. I’m always out at work or school and my mom is working about a billion shifts at the care home. She probably won’t know I’m missing; we’re always like ships passing. Sometimes, I can go a whole week without seeing her. This place is a pretty neat distraction. It’s amazing, honestly. And it was right next door to where I work, this whole time.”

  “It’s nothing.” I tried not to look into her big eyes. “It’s for your safety, really. But I’m glad you like it here.”

  Krieger smiled to himself. He said nothing, just carried on with his work instead. I was grateful for that. He’d had my back when Louella had come in. I knew he’d put his neck on the line, when he didn’t have to. I respected that massively. He’d given me the chance to get to know Suri better, and that was worth a hell of a lot. Even if Krieger had insisted she had to go, I probably would’ve crept back into the Science Center and watched her from afar. Too creepy? Maybe. But I’d just have been waiting for an opportunity to speak to her again, even if she didn’t know who I was. That came with its own set of flashbacks. It was hard enough with the Smiths. I couldn’t imagine how hard it would’ve been with Suri. Or would be. We hadn’t crossed that bridge yet.

  “What is this thing?” Suri pointed to the remains of the detector. It was pretty much in pieces by now. It was going to take ages to reassemble properly. The most important set of Legos I’d ever worked on.

  “It’s a magical detector,” I replied.

  She chuckled. “A who-said-what now? Human here, remember? You’ve got to dumb these things down. I’m still getting used to the fact that there are witches and wizards and cat-beasts, and big, evil glowing people in this world.”

  “Sorry.” My cheeks were hot. “It’s basically a device that finds people who have magic in them. Well, Chaos. Chaos is the name for that magic. It’s in everything, but only magicals can use it.”

  “That doesn’t seem fair.” Suri smiled at me, letting me know she was teasing. “Why do you get to have all the fun?”

  “It’s not always fun, believe me.” I picked up the thermal globe and held it in my palms. “This strand in here is a captured piece of Chaos. Mine, to be exact. See, I also have the ability to sense magicals, so I’m a Sensate and a Portal Opener. And we’re going to use this device, with my Chaos inside, to track down that big, evil glowing person you were talking about.”

  Suri gave a low whistle. “This stuff is so cool. It’s like something out of a book, but then it’s completely real. My mind is being blown right now, Jacob. Dr. Krieger here might have to piece my brain back together when he’s done with this.”

  Krieger laughed. “I would find that far easier, at this point.”

  “Is it hard to fix?”

  Jacob shrugged. “Yes and no. It’s just time consuming.”

  “I guess you must like this sort of thing, huh?” She passed me a handful of bolts.

  “I’ve always loved taking things apart and putting them back together. I used to always be in the workshop at school, building things. I wanted to be an engineer, but then… well, this happened.” I gestured around me.

  “You can’t do both?”

  I pulled a doubtful face. “That depends on how this stuff with Katherine goes.”

  “That sucks. You should be allowed to do both, regardless of what this crazy lady does.”

  If only it were that simple. “Who knows? Maybe I will. But right now, I’m focusing on this. I have to, for everyone’s sake.”

  “Is it this Katherine woman who’s affecting the security magicals? I heard Louella mention that something was up with them.” Suri glanced up at me, worried. There was still a lot about this world that troubled her. I could see it in her eyes, despite her enthusiasm.

  “We’re not sure at the moment.”

  Suri frowned. “I don’t know if it’s related, but I overheard her say something to the cat-thing when they were holding me captive in the freaky light world. It didn’t make any sense to me at the time, since everything was pretty crazy, but now I’m wondering if it might have something to do with your security problem.”

  Krieger stopped what he was doing immediately. “What did you hear?”

  “Katherine asked the cat-beast about the ‘infiltrations’ and how they were coming along. The cat-woman said they were going well, and that their influence was spreading, to keep news about Echidna under the radar. No idea who or what Echidna is. I always thought they were cute, spiky creatures, but I’m guessing it’s important, since Louella kept mentioning that name, too. Anyway, she wasn’t specific about it, but she mentioned members of a cult and the use of mental spells. Does that make any sense to you?”

  Do bears crap in the woods?

  “It certainly does,” Krieger replied nervously, glancing at me. “It confirms some of my suspicions, as well as Isadora and Remington’s.”
>
  I nodded. “It means Katherine’s cult is spreading. Like, really fast.”

