Persie Merlin and the Door to Nowhere by Bella Forrest Page 0,57
didn’t mean for this to happen. I tried to catch those pixies without anyone finding out, but… Victoria has a sixth sense for these things. She walked into the Repository while I was trying to chase down the second one.” His cheeks reddened. “And let’s just say I wasn’t being as quiet as I should’ve been. I crashed into a pillar of orbs and she heard me. But I never meant to put Persie in the spotlight. If I did, I’d have gone to Victoria as soon as Persie told me everything last night. Instead, I stuck to my promise of giving her until later today to try to fix this first, because I could see that was what she wanted… Needed, actually.”
I turned to face him, confused. “You didn’t tell Victoria? Forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but it sure looks like you did. Who’s to say you didn’t already decide the deadline had passed? Why else would she have shown the pixies to our class?”
“She showed the pixies to every class!” Nathan went into uber-fidget mode, jiggling his knees anxiously. “But Victoria isn’t stupid. She picked up on the same coincidence Charlotte did. She just wanted to make it fair before she came to your class. I think, truly, she wanted to give Persie the benefit of the doubt. Students play pranks here all the time, so there was a chance someone would break and confess to some joke gone wrong, but no one did. Victoria had no choice but to look to the obvious: Persie. And that wasn’t because of me. Like I said, I tried to hide what I was doing. I wouldn’t have caught the third one without Victoria’s help, anyway.”
I refused to back down. “Did Victoria ask if you knew anything about them?”
“No,” he replied simply.
Too simply. I smelled a rat.
“You’d be terrible at poker.”
He twisted a leather bracelet on his wrist. “I told her what they were, that’s all, and that there are probably more. But I used my own knowledge, just showing her pages in a book. I didn’t mention Persie at all. She didn’t ask anything else after that. Maybe she didn’t need to. So, perhaps you shouldn’t be so quick to blame me.” He fiddled so hard with the bracelet that it snapped.
“I’m just trying to piece everything together, since my friend is now swimming in major doo-doo.” I couldn’t believe I’d just used that word. That spoke volumes about my mental state.
He sighed. “Then here are my two cents, if you’re willing to listen.”
I shrugged, verging on petulant. “Sure, why not. I’ve got nothing better to do.”
“Charlotte shouldn’t have called Persie out so publicly. She should’ve left that to Victoria to deal with privately. However, Charlotte said something Victoria couldn’t ignore. If she had, everyone else would have turned vigilante. Extinct creatures turning up in the same week as a person who can Purge beasts—it’s not a big leap, Genie.”
You think I don’t know that? I reined in my exasperation. He was right. If Victoria had swanned out of the lab without saying a word to Persie, the class would’ve gone all interrogator on her. Shining lights in her face, the whole shebang. And he sounded genuinely sorry that Persie had been incriminated. Still, that didn’t mean we were cool.
“Fine. Say I believe you—here’s the million-dollar question. Do you think these pixies had something to do with Xanthippe’s disappearance?” I left it lingering in the air like a terrible fart. He looked sweet and unassuming, but maybe that was all some kind of elaborate ploy. I wasn’t sure how far he could be trusted.
He hesitated. “Do you?”
“No, of course not!” I barked. How could he even ask that? Even the village clown could see that six-inch critters had nothing to do with the disappearance of a grown woman—and one who had no qualms about hitting back, if the incident in the banquet hall was anything to go by. I didn’t care about his credentials. I didn’t care that he’d seen that first pixie with his own eyes. It didn’t take Einstein to figure out the two events couldn’t be related. Unless… maybe they really were like ants, able to carry many times their own body weight? They were known to be mischievous. What if they’d taken it too far?
No, I wasn’t going down that path. Persie needed me to believe in her. If I had any doubts, I needed to bury them immediately.