Persie Merlin and the Door to Nowhere by Bella Forrest Page 0,109

bestial energy, that was what Leviathan said. Well, the Institute had an entire Repository just waiting to be sapped as an energy source. And all of that would’ve begun a week before I arrived. Sure, I might’ve added a little bit of juice, but only once the ball was already rolling. Tentative relief washed over me as I hoped, with all my heart, that Nathan’s theory was right.

“Can I ask you one thing?” I straightened, dragging my confidence with the rest of me.

Nathan nodded. “Of course.”

“Have any of the beasts in the Repository seemed sluggish or weird lately? You know, around the time the foundations for the sphere were dug?” I wanted one last piece of evidence to exonerate me.

He rubbed his stubbled chin in thought. “Now that you mention it… yes, they’ve been more lethargic, and less inclined to emerge from their mist. I thought it had to do with the changing seasons and the particularly awful weather we’ve been having, as Purge beasts can be very sensitive to atmospheric pressure.”

“Do you think the Door might’ve been sapping their energy?” I put it out there and prayed.

He squinted, thinking. “I don’t see why not. It certainly fits the timeline.”

Thank Chaos! Thank freaking Chaos! That meant it wasn’t the pixies, it might’ve had very little to do with me, and I could stop feeling like everyone who’d gone missing had marched off to a terrible fate because I’d had the audacity to come to the Institute. A nagging thought in the back of my head reminded me of the other missing magicals, the ones out there in the wider world, disappearing each month. The Door couldn’t have had anything to do with that.

“Then let’s find this Door.” I steeled myself, letting the pixies light the treacherous path down the central walkway. They didn’t provide much light, the equivalent of cat’s eyes reflecting at the side of the road, but it was enough to avoid tumbling to a tragic death.

Nathan followed me toward the middle of the sphere only to veer off and pause at the sheer lip of the suspended walkway, staring into the abyss below. A pole, which would one day have glass orbs clinging to it like in the Repository, stood within arm’s reach, though we’d have to lean out at 45-degrees to grab it.

He cast me an anxious smile. “I wanted to be a firefighter when I was little. I guess now I’ll finally find out if it would have worked out.”

“You’re going to go first?”

He gulped and reached for the pole, his toes barely hanging onto the walkway. “Looks like it.” He grabbed onto the pole and swung his torso toward it, and his legs followed. He clung koala-style for a moment, frozen. A second later, he whooshed downward, with a horde of pixies hot on his heels, and disappeared from view.

Taking a deep breath, I approached the spot where he’d stood. Boudicca plopped onto a sitting position on my shoulder and gripped my T-shirt with both hands. Why she didn’t fly down with the others, I had no clue, but I liked having her with me.

“Hold on, Genie,” I whispered, wishing my words would somehow find her.

I leaned out past the point of no return and grabbed the pole, then froze, half on the walkway and half off. Finally, I wrapped my legs around the pole, as Nathan had done, and clung there for a few seconds. It was always a mistake to look down, but the fact that I couldn’t see a damn thing down there made it ten times worse. Genie had saved my behind more than once. Now, it was my turn to reciprocate.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I loosened my grip and plummeted into the unknown.

Twenty-Five

Genie

Did I fall asleep? Bright light burned through my eyelids. Closed eyelids. I could see all the little veins crisscrossing over the thin skin. I must’ve fallen asleep at some point, though I didn’t remember dropping off. And why was the sun shining in my face? Ireland hadn’t seen more than an hour of strong sunshine since I’d arrived.

I groaned, cracking my eyes open. I was in the new wing somewhere, and one of the hunters was shining a flashlight in my face, asking why I was somewhere I shouldn’t have been. There were nearby voices—other hunters, probably—but I couldn’t make out what they were saying.

But then my eyes adjusted to the light, and I froze. The new wing, I realized, was long gone, and… oh, man,