Persie Merlin and the Door to Nowhere by Bella Forrest Page 0,91

to the door, prompting the pixie to disappear in a puff of green smoke. I prayed she hadn’t seen it wafting across my books. “Stop looking for other culprits, Persie, when the truth is staring you in the face. I know it’s hard for you to accept because these pixies are yours, but you need to come to terms with it. The simplest explanation is likely the right one. Pixies have been Purged for the first time in centuries. Fifteen people have gone missing so far.” She paused and hit me with a solemn stare. “And among them is your friend, Genie Vertis.”

After dropping that bombshell, she strode out and closed the door behind her.

Twenty-Two

Persie

Genie can’t be missing! No… no, no, no. She can’t!

An hour later, my thoughts were still leaping up and plunging low, leaving me with mental whiplash. I spun around and around in an endless vortex of panic and fury, fearing the worst—that ‘missing’ meant something else. That it meant gone, in the most final sense of the word: dead, or trapped, or hurt, or being tortured in some place I couldn’t reach her. As the terrifying possibilities kept coming, my nerves sang at fever pitch, making my skin crawl and my head hurt. I paced, I sat down, I leapt up, I paced some more. I wanted to scratch at the walls and kick down the door, just to get out and do something for my friend, in case it wasn’t too late to help her.

The cold manner in which Victoria had given me the news made me want to turn pixie and break everything in my room. Maybe if I set fire to the rug and the alarms went off, someone would come and let me out. But I had no means of starting a fire. The hunters had taken my lighter and anything remotely sharp when they’d locked me in here. And, to add insult to injury, Victoria had somehow taken my phone when I wasn’t looking, so I couldn’t have called the SDC even if she hadn’t put a block on outside communication.

Storming over to the door for the hundredth time that hour, I battered it as hard as I could. “Let me out of here! My friend’s in danger! LET ME OUT!” I heard footsteps in the hallway and a burst of cruel laughter, but nobody came to open the door. Like Einstein (or maybe someone else, no one knew for sure) said, this was the very definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

I felt insane, and hopeless.

They’re treating me like a monster. My room wasn’t a glass box, but still… There were four walls and no way out, so what was the difference? And I was stuck in here “for my own safety, and everyone else’s.” Just like in the nightmare. Only, Genie’s safety was on the line, and me being imprisoned wouldn’t do a damn thing to get her back.

If I could get her back.

I slid down the door and ended up hunched on the floor, my knees drawn up to my chin. My body shivered violently, though the radiators were on full blast. My throat tightened with each breath I tried to take, my nails raking against the wooden floor and my head careening into panic mode. If I wasn’t careful, soon enough I wouldn’t be the only one in this box. Panic led to Purges. I needed to get that on a T-shirt.

Why isn’t anyone rebelling against this? I leaned my head back against the solid door, tapping my fingers against my knees and trying to distract the panic attack. If there were fifteen people missing, how come there weren’t parents swarming this place? Maybe not enough days had gone by for parents to be worried about not hearing from their children, since everyone was an adult here. Plus, since Victoria had blocked phone signals from getting out in case someone attempted to make this an external problem, it wasn’t like authorities could be informed on the sly. She’d been so insistent about keeping it within these walls, and it looked like she was getting her wish. But that seemed so underhanded. Perhaps the truth was simpler—that, even if they could call out, everyone here was more afraid of Victoria than they were of whatever was taking the magicals.

I’m not doing so well, Genie. I scrunched up my eyes and remembered everything she’d taught me. I pictured us on the