Persie Merlin and the Door to Nowhere by Bella Forrest Page 0,79

until proven guilty? Though that wouldn’t have helped me much. In two seconds, they’d see all the evidence they wanted.

“Are these… puzzle boxes?” The guy plucked out the one with the pixies inside. “How come it’s glowing? Did you catch something?”

The other woman sifted through my bag. “She’s got three of them, Gerry. And two Mason jars.”

“Dearie me, looks like you weren’t just getting rid of cardboard boxes.” The man glared at me. “And you’re not authorized to use this stuff. Did you steal it?”

I said nothing, not wanting to implicate Naomi.

He surveyed me for a moment, then said, “You look like a troublemaker.”

The platinum-blonde whispered in his ear. “That’s Persie Merlin-Crowley.”

“Is that so?” The guy’s expression changed in a split second. “You’re the one who caused all this in the first place, aren’t you? From what I hear, you might just be the mastermind, making these things do your bidding.” He smirked at his colleagues. “Apparently, some student saw her chatting to a pixie. Stinks of deceit to me.”

“What?! Who said that? That isn’t true! I was just trying to help!” I gasped. “I wanted to clear up my mess, I’m not masterminding anything.”

He sneered. “Or you wanted to save your little aberrations, so they can keep doing your dirty work.” He glanced at the box, seeing something in the faintly glowing lights that Naomi clearly hadn’t taught us about yet. “Being able to control them would certainly explain how a beginner like you managed to catch five of these.”

“They’re not aberrations!” I blurted out, instantly regretting it. Evidently, the glow from the box told him how many monsters were inside.

“Aww, how cute.” The man laughed coldly.

Flustered, I tried to form the right words. “And I’m not making them do anything. I don’t control them, which should be freaking obvious since they’re evading me as much as they’re evading you! I used knowledge to catch these, not some ability. Oh, and for the last freaking time, they’re not responsible for the disappearances!”

I’d say it until I was blue in the face, or someone listened—whichever came first. And this group definitely wasn’t listening.

“Agnes, get her in Cuffs,” the blonde instructed. “We’re taking you back to your room, and we’re going to make sure you stay there this time, until Victoria decides what to do with you.”

Panic fluttered in my chest as cold metal closed around my wrists. A weird prickly sensation followed, like static electricity—not painful or sapping, just odd, similar to the way it felt when I got too close to Genie in full Verso mode. Magic of some kind, though I could only feel the slightest hint of it. I guessed these weren’t ordinary Cuffs, though slapping a pair of Atomic Cuffs on me seemed like overkill. I wondered if Atomic Cuffs would be able to stop a Purge, if I could make one come? Having felt the force of my previous Purges, I highly doubted it.

Ignoring my pleas, the huge woman and her fellow hunters marched me down the utility corridor and back up the stairs, all the way to my bedroom. I wondered if these were the same hunters who’d been stationed in my hallway to keep an eye on my Purges.

I was shoved inside and pushed onto a chair while they set about laying charms and hexes to prevent me from leaving. It took all of ten minutes, but it felt like forever. Finally, with scowls that could’ve curdled the pixies’ milk, they unlocked the Cuffs and stormed out. These hunters weren’t playing around. They had orders to follow, and I’d made the mistake of crossing their path.

Now I had no way to search for the pixies, and they’d taken the five that I’d already captured. I wasn’t just back at square one, I wasn’t even at the starting line anymore.

Eighteen

Persie

Pixieless and fuming, I paced my bedroom floor and tried to think of a hundred ways I might get back at those hunters.

“Aberrations? Who does he think he’s calling an aberration?” I snarked, unable to sit for more than a few seconds without jumping back up again.

In that one sentence, he’d cemented something in my head. These creatures deserved more than the lot they had in life. They hadn’t asked to exist any more than humans had, but we had to share this world, and they’d wound up with the short end of the stick. They gave their energy for our magical empire, for Pete’s sake, and still that hunter had dared to speak about