I was never going to forgive that.
Alton was waiting for me in his office. But he wasn’t alone. Wade was sitting in one of the armchairs, sullen and grumpy. Imogene Whitehall of the California Mage Council was standing by the edge of Alton’s desk. Astrid, Santana, Tatyana, Dylan, and Garrett were also present.
“Ah, look who made it back into the world!” Alton exclaimed, beaming at me.
I could feel his affection flowing through me and warming me up like a log fire in the middle of a snowy winter. I gave him a soft nod, then looked at Wade. He was guarded, but still, I knew he was happy to see me. A wave of relief crashed into me, and I understood that everyone present wanted me alive and well… and with them.
Technically speaking, there were two people in the room whose emotions I couldn’t feel—Garrett and Imogene, both Shapeshifters, I assumed. It was my clearest takeaway from this entire struggle, especially after my dinner with Wade and Garrett. The only ones whose emotions I couldn’t feel seemed to be Shapeshifters. But their expressions told me everything I needed to know. I was quite the sight for sore eyes, and that made me feel good.
“How are you feeling, Harley?” Imogene asked softly.
Santana, Tatyana, and Astrid greeted me with loving hugs. I was still sore from my bruised ribcage, but the fractures had fully healed. I felt as though I’d been run over by a truck, but, by this point, it wasn’t my first, nor was it going to be my last, round of injuries. Something else was coming. My instincts were flaring.
Not now. Maybe not tomorrow either. But, at some point in the future, I was going to hear from Katherine Shipton and her minions again. She’d yet to take me down, and I was positive that she was determined to strike over and over until she either got what she wanted or went down in flames. I was rooting for the latter.
“Good to see you, crazy girl,” Santana said. “Never seen anyone jump through a wormhole with your confidence.”
I smirked. “Well, you know me. Brave and suicidal mean pretty much the same thing in my mind.”
“It’s good to have you back,” Alton said, and motioned for me to take a seat in the spare armchair.
I settled into it, exchanging quick glances with Wade. Liquid sunshine poured through me, and I couldn’t help but smile as I shifted my focus back to Alton and Imogene.
“I wanted you all to be here for this briefing,” Imogene said. “I’ve done some digging through other covens, and I’ve come up with some troubling facts. Unfortunately, our Katherine Shipton nightmare is nowhere near over. I’m glad you all survived your encounter with the Ryder twins, but I’m afraid it doesn’t end here.”
“Do we know how or when they started working with her, or where the hell they’ve been this whole time?” Tatyana asked.
“We know that Katherine intercepted them as soon as the Albuquerque Coven ordered them to be separated, but we have yet to find out exactly what they’ve been doing, or who else is involved,” Imogene replied. “Isadora Merlin and Jacob Morales are missing, but we do have magicals out there looking for them. There’s an ongoing effort from multiple covens to track down the missing kids, as well. The ones who willingly joined Katherine have gone underground, but I’ve got some trusted sources in the deepest layers of each American coven. The moment one of them makes a move, I’ll know.”
My heart broke again as I thought of little Micah and the others like him. They’d been forced out of their family homes and dragged into Katherine’s darkness, forced to grow with her poison. My throat burned whenever I tried to imagine what that could be like. Children were innocent. They didn’t deserve this.
I exhaled. “Do we know what it is she’s planning, exactly? I mean, Finch said she was going to become a Child of Chaos, but how does one even do that? Is there an instruction manual somewhere?”
Where did one so much as begin to ascend as a Child of Chaos? It boggled my mind. Children of Chaos were elements of the very universe we inhabited. Darkness, Light, Gaia—mother of the natural elements to which we were connected—Water, Fire, Air, and Earth. Children of Chaos were threads of raw and unlimited power, permeating time, space, and matter itself. How did one even go around finding one?
The road there seemed impossible, if not simply fictional.
