Persie Merlin and the Door to Nowhere by Bella Forrest Page 0,111

to me. I didn’t mind that one bit; I didn’t want to be close to them either. The soldier was less frozen than some of the others, doing a kind of box-step on replay. I gave his sword a wide berth as I approached.

“Hello?” I patted him awkwardly on the back. “Can you hear me?”

The soldier continued to box-step, his chainmail clattering with each move, all the while speaking in an accent so thick, I wasn’t even sure he was speaking English. “Leanfaidh mé thú. Táim ag teacht. Fan liom. Leanfaidh mé thú. Táim ag teacht. Fan liom. Leanfaidh mé thú. Táim ag teacht. Fan liom.”

After a few repetitions, I realized it wasn’t English at all. It sounded Gaelic, but it might as well have been gobbledygook to me. His eyes had the same glazed sheen as Xanthippe’s.

“Am I dead?” Finch and Harley had comforted Persie and me with tales of the afterlife. They’d categorically confirmed its existence, after Persie had had a nightmare about dying. But even they didn’t know what lay in the great beyond, behind the proverbial veil. They knew it existed, because they’d had passed loved ones communicate with them, but there was still no roadmap. Maybe I’d found it. Maybe that was where the door really led.

If this was heaven, it wasn’t for me. And the floating orbs whizzing around made poor and slightly unnerving angels.

Determined to push away my increasing terror, I stepped away from the soldier and headed for a duo of elderly folks, an old man and woman, both drowning in dirty cloaks. Beneath, they wore a tunic and a dress, respectively. The woman carried a basket, while the man had his arm around her, and both had muddied, bare feet. Like they’d walked into a bog. Another strange detail. Where, here, could they have gotten their feet so filthy? The grass couldn’t be drier—it crunched, for Pete’s sake.

This time, I stepped right in front of them. “Excuse me?”

They stared right through me, both chanting the same mantra under their breaths: “I’ll follow you. I’m coming. Wait for us.”

“Who are you following?” I asked helplessly.

The same words repeated back.

“Someone else has to be awake!” I snapped, my nerves jangling. “Hey! HEY! Can anyone hear me? Where the heck are we?!”

Why was I the only conscious person here? Was I supposed to be like them, a glitching statue? A blood-chilling thought snuck into my head. What if I would end up like them? Was it only a matter of time? I had no idea how long I’d even been here.

I decided I’d find someone in modern clothing. Maybe they wouldn’t be as stuck as the others. But then I heard, behind me, a crunch of the silver grass. I whirled around, and there, approaching on the opposite side of the riverbank, was a man, and he was looking at me. A conscious, mobile, non-hypnotized man. He was dressed in old-fashioned clothing, too—black leather pants tucked into high boots, and an elegant jacket that split into coattails at the back. Brass buttons went all the way up to his high collar, and he carried a riding crop in his left hand.

Neither of us moved. He simply watched me with a sullen expression on his face. Sad and bitter.

“Hey! You!” I broke into a run, heading for the riverbank. He didn’t take his eyes off me. The closer I got, the more miserable he appeared. His shoulders were hunched and his red hair was all mussed, as though he’d been running anxious hands through it for hundreds of years. His mouth was set in a grim, melancholy line. Still, he didn’t answer. Had he forgotten how to speak? I supposed that could happen, if he’d been here long enough with no one to talk to. Or, worse still, perhaps he thought I was a figment of his imagination, so there was no use talking to me. I knew I’d go bonkers if I was trapped here alone.

Coming to a halt on my side of the river, I waved to him. “Can you hear me? Can you understand me?” He tilted his head, but his mood didn’t improve.

He didn’t say a word. In fact, the cheeky bastard turned his head away from me.

“Hey! I’m talking to you!” I glanced down at the river. A bit of Air would launch me clean over this thing. However, when I tried to release my Chaos… nothing happened. A few pathetic sparks sputtered out, nothing more. Puzzled, I tested my