Persie Merlin and the Door to Nowhere by Bella Forrest Page 0,113
not going to end well. We need to get in without our brains being mush.”
He took off his glasses and wiped the lenses, his mouth twisting in a thoughtful grimace. “There might be something I can use, but it’s not from my father’s Grimoire. I may be wrong, but the Wisps might be the only ones who can go in and out without any trouble, if this is their domain. There’s an ancient manuscript in the Theorem Complex that might have what I need, but it’d be a huge risk to go up there and try to find it. We’ve already put Charlotte on the warpath, and there will undoubtedly be hunters searching the libraries. Also, I’m not sure how good I’ll be at shimmying up a pole.”
No, no, no, no, no! I refused to accept that we’d fallen at the last hurdle, so close to finding Genie. Fortunately, I still had one option left—a dangerous mission for my pixie friends. They’d already shown how skilled they could be with camouflage, but there would be no assurances that they wouldn’t be caught, especially with hunters on the prowl. Still, if I could prove they weren’t responsible by getting everyone back, then maybe it would only be a temporary sentence for any captured critters.
I looked at Boudicca, still perched on my shoulder. “I need you to do something for me, but I’m going to need all of you. Can you gather the others?”
Boudicca eyed me warily for a few seconds, but she must’ve seen the despair in my eyes, because a moment later she hopped off my shoulder and landed on the floor. Squeaking sternly, she beckoned for the other pixies to join her on the ground. They obeyed immediately, abandoning Nathan for their rightful leader. Gesticulating furiously, she looked around at her brethren. And then, wordlessly, they gave a collective nod of understanding.
“What are they doing?” Nathan whispered, in awe of the creatures.
I watched them hopefully. “I think they’re… gathering their forces.”
In unison, the pixies lifted their arms and started to step side-to-side, their cuttlefish dots pulsing in an identical rhythm, rotating through the whole rainbow of colors. They moved their arms up and down, keeping the same side-step rhythm, and began to chant something ancient and mesmerizing, sending a message through the Institute to the remaining pixies-in-hiding. I felt it reaching out, my monster sense tingling, letting me know the purpose in their sounds and movements.
“They have rituals, they communicate, they show compassion.” Nathan adjusted his spectacles, peering closer. Even I knew this was special, and I didn’t know nearly as much about monsters. “How can anyone suggest that they aren’t sentient beings with souls and conscious thought?”
I nodded. “I’m right in that boat with you.”
Within minutes, all the pixies from my Purge fluttered down to the bottom of the sphere on dragonfly wings, greeting their fellow creatures with hugs and mischievous slaps on the back. A chubbier pixie with three tiny feathers sticking out of his mossy hair dove into a display of chirps and squeaks, pretending to be, from what I could tell, a hunter trying to chase him. He leapt over imaginary obstacles and stuck out his tongue, waggling his behind at the make-believe hunter before puffing out his chest proudly.
Boudicca smacked him on the back of the head to get him to shut up, and he immediately quieted. Now that she had the floor to herself, she spoke to the newcomers in her punctuated chirps, which I’d come to appreciate the sound of. They stared at Nathan and me with bewildered eyes, as if to say: “But aren’t these guys the enemy?” As Boudicca explained, though, they began “oohing” and “ahhing.”
When that was done, she turned to me with a look of “so, now that I’ve got everyone here, would you mind explaining why?”
I knelt, as it seemed like the polite thing to do, and the pixie army looked back at me solemnly. “There’s a book that we need from the main library, and we’d like you to retrieve it. It’s a risky mission, and there’s a chance that some of you will get caught, but we need that book to clear your names of wrongdoing.” I nodded to the doorway. “Hopefully, it’ll help us get inside there.”
There was a roar of outrage and general dissent from the gathered group, and some disdainful stares were cast in our direction. Some pointed at me, shaking their heads and tiny fists. I was asking a lot, and