“There is certainly no manual,” Alton said, looking equally bemused. “She’s going to keep trying to recruit magicals, though. We’ve been looking into Finch’s statement, but we’ve yet to find something credible on the topic of Children of Chaos. Whether she knows something more or she’s just plain crazy, she clearly needs powerful magicals for something. At this point, our only hope is that Krieger finishes the magical detector. Without Jacob’s Sensate ability, we have no other choice,” he added, looking at me.
His doubt sent shivers down my spine. I braced for a rebuttal, since he probably knew I hadn’t made much of an effort to stop Isadora from taking Jacob away.
“We’ll have to up our game, going forward,” he continued, his gaze fixed on my face. But he didn’t call me out on the Isadora/Jacob issue. Relief washed over me, and I relaxed in my chair. “The Ryders had inside information from this coven. It means that Isadora’s claim is true. We have spies in here, and we must be careful. Which is why, going forward, everything related to Katherine Shipton will be conveyed only to this team here, along with a few other trusted witches and warlocks. Imogene will help us oversee the entire operation and assist us with any resources we may need.”
“Katherine definitely has her fingers in more than one pie here,” Imogene replied. “She’s been leaving trails of bodies across the US for two decades now, and it’s taken us a long time to connect her to a number of unfortunate incidents. However, with what you gathered from the Ryders’ storage unit, we have a better clue as to how they did what they did, and how we can prevent such a tragedy from happening again. We’ve got APBs out on everyone who’s missing. It’s only a matter of time before we find them.”
Wade cleared his throat, gazing at Imogene. My heart fluttered, and I knew that was all him. He was still crushing on her! Ugh. My eyes rolled, and I pinched the bridge of my nose in an attempt to keep my focus.
“We need to start drilling into Finch and Emily now,” he said. “They’re viable leads, and I imagine we can work them over hard enough until we get them to talk.”
“Good idea,” Imogene replied, her lips stretching into a charming smile. No wonder Wade was smitten. Heck, even Dylan and Raffe were swooning over her. Alton, not so much, but then again, Alton was happily married. “However, Emily is quite useless at this point in time. When she isn’t sedated, she’s crying and screaming after her brother. She didn’t take his death well.”
“Boo-hoo, cry me a river,” I grumbled. “I’d like to talk to Finch, if that’s okay with you, Alton. It’s time he and I had a chat, anyway.”
Alton nodded. “Agreed. But I want you to have Wade with you when you do that,” he said. “Just in case he gets out of line. We’ve tried to have Adley talk to Finch, but he refuses to see her. Perhaps he’ll be more open to talking to you. We won’t know until we try.”
“Then it’s settled,” I replied, giving Wade a sideways glance. “Ready to get back in the game?”
“I was never out to begin with,” he answered, one corner of his mouth curving upward.
“Of course. Nearly bleeding to death was simply the equivalent of five o’clock tea in the magical world, huh?” I said, raising an eyebrow.
Alton laughed. “Good to see you both got your spirits back.”
We kind of had. We’d lost people along the way, and we’d nearly gotten ourselves killed, too, but it felt like we still had a lot of work to do. There was still so much that we didn’t know, including about my parents. I had questions that needed answering, and that alone was enough to help me power through the grief and hopelessness I’d felt earlier, and to focus on what came next.
Sure, Katherine Shipton had it in for me, and I needed to watch my back, but this was no lo
nger just about me. All our lives were at stake. And I was damned if I was going to let her ruin anyone else’s future in this world.
As we moved to leave Alton’s office, he motioned for me to stay. Once Imogene and my teammates were out, and the door closed behind them, Alton handed me a small manila file.
“I think it’s time for you to start thinking more seriously about the coven and its role in your life, Harley,” Alton said, his voice low.
I opened the file and noticed different forms to fill out, each branded with the San Diego Coven’s sigil, and his signature at the bottom. “What’s all this?” I asked.
“Your choices, Harley. You join the coven, or you register as a Neutral,” he replied. “You knew this was coming. Your probation month is over, after all. Frankly, I’d be honored if we could have you here as a member, especially after everything that happened, but I also intend to keep my promise and respect your decision, whatever it may be. Just know that you have a family here. Take as long as you need before you give me an answer. You’ve earned it. Mind you, by ‘as long as you need,’ I don’t mean another month. We don’t have that kind of time, given Katherine’s endeavors.”
