Persie Merlin and the Witch Hunters - Bella Forrest Page 0,45

fight, trying to find any sign of my kidnapper. A torn bit of clothing, or