Persie Merlin and the Witch Hunters - Bella Forrest Page 0,104

of her thousand-yard stare. She probably thought I’d tried my luck with every woman in a ten-mile radius, but that could not have been further from the truth. In my six years at the Institute, I had barely flirted with women—and the sparse few that I had flirted with had turned me down flat or gotten bored swiftly because I’d prattled on about my monsters instead of listening to them. Genie was the first person I’d met who made me forget the monsters and think only of her.

I shook my head. “It’s nothing like that. I just wanted to find something unique for her birthday, as a way of thanking her for letting me order new things for the Repository to make the monsters more comfortable.” I stared down into my lap. “Besides, my ‘fancy’ is… elsewhere.”

Ariana’s eyes widened slightly as she looked at Genie with new understanding. “Ah… I see it now.” She reached over and gave me a playful nudge. “I pity the poor lass, and ye’d better treat her right, O’Hara, else ye’ll have me to deal with. If I hear ye’ve bored her to death, I’ll have to mix ye a love potion that’ll stick.” I was grateful that she hadn’t explicitly named Genie as the object of my affections, but I was far more grateful for the sweet, secret smile on Genie’s face as she glanced back at me.

“Do you think you can do it?” I struggled to focus with Genie looking at me like that, but I was aware of time ticking by.

Ariana snorted. “A love potion? Aye, no bother.”

“The anti-curse,” I replied, with an obligatory eye roll.

She looked over the pages once more. “Like I said, I’m a sucker for a challenge, and I know Victoria would go crackers for this as a surprise birthday present. Let me see what I can rustle up. There’s tea and coffee over there if ye get thirsty—this might take a while. But I’m guessin’ neither of ye’ve got anywhere else to be, since yer already together.” She grinned mischievously as she slid off her stool and walked to the floor-to-ceiling cupboards on the far right of the room, where she began ransacking the shelves for ingredients.

I stole a look at Genie and thought about taking hold of her hand. But she had already turned away to watch Ariana work, leaving me gazing at the elaborate design of the silver barrette at the back of her head.

An hour later, I clamped a hand over my mouth as a plume of lurid green smoke puffed out Ariana’s latest trial and error experiment. It seemed we were finally getting somewhere. Genie and I had gone through two cups of tea apiece, an entire packet of custard creams, and several packs of Ready Salted crisps—or chips, as Genie called them. All the while, we’d watched Ariana toil away at her anti-curse creation. Countless bottles of liquid littered the workbench, and there were pouches of herbs and plants and powders scattered everywhere. Precious metals and rarer items were stored in little metal boxes, and Ariana used delicate scoops as she tested different quantities, trying to get the cure right. She was mesmerizing to watch, working like a Michelin-starred chef, adding drops of this, pinches of that, and sprinkles of something else into the row of beakers lined up before her.

“Well… that’s the right smell, but it int the right color.” Ariana lifted her safety goggles for a moment—an accessory which she had neglected to provide for us—and mopped her brow with the back of her sleeve. “From what I can tell—and this is a lot of guesswork—the smoke should be red, not green. I think I put in too much wolfsbane—aye, that’ll be it. It wants more belladonna.” Sliding her goggles back on, she started afresh with a clean beaker, going back through the motions that had resulted in the green smoke.

I dusted some biscuit crumbs off my lips. “Can I ask you something?”

Ariana peered at me through the magnified lenses of her goggles. “Aye.”

“Have you ever heard of any of these Anghenfil Curses being contagious?” I’d been waiting for the right moment to bring up that part of the Fear Dearg curse. Now seemed like a prudent time, with her attention mostly fixed on the ingredients. I hoped she wouldn’t dig any deeper into my question.

She frowned. “Chaos, no. The Primus Anglicus liked to tinker with their revenge curses on non-magicals, but they weren’t sadists. They only bit if they