  “If what Suri says is true, that means we can’t trust anyone. Katherine could well have operatives everywhere, and we wouldn’t know a single thing about it.” He grimaced. “From here on out, we must take every display of apathy coming from the authorities as a sign that Katherine’s Dark magic tricks are at play. She’s pulled the wool over magical society’s eyes. And let us just hope that this business with the security magicals is mere coincidence.” I knew he didn’t believe that.

  “Can we go public with this?” I asked.

  “Not without making more magicals fearful, which may drive them to join Katherine.”

  I threw my head back in exasperation. “So we just have to keep working on this and pretend like nothing is happening?”

  “It’s more that we have to keep a low profile. With this device, we can find Katherine and destroy her before she completes the final ritual. We have to focus on that and the things we can actually do. At this point in time, we can’t expect the upper echelons to help us. Magical society, as a whole, may well have been compromised, and may unwittingly be assisting Katherine at this very moment.” Krieger’s knuckles had whitened around his screwdriver.

  We’d barely gotten back into the swing of things, with tension thick in the air, when Isadora came running into the office. She had O’Halloran with her. Suri ducked down under the table, peering up at me with scared eyes. I shared her fear. Had Isadora lost her mind? What was she doing, bringing O’Halloran here, when she knew Suri was around?

  Isadora shot me an apologetic look. “Sorry for bursting in here unannounced, but I was out in the hallway, speaking with O’Halloran, and I thought it was something you might want to hear, Krieger.”

  “Not sure why it’d be important to you, but Isadora insisted,” O’Halloran added.

  “Go on,” Isadora urged. “Tell him what you told me.”

  O’Halloran shrugged. “I was just saying that, after we started work on getting the Bestiary contained, after the… uh, the glitch that happened…” That blank look came into his eyes. “What was I saying? Oh, yeah, after the cult’s attack and the fallout from that, Levi called me into his office and gave me this big box of pills. He said I had to hand them out to all of the security personnel to help protect us from this mind-control hex that Katherine liked to use. I’ve been picking up more from him, and taking them, ever since.” He frowned at Krieger. “Ah, I see now. Is that why you brought me to Krieger? Because he had the mind-control hex on him?”

  Krieger went white. “I’m free of it now.”

  I looked between Isadora and the doctor. Krieger had gone through hell to get rid of that hex. There was no way that a pill could stop something that complicated from getting through. I could see it on their faces, too—a dawning realization. There had to be something in those pills that had gotten the security magicals to do whatever Levi told them. It also had to be the thing that was blocking their memory of Echidna being snatched.

  “Do you think we should go to the Mage Council and the coven directors and tell them about Echidna’s disappearance?” Isadora was testing O’Halloran.

  He shook his head. “The National Council and the president know what happened that day. Levi is handling it. Nobody else needs to know about it.”

  “Do you think that’s normal, to keep something so important from the rest of the magical authority figures?” Isadora pressed. “And to keep the entire magical world in the dark about what’s really going on?”

  O’Halloran froze for a full minute. He stared into the distance like a robot. Krieger snapped his fingers right in front of O’Halloran’s face, but got nothing. No response. Nada. He just blinked, like his brain had wandered right out of his ears. I didn’t even know if he knew we were still in the room with him.

  “Discretion is of paramount importance to stop the general populace from panicking,” O’Halloran replied, coming back around. That was the least O’Halloran-like thing I’d ever heard him say. It sounded like a rehearsed line. And it definitely sounded like it had come from someone else. Someone who’d fed him that line.

  Isadora nodded. “Understood.”

  “Was that all you wanted me for? Am I good to go now?” O’Halloran waited.

  “Yes, thanks for that.”

  He smiled like nothing had happened. “Great, then I’ll get going. Alton and Santana aren’t going to get themselves out of prison, and I doubt they’ll get lucky enough to broker a deal. Not unless Jacob here plans on going AWOL again.”

  “No plans to,” I replied.

  “Shame, we could use some leverage.” With that, he left. And a sense of doom settled over the rest of us. Even Suri seemed reluctant to creep back out of her hiding spot.

  Isadora shook her head slowly. “I wanted you two to see and hear that. It’s exactly how Louella described it, though the post-blackout answers change from security magical to security magical. But they always have that robotic, rehearsed tone to them.”

