Persie Merlin and the Door to Nowhere by Bella Forrest Page 0,135
rare—a private collection for someone important. In the center of the room sat a desk of that same white marble, with a cream wingback armchair behind it. And, sitting on the desktop, a plaque that read “Shailene Basani, Founder.”
“I take it your mom isn’t here at the moment?” I gulped, feeling like I was treading on sacred ground.
Charlotte laughed coolly. “You’re kidding, right? My mom is never here unless there’s some public show that she needs to put on a performance for.” She headed for the back of the room and pulled aside a tapestry of a roaring, golden griffin, revealing a hidden door behind it.
Is that why you act so cold? I wondered. It might’ve been the most honest thing she’d revealed to me, and I didn’t know what to do with that. Maybe being a Basani wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Kind of like being a Merlin. But where my mom shunned her fame, I guessed Shailene and Fay lapped theirs up, leaving Charlotte behind to bear the actual responsibility of the Institute’s legacy. I remembered all the things Uncle Finch had told me about the twins. Maybe this place was just another shiny magazine cover to them—a feather they could put in their caps and forget about. Maybe Charlotte felt like that, too—that she was just another accolade, forgotten about when they moved on to the next big thing.
Taking out a smaller key, Charlotte unlocked the hidden door. Cold air whistled in, making me wish I had something warmer to wear. But there wasn’t time to grab a coat, not with so much on the line.
I hesitated for a moment on the threshold, staring out at the beautiful night. The rain had stopped and a full moon shone ethereally, unhindered by cloud. Glittering specks lit the velvety dark blue sky and rolling hills stretched away before us, the calm sea off to the east.
Charlotte slipped out into the darkness and I followed her uncertainly, glancing over my shoulder to find that most of the Institute had disappeared, leaving only an open doorway in the ruins of an old, imposing castle. With the Institute being inside an interdimensional bubble and all, I didn’t know what else I’d expected. Charlotte hurriedly closed the door before taking off across the hills. She seemed to know where she was going, and so did the pixies.
Fifteen minutes later, we were trudging up a steep slope, my boots slipping and sliding in the mud from the day’s downpour. At the top rested an old gray church, which looked about as old as the ruined castle in the distance behind us—the bare bones that the Institute’s bubble was built around. Charlotte had already reached the top of the hill with the pixies, the motley crew waiting for me impatiently. Taking a deep breath, I leaned forward and upped the pace, until my thighs burned and sweat formed on the back of my neck. On the upside, at least I wasn’t cold anymore.
“You’re going to have to work on that, for training,” Charlotte remarked, as I finally reached her. “The one thing you can rely on as a hunter, above all else, is stamina.”
“Noted,” I wheezed. The pixies snickered, one of them dropping to the ground and pretending to faint. “Yeah, hilarious. Thank you. Where are we, by the way?”
Charlotte turned toward the church. “St. Finnean’s Chapel, though it’s had a lot of names over the years. I figured this would be the best place to start looking, since it’s a) the closest and b) the oldest one around here.”
The graveyard was eerily beautiful in the moonlight, the silvery glow spilling across broken headstones which, in turn, were covered in bleached white lichen and tufts of brown moss. A willow tree stood watch on the far side, its rustling fronds bent like someone hunched with grief. I wondered how long it had been here, guarding this cemetery. If only it could speak, it might’ve told us the way to Fergus McLeod’s bones. And yet, I couldn’t quite shake the feeling that it was watching and whispering, having seen us approach from the ruins.
“Some of these names are going to be hard to read.” And I had no phone to see by, only moonlight and the glow of the pixies. Their illumination had amped up a notch, now that we were out in the open, as if their bodies instinctively responded to the darkness.
Charlotte shrugged. “It has to be here somewhere.”