Persie Merlin and the Door to Nowhere by Bella Forrest Page 0,26
when she wants to, and if she has a Purge, she’ll let us know in her own time.’ I thought she’d smother me in my sleep after that.” He kissed Mom’s cheek and she smiled up at him.
“When you said you were having trouble sleeping, I thought it might be Purge-related.” My mom segued back into our previous conversation, and I braced to gloss over it. They needed to hear the Hollywood version of how I was doing, not the grainy, indie version. Sitting there in my room, a continent and an ocean away, the distance between us had never felt bigger.
I widened my smile until my cheeks hurt. “No, no, nothing like that. I’m just getting used to all the noise. There are women down the hall who have their music blasting all hours, so I’m not sleeping until late, and then I have to get up early. Sure, that makes me sound like a granny, but a girl’s got to have her eight hours, right?”
My mom’s expression relaxed immediately. “Oh, thank Chaos.” She turned slightly to face my dad. “She was just telling me she’d been having some sleeping issues when you came in. My heart’s been pounding for the last five minutes, thinking it was something awful. I’ll send you some earbuds to help. If that doesn’t work, you should bang on their door and, when they answer, act all shocked and say you thought someone was strangling cats.”
I smirked. “I’ll think about it.” Now, it was my turn to do a bit of segueing. “What about the two of you? It sounds like there’s been a breakthrough with the missing magicals cases?”
My parents exchanged a solemn look before my dad answered. “You know that’s sensitive information, Persie. We can’t disclose details of the investigation yet, since it’s in such fragile stages. You shouldn’t have even heard what I said when I came in. There are protocols we have to follow.”
“How come Marius and Azar know all about it, then?” I might’ve been coming across a little petty, but the point stood. Last I’d checked, Marius and Azar weren’t part of my parents’ Secret Agent Squad. Actually, last I’d checked, they were in freaking Mexico. They were the same age as me, and they weren’t carrying around a big “Merlin” target on their backs. Surely I deserved to be in the loop—or was that forbidden, now that O’Halloran had decided I was a menace to polite society?
My mom sighed, and I saw the depth of the fatigue she’d been hiding. “They’ve been assigned to the SDC’s agent training program. They both showed an interest in wanting to make careers out of it, so they signed the NDAs and all the forms and they were brought on board.”
“In a week?” I might’ve snorted.
“It was already in the works before you went away, Persie,” my mom explained. “They were given their first tasks when they got back from Mexico two days ago.”
My dad offered me an apologetic look. “However, if our investigation goes anywhere near Galway or the Institute, we’ll let you know what’s going on.”
Yeah, because that’ll happen. My dad was just paying lip service to stop me from trying to pry more information out of them. Still, I knew a hopeless cause when I saw one. Without an NDA, or my dad bursting into the room again without spotting me on video call, I wouldn’t find out anything else. And the sudden spike of annoyance and jealousy made my stomach churn in a deeply unsettling, painfully familiar way—a Purge was coming. The shivers would be next, then the chest pains, and then the need to expel.
“I get it.” I drew shaky fingertips across my lips. “Ask you no questions, you’ll tell me no lies, right?”
My dad gave a reluctant nod. “It’s just red tape, Persie. You know we’d tell you if we could.”
Best not to open that can of worms… A comeback tingled on the tip of my tongue, but I let it stay there. Leviathan’s gift had already been given, so there seemed little point in dragging up old quarrels and old lies for the sake of landing a jab. Especially with the nausea rising and the shakes settling in.
“Kes has been asking about you.” Mom switched back to fluffy small talk. “He’s insanely jealous of you and Genie. Tobe had to carry him out of the Bestiary at least six times this week. He’s been trying to spring some beasties loose so he could start