Persie Merlin and the Door to Nowhere by Bella Forrest Page 0,6
but if they kept it for another day—tomorrow, even—I would be forever grateful.
Genie took off again, and I followed on weary legs. I’d recovered from the banshee-Purge, but last night’s dream had taken more out of me than I’d first realized. My hands and wrists and arms throbbed as though I’d been… well, slamming them helplessly against a sheet of glass. And my chest still felt heavy and clenched, like some of that unnerving dark sludge lingered in each lung.
“There! Cadets!” Genie punched the air and picked up speed, chasing after a gaggle of cargo-panted students who appeared to know precisely where they were going. It made me feel a tad uncomfortable, seeing how professional and clean-cut they looked, while Genie and I ambled along in our civilian get-up of T-shirts and athleisure pants. They’d probably spent the last five days studying the orientation map religiously instead of recuperating and strolling around like this was a holiday camp.
We hurtled after the militant contingent, our shoes screeching on the polished concrete as if we were doing laps of a basketball court. In focusing on the other students, we might have neglected our spatial awareness. Skidding around a corner into a narrower corridor so as not to lose sight of our unwitting guides, we crashed straight into a figure hurrying out of a doorway on the right.
The three of us went flying. Papers and folders erupted in a snowfall, the sheets fluttering down in a chaotic whirlwind as I bounced backward and hit the floor with a thud that knocked the wind out of me. My coffee arced into the air and landed in places unknown. Staring up at the paper blizzard, I cocked my head, distracted from the pain shooting across my shoulders. Every sheet was etched with intricate illustrations of monsters, labeled and detailed with technical jargon in elegant handwriting. They were on par with my own drawings, though I noticed some discrepancies from my useful angle: too-small wings on a gargoyle, scales on a serpent that should’ve been feathers, a wrongly proportioned loup-garou, that sort of thing. Minute details that only someone who’d been up close and personal with these creatures could have noticed.
“They’re beautiful,” I blurted out as I maneuvered into a crouch and started picking up the pages. I was so engrossed in the images that I barely even saw the person we’d careened into.
“Yeah… beautiful.” Genie tapped me on the shoulder. I peered up at her and saw her wide eyes and open mouth directed at the mystery artist. Following her gaze, I glanced over my shoulder to see who she was gaping at.
A young man, somewhere in his early twenties, dusted down a gray tweed suit jacket, shot through with delicate threads of vivid purple that formed checkered squares. A stylish kind of tweed, like something from those old Kingsman films my uncle adored, but mismatched with a white polo shirt that had a fresh coffee stain down the front and faded black jeans that I would’ve described as “dad fit.” He had a nice face, though: unusual green-blue eyes that reminded me of Amazonite, with a dark ring around the iris. His sweeping mane of unruly golden-brown hair had been hastily gelled into submission, and defined, manly features and blonde stubble added to his Tobe-like leonine look. His fair eyebrows knitted together in consternation as he looked down at the stain on his shirt.
He bent down for a pair of rectangular glasses that had survived the fall and cleaned them on the edge of his polo shirt. “I prefer to drink coffee, but maybe the caffeine will sink in via osmosis.” He put the glasses back onto the bridge of his nose, and then it was his turn to start gaping like a beached fish as his gaze fell on Genie. “I mean, not that I… uh… mind. No, osmosis is good. Um… accidents happen. It’s nothing. I can just… uh… fasten the button and hide it.”
Realization dawned as I connected that the coffee all over him was my coffee. “Oh, my goodness, I’m so sorry! That was me.” I scooped more papers into my arms, checking them for liquid damage. “I hope it didn’t get on any of these. It’d be a shame. They’re… nice.”
I was thoroughly mortified that I’d doused him in coffee, but he didn’t seem to be paying attention to his shirt or sketches. Nope, my friend had all of his interest. There were very few who could look Genie