Persie Merlin and the Door to Nowhere by Bella Forrest Page 0,73

couldn’t be seen.

Taking out my phone, I set a twenty-minute timer. If I held this spell much longer than that, I’d risk second-degree magical burns. My grandpa’s right calf had never been the same after a thievery gone wrong—he’d had to stay inside the spell for an hour. Badass that he was, he’d gotten his whole calf tattooed with cool monsters and an Atlantean curse word. I was young at the time—Grandpa died when I was six—but my dad used to shut him up when he tried to show me the full tattoo and point out the word in question, and Grandpa would cackle like no one’s business. Apparently, I’d had a habit of repeating words I shouldn’t… even then.

I set off through the Institute, making a beeline for the Repository. The spell’s side effect of burning-skin torture faded to a dull throb, so I could walk at normal speed. On my way, I breezed past hapless hunters. One of them turned and sniffed the air, her nose wrinkling. I braced for an insult, ready to add her to my list of Institute enemies. That was another unfortunate side effect—the invisibility spell could get a bit whiffy after a few consecutive uses.

“Do you smell… popcorn?” she asked her colleague.

A guy in ridiculous shades frowned. “It’s more like ozone.”

“No, it’s definitely caramel or toffee or something,” a third hunter chimed in.

A fourth took a huge sniff. “You need your nostrils checked. That’s roast potatoes. I wonder who’s cooking at this hour?”

I grinned and snuck past them, leaving them to play “what’s that smell?” without me. At least there hadn’t been any bad scents. If they’d mentioned fish, I might have had to give them an invisible smack. Atlanteans didn’t, and never had, smelled of fish. Another false stereotype spread by the magical media, like the seahorse-riding and secret-weapon-hiding.

A few minutes later, I reached the wide hallway that led to the Repository. I paused for a breather, only for a clumsy clown—Nathan, of course—to skid out of said Repository and almost tumble to the ground. Miraculously, he managed to do some flailing wizardry and stay on his feet. With a mortified look, he glanced up and down the hallway to check if anyone had seen. But I was the only one there, and he couldn’t see me. Relief washed over his features, and I giggled under my breath. He might have been a walking disaster, but it really was kind of cute. And he’d gone all casual in jeans and a gray T-shirt, showing off broad shoulders and an eye-popping physique usually hidden under tweed and corduroy.

Mr. O’Hara, you’re really spoiling us… I crept closer until I stood next to him. Standing dead center in the hallway, he lifted what appeared to be a magnifying glass with a red-tinted lens. Scrunching up one eye, he peered through it.

“No way!” I blurted out, and immediately clamped a hand over my mouth. Specterglass was the stuff of myth and legend. There’d been a fragment of it in one of Atlantis’s thousand museums, guarded by round-the-clock security. But Nathan had a whole lens of it, stuffed inside a fancy bronze frame with a handle. If legend was believed, it revealed spirits, showing them in misty forms of red and white particles. A huge benefit if you wanted to locate the dead and didn’t have a Necromancer or someone with Medium abilities handy.

He whirled around, almost dropping the magnifying glass. I might’ve screamed into my palm. “Who’s there?” he demanded.

Dammit! Maybe if I stayed perfectly still, he’d think it was all in his head. The ruby-red glass glinted like wet blood in the hall’s lamplight. Specterglass was a magical phenomenon, supposedly occurring naturally in the core of the Kolumbo submarine volcano off the coast of Santorini, where it could only be found on the seafloor after an eruption. In fact, the origin wasn’t known for sure. What we knew about specterglass was myth, spread by the ancient Greeks.

“Who’s there?!” Nathan put up his fists and spun 360 degrees. Coming back to face me, his nose crinkled up. “What is that smell? Is that… vanilla?”

I decided to give up the ghost. “No, it’s burning flesh.”

He shrieked so loud my eardrums rattled. “What the—!” Hands shaking, he raised the specterglass and peered through it. But I knew he wouldn’t see anything. “Are you… a s-spirit?”

“Maybe,” I said playfully.

Are you a good spirit or a bad spirit?”

“That depends on who you ask.” I grinned inside the spell shield. He