Persie Merlin and the Door to Nowhere by Bella Forrest Page 0,54
tiny keg deliveries.” Genie offered me a reassuring smile. “For now, they’re behaving. Let’s take that as a good sign, until it’s not.”
“Was that supposed to be comforting?” I lamented.
She laughed. “Did it work?”
“Yes and no.” I focused on the puzzle box to distract myself. “Anyway, we’ll have an hour at lunch to… try something else. If they stay hidden, then there’s nothing we can do about it until classes are over. And I refuse to start slipping in my lessons on the first day, pixies or no pixies.”
I wasn’t furtively keeping my plan to go to Victoria from Genie. I just didn’t want her to sit through these lessons, worrying that her best friend might be in huge trouble. She’d been in her element this morning, with Hosseini, and she deserved to ride that buzz for a while after the night she’d had.
“I think the staff must’ve put some extra fire in your bagel this morning.” Genie winked, and I smiled back. But the ironic thing was, it wasn’t the bagel or the dream that had kicked my behind into gear; the pixies were responsible for this newfound surge of determination. One pixie, to be precise. She’d shown me that I was capable of hunting, even if putting them in cages afterward didn’t sit too well with me. I just had to remind myself that they had to go in those orbs, and eventually into glass boxes, for a valid reason—the protection of the magical world, and the energy it relied on. Only, that didn’t feel like an entirely valid reason anymore. There had to be a better way.
Picking up my pen, I started to make notes on the puzzle box. The contraption had clearly been designed by someone with an artistic eye. Each panel displayed a specific image: a sea serpent on one side, a phoenix on another, a Caladrius on the third side, and a rock golem on the fourth. The bottom and top panels had identical pictures of a unicorn dipping its head into a pool.
“Water, Fire, Air, and Earth,” I realized with a bristle of excitement. “And these panels must be the fifth element: Magic itself.”
Genie’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh, this is so going to be your forte.”
“It’s a universal language, so anyone can use it.” I jotted my theories down and picked up the box. I felt for those hair-thin indents in the metal that Hosseini had used. Curious, I copied what he’d done, and the images instantly twisted into warped versions of each panel: a sliver of a serpent in the middle of a phoenix, and the back end of a rock golem taking the place of a Caladrius’s head. “That must be how you get the box to lock. The lid opens when you line up the patterns, and you stop the monster escaping by twisting the box out of sync.”
Genie peered over my shoulder for a better look. “What about that harp thing Hosseini showed me?”
“It must let the monster in and out again, manually,” I replied.
Naomi scurried over and paused at our bench. “You certainly have a talent for this, Persie. You’re absolutely right!” She grinned so wide that it felt like a pat on the back. “Once a monster has been captured, the interior hexwork memorizes the unique signature of the beast inside. That means it can be released at the touch of that harp and drawn back in again with a second touch. Twisting the box is the only way to ensure everything is fully locked in. Then, once a new monster is caught, it forgets the old signature and remembers the new one. Nifty stuff! I wish I’d invented it.”
“I’m sure your Omnisphere will replace these, one day,” I replied. I felt compelled to give her a compliment since she’d given me my first compliment at the Institute.
She waved a hand at me. “Ah, who knows. One can hope! If I made the sort of money that the inventor of these boxes makes, I’d buy an island somewhere and—”
I never found out what she’d have done on that island. The lab door burst open and Victoria Jules stormed in with a tempestuous look on her face. A four-strong squadron of hunters flanked her, as well as Hosseini and Nathan.
“First years, apologies for the intrusion.” She swept a hand through her stylishly short crop. “This is highly unorthodox, and I resent disruption to the Institute’s routine, but classes are suspended until further notice.”
Colette Requin, a stern-faced French-Canadian, raised