I breathed out, then gave him a brief nod and left the room.
Truth be told, I’d already made my decision. I just needed to tell someone else first. The person who’d brought me here to begin with.
I figured he deserved that courtesy.
Forty-Three
Harley
“Ready?” Wade asked me, as we both stood before the six big mirrors in the Assembly Hall.
Aside from extremely rare Portal Openers like Isadora and Jacob, they were the only other magical way for us to get from one place to another without using the basic modes of transportation. Of course, every single travel through the mirror was preapproved and recorded.
In our case, our destination was quite special.
“For what? Purgatory? I doubt anyone is ever ready for Purgatory,” I replied.
He moved to stand next to me and took a deep breath as he stared at the mirror in the middle for a while.
“I’m glad you’re okay,” he said suddenly. “You know that, right?”
“Are you sucking up to me so I say yes to joining the coven?” I asked with a smirk.
He looked at me, and I felt my heart perform athletic somersaults in my chest. I feared it could break my ribs again, all on its own. “No. I’m just glad you’re living, breathing, and willing to fight another day, Harley.”
My cheeks were on fire as I gave him a sheepish smile. “I know. I was kidding.”
“I wasn’t,” he replied, then shifted his focus back to the mirror. “Volat in Purgatoris.”
The reflective glass surface began to ripple. I nodded once and braced myself as I walked right into it. The mirror felt liquid and cold against my skin. I set foot into a different place altogether. Mirror travel was less shocking to my senses than slipping through a wormhole.
When Wade caught up with me, we found ourselves in the reception hall of Purgatory, the prison for our magical world’s most dangerous and hardened criminals.
It was huge, stretching out in multiple corridors, with cell doors lining both sides of each passageway on multiple levels, interconnected by stairs and suspended ramps. The reception hall’s ceiling was made entirely out of glass, giving us a clear view of Purgatory’s cell rows. It was all stark and gray, with black metal and stainless steel bars and architectural details. It was a Brutalist’s dream, a recipe for emptiness and depression.
It reminded me of a supermax-type of prison. Only, it was eerily quiet.
One of the security magicals stationed in the hall walked over to greet us. I checked his nametag, noticing his black Kevlar uniform. The guy was dressed for war, equipped with electro-shock batons and his Esprit—a gold pinky ring.
“I’m Officer Mallenberg. Welcome,” he said, his tone flat.
“We’re here to see Finch Shipton,” Wade replied.
“Follow me,” Mallenberg said. He turned around and guided us out of the reception hall and through one of the corridors.
White neon bulbs glowed overhead, casting a cold, impersonal light against the cement-gray walls. Each cell door was framed in steel, with a plethora of runes and sigils engraved all over it. Inside, I could see more symbols carved directly into the cell walls. The prisoners had decent living conditions, from what I could see, but they all wore a modified version of the Atomic Cuffs, where the energy crackled around their wrists without holding them together. They had freedom of movement, but they must have known that the moment they tried to tamper with the cuffs, they’d suffer terribly.
There were all kind of magicals in here. Young witches, aging warlocks… even juveniles. They stared at Wade and me as we walked past their cells, but didn’t say a word. Their emotions pummeled me—viciousness, simmering anger, resentment, frustration, resignation, sadness, and, in some cases, curiosity.
I focused on Wade’s feelings, slightly overwhelmed by the prisoners. This didn’t feel like the other crowds I’d learned to deal with, back at the coven. There was something in the air, something about Purgatory that weighed heavily on me. There was so much despair and agony in this place, it was impossible for me to completely block it all out.
Toward the end of the corridor, Purgatory began to feel and look different. There were fewer cells on each side. There weren’t any black bars, but solid steel doors with small hatches to open and look through.
“This is the solitary confinement area. Our most dangerous residents are here,” Mallenberg said.
We stopped in front of the very last cell, its number spray-painted at the top. Number 230. Mallenberg banged on the metal door.
“Hey, Shipton! You’ve got a visitor!” Mallenberg shouted.
Wade and I waited for half a minute before we heard Finch reply from inside. “I smell a redhead…”
Mallenberg scoffed, then unlocked the latch with a special key and opened it, giving me a clear view of Finch inside his cell. Nothing had changed about him, with the exception of his yellow prison jumpsuit. His sky-blue eyes were still vivid and burning with chilling hatred. His platinum hair was short, clipped down to a buzzcut. His grin gave me goosebumps.
“Hey, Finch,” I said.
Wade kept to the side, staring at the wall behind me. He was quiet and calm, but, inside, a storm was raging. I moved my Empathy focus on Finch—it was empty. Blank. Almost close to soothing for me, like white noise.
Finch rose from his bed and turned so he could face me, leaning his back against the wall. Every square inch of his cell was covered in runes and symbols to stop him from breaking out. Security magicals patrolled the corridors once every ten minutes, as well. There were enough prevention methods at work here that one would’ve had to be downright stupid or suicidal to try to escape.
“The stench was familiar,” Finch replied.
“You knew I was coming. You were notified in advance. Don’t try to make yourself appear psychic. It’s not a good look on you,” I said. “How’ve you been?”
Finch chuckled. “Peachy, Sis. You?”
“Had a run-in with the Ryder twins.”
Oh, that got me his full attention, curiosity glimmering in his eyes.
“I take it they’re trouble? I told you, Sis, there’s no stopping my mom,” he sneered.
“Were trouble,” I replied dryly.
He stilled, frowning. “Beg your pardon?”
“Were. No longer an issue. Emmett is dead. Emily got herself a private suite here in Purgatory. I doubt you’ll meet her at lunchtime, though,” I said. “She’s going to spend the rest of her life in isolation. Or she might get executed—though I seem to recall reading somewhere that executions are rarer these days than they used to be, am I right?” Before he could respond, I continued firmly. “Either way, until we find Katherine, she’s a potential asset. If she decides to be helpful, she might get a life sentence.”
Finch exhaled
, a vein angrily pumping in his temple. “They should’ve torn you to shreds. You’re a flea compared to what the Ryders can do.”
“I suppose you knew them and all about what they were planning to do, long before you had your ass dropped in here, huh?” I asked, offering a smirk to go with it. He didn’t say anything, but that, to me, meant yes. It didn’t take a genius psychologist to figure Finch out. So I decided to drill, poke, and prod until I got him to open up some more. “I understand you’ve had no visits or calls whatsoever for the past month,” I continued. “You refused to see Adley, the only person who actually cares about you. She told me to tell you that she still loves you, for some reason.”
His eyes found mine, and I could’ve sworn I spotted a flicker of regret where Adley was concerned.
“Anyway, I just wanted to give you some updates about what’s going on in the world of the free,” I said. “No matter how much scheming and planning you do, Finch, I will still come out victorious. I never drank the poison of Katherine Shipton, who, by the way, clearly doesn’t give a damn about you. I thought she would’ve at least tried to send you a message or something. But no. You’re all alone in this cold, dark dump.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying,” Finch replied. “And you’re certainly not the right person to tell me about what my mother thinks or feels about me. Last time I checked, your daddy was still chasing her, after he murdered your mother,” he added with a cold grin.
His skin began to ripple. I heard bones crack. Finch was shifting, but I couldn’t figure out into whom or why, until the transformation was complete, and he straightened his back.
“You son of a…” My voice trailed off.
My heart broke in an instant, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to give Finch a win. Not today, not after everything I’d been through. Finch had just shifted into my father—just to mess with me. I recognized the rich, black hair… His eyes were like mine and, ironically, still Finch’s, too. He looked different from the memories and photos I had of him. He was still wearing the yellow prison jumpsuit, which automatically reminded me of his time in jail, prior to his execution.
Harley Merlin 2: Harley Merlin and the Mystery Twins Page 35
