Persie Merlin and the Door to Nowhere by Bella Forrest Page 0,62

Maybe they’d be able to give us some idea of where she is, if they saw her, or if they know what happened to her.”

Even if it’s just to get people off my back. I felt awful about Xanthippe, but I also wanted to give the pixies a chance to prove themselves innocent. It was funny to me—and not funny ha-ha—that people immediately laid blame on monsters. In my experience, humans were usually the culprits, especially if they had Purge-beast scapegoats to pin their misdeeds on. Aside from Leviathan, and the will of his dead mother, I’d never heard of a single beast who wanted to wreak havoc on the world, but I’d heard of plenty of humans.

Then, a curious notion came to me. “The first priority is, obviously, making sure Xanthippe is safely returned.” I paused, gathering courage. “But what if this has nothing to do with the pixies at all? Don’t get me wrong, the timing is very suspicious, but that doesn’t mean they’re to blame. What if this has something to do with magicals instead?”

“Go on…” Victoria urged.

I knew I might get into trouble with my parents for revealing this, but it made a lot of sense. More sense than a bunch of pixies spiriting away a student.

“Well, my mom and dad are in the middle of an investigation. They’re looking for magicals who’ve been abducted across the US. It’s happening more and more frequently, and they don’t know who’s doing it. What if it’s more global than they realize? What if it’s linked to Xanthippe’s disappearance, too?”

Her sleek eyebrow raised a quarter of an inch. A hint of surprise. “I admire your flexible thinking, but I find that highly unlikely. We currently have no clear evidence that Xanthippe has been hurt, nor any sign of a struggle or external abduction.” She flattened her palms onto the black marble desk, where veins of gold slithered through the darkness. “It’s my hope that the lass will show up on her own, but we do have to consider other possibilities.”

I nodded eagerly. “That’s what I’m trying to say. Talk to my mom at the SDC about this. You might find out you’re investigating the same thing, and a problem shared is a problem halved, right?”

Victoria physically sat back, as though she couldn’t even be near the idea. “This is an internal matter, Persie. Liaising with outside territories is out of the question, but we will conduct interviews with those who were close to Xanthippe within the Institute. That said, until we are able to exclude the pixies as suspects, they will be considered an immediate threat and hunted accordingly.”

“What?! No! Sure, capture them, but don’t kill them!” I blurted out, my protective instinct flaring. The same one I’d felt when I’d held the she-pixie in my hands and knew I could’ve crushed her or spared her.

Victoria mustered a bemused snort. “I didn’t say I’d have them killed, Persie. That’s not what hunting is about. You know that.” Her eyes narrowed slightly, as though she was wary of my impulsive outburst. Nathan sympathized with the monsters, in his own way, but I wondered if anyone had outright suggested an alternative to catching and trapping them. Maybe there wasn’t one.

“Sorry…” I forced a smile. “It’s been a long day. My head’s not on straight.”

She visibly relaxed. “They’ll be captured in the usual fashion and sent to the Bestiary, though I don’t imagine they’ll be much use to the Bestiary’s energy supplies.” Her fingertips toyed with a small, silver clover on her lapel, with the tiniest emerald in the center. “Although we’ll have to keep some specimens for training and research purposes, given their… recent resurgence into the world.”

Specimens? The word riled me up, and I struggled to conceal my distaste. They weren’t lab rats. They had thoughts and personalities, and sass by the bucketload. I didn’t like the idea of them being prodded and poked by the Institute’s researchers. I knew that not all of them would be like Nathan.

“How many pixies are we dealing with? An estimate will suffice,” Victoria said.

I tried to picture the mayhem in my bedroom, my mouth moving in a silent tally. “Um… a couple dozen, I think.”

Truthfully, I had no clue—except that there were definitely more than two dozen. By giving her a loose number, I’d leave some wiggle room to find some on my own and find out if they knew anything about Xanthippe’s disappearance. Getting them to trust me enough to tell me,