Persie Merlin and the Door to Nowhere by Bella Forrest Page 0,102
was buried beneath the Institute?”
I shook my head. “My little birdie is never that detailed.”
The day Leviathan gave me information that wasn’t peppered with gaping holes would be the day his glass box properly froze over again. All he’d told me about the door was to “look into it.” I’d done that, and I’d hardly learned anything. Oh, he must’ve been killing himself with laughter, knowing my only option was to ask the pixies for help, that we’d have to resort to a bevy of hilarious charades to communicate.
“It’s Leviathan, right?” Nathan asked as we continued to walk, following Boudicca’s fluttering wings. Some of her motley crew were acting up, wiping the last of the strawberry goop off their faces and smearing the jammy blobs across the nearest available canvas—rafters, the tops of the high windows, the wall. I didn’t get to focus on it much, since Nathan had dropped that doozy of a question on me.
“Huh?” My throat closed up.
Nathan looked half-excited, half-sorry, an expression he seemed to have perfected. “The little birdie is Leviathan. He gave you this ability, didn’t he?”
“H-how could you possibly know that?” I blurted out, my hands turning clammy with cold sweat. No one, other than Victoria, was supposed to know where my ability had come from. Chaos, if the rest of the Institute found out… They’d make accusations like the head huntswoman had, claiming I was in cahoots with an ancient monster who wanted to make mankind suffer for centuries of injustice against him and his kind.
Stop panicking. Even Victoria doesn’t know the part about turning the world into monster paradise or him making me his queen. I served myself a swift reminder of the facts before the stress could take hold and bring on another unwanted Purge. Learning to control my emotions was my best defense against this ability. I needed to stop with the knee-jerk, paranoid reactions, before they got even more out of hand. My cousin Diana would’ve called me a “typical Pisces.” I didn’t necessarily believe in that stuff, but my emotions really did have an iron grip over me. One I’d have to loosen, if I wanted to get ahead of my curse.
Nathan smiled reassuringly. “Relax. No judgment here, remember?” He gave me a light knock in the arm. “Victoria mentioned it to me, in private, after she caught me trying to catch pixies in the Repository. She hasn’t told anyone else, but she knows about my research into ancient monsters. I think she wondered if I knew of anything that might be helpful to you.”
My panic turned into a fleeting glimmer of hope. “Do you?”
“I can only tell you what I told her: that I will look into it, and let you know if I find something worthwhile,” he replied. A few of the pixies at the back of Boudicca’s aerial squadron shoved each other for a better spot in the line-up, earning a sharp hiss from their gutsy leader. I wouldn’t have wanted to get on her bad side, either.
“Could you maybe tell me before you tell her?” I said. “Give me a grace period, to see if I can do anything with it?”
“It’s your ability, and your connection to Leviathan. It would be wrong of me to do otherwise. I swear on my integrity as an academic that I will come to you first. After all, you have more insight on this matter than anyone else.”
“Thank you,” I said, relieved.
He chuckled softly. “Might I ask a favor in return?”
“That depends…” I eyed him curiously. “If you’re going to ask me to set you up on a date with Genie after we’ve got her back safe and sound, I can’t make that sort of promise. I can put in a good word, but it’ll be up to her.”
He froze mid-step and turned to face me. “A… date?” His cheeks burned beet red. “Chaos help me, have I really been so obvious?”
I shrugged, smiling.
“She’s just… intriguing. I’ve never met anyone like her, and nor do I think I’ve ever had anyone keep me on my toes in quite the same fashion. I’m genuinely worried I might end up with some kind of repetitive-strain injury in my feet.” He smacked himself on the forehead, shaking his head at himself. “And now I’ve just gone and babbled all of that to you. That wasn’t even what I was going to ask.”
“Is it even okay for students and aides to date?” The prospect of a maybe-romance was a welcome distraction