  “What you’re saying is, the magic is obvious,” Krieger interjected. “And Levi is the one behind it.”

  “Do you think he’s working with Katherine?” I couldn’t believe I was saying it. But it wouldn’t have been the craziest thing to happen around here.

  Isadora plopped down on a stool. “I have no idea, to be honest. I don’t know if this is happening because he’s in cahoots with her, or if he’s an unwitting participant in her spread of power. All I know is, I’m getting to the bottom of this. This can’t be allowed to continue.”

  “There must be some kind of chemical magic in those pills,” Krieger said. “Once I’m done putting this detector back together, I’ll come up with something to counteract their effects. I’ll look through every textbook I have until I find an antidote. For the time being, however, it might be best if we keep this to ourselves. We can’t risk getting imprisoned.”

  Sit back and do nothing, again? Only, this time, I kind of agreed with him. Until we knew which higher-ups weren’t brainwashed and we found a way of reversing the effects, we couldn’t say a word. Krieger had been right—outside of the people in our group, we couldn’t trust anyone.

  Twenty-Six

  Harley

  Taking the piece of charmed chalk from Remington, I drew a shaky rectangle on the carved rock of his office, making sure it was big enough for us to walk through. It looked pretty silly, just a raggedy set of lines dragged across the uneven rock, but Remington had sworn this would work and I had no reason to doubt him. This had come straight from the encyclopedia of Odette, so it had to be good.

  “Aperi Si Ostium,” I said confidently.

  The lines lit up with green light. The center of the rectangle rippled like a mirage, the solid rock fading away to reveal a transparent screen with a silver handle throbbing to the far right. Through the hazy screen, I could see Grand Central Station beyond. Taking a breath, I turned the handle and swung it outward, then stepped beyond the threshold.

  Wade, Garrett, Finch, and I emerged into the empty silence of Grand Central Station. Once everyone was through, I turned and closed the rippling door behind us, the transparent screen disappearing immediately, taking Remington’s office with it. There was no going back now.

  Our shoes echoed across the huge space, while pigeons cooed from their nooks in the roof. The golden-edged clock on top of the information desk showed that it was close to midnight. A few weary travelers headed across the elegant floor, having come off the last train to pull into the station, but that was it.

  I’d always liked bus stations and train stations late at night. They’d been my refuge a couple of times, after some terrible arguments with my foster families at the time. They could be scary, but I doubted Grand Central Station could ever be anything other than awe-inspiring, like wandering into a time warp of old New York.

  We’d chosen this location to scout out the New York Coven first. The parts I’d seen of it had had a gr
eat view of Central Park, but judging from these layout plans, it had moved farther south. At least, the entrance had.

  I glanced at the others. Finch and Garrett had shifted into faces I didn’t recognize—a middle-aged businessman and a slick-looking twentysomething, respectively. Wade and I had been forced to use ordinary disguises. I had my hair stuffed into a black baseball cap and wore a heavy, black denim jacket with a fur collar, which I’d borrowed from Remington. The man had style, what could I say? Wade was pretty much himself, still dressed in a sharp suit, but with sunglasses covering his eyes. He’d gone for a more Clark Kent approach.

  “You realize it’s more suspicious to wear shades at night, right?” Garrett said.

  Wade turned to Garrett. “They’re special lenses that allow me to see traces of spells or hexes. A gift from my parents.” He glanced up at the American flag hanging from the marble wall. “It’ll help us gauge the concentration of residual and current spells wherever we end up. It’s the closest thing we’ve got to an alarm system.”

  With Garrett looking cowed, we exited the station and turned right, walking a few blocks toward Rockefeller Center and Central Park beyond it. This way, we were far enough from the coven itself to avoid detection and were able to approach it with more caution. There was no telling how wide they’d placed their security.

  “How long have you had those, anyway?” I nodded to Wade’s shades, trying to keep things light. “They would’ve come in handy a couple times in the SDC.”

  His eyebrow arched over the dark shades. “My mom was cleaning out the attic and found them. She sent them a week or so ago. Do you think I’d have hidden something like this if I’d had them sooner?”

  “I wasn’t saying that.”

  He shrugged. “Sorry, then. It sounded like you were.”

  Geez, what is UP with him? Subtly, I fed my Empathy toward him. I wanted to make sure his head was in the game, not focused on some simmering anger he had over me and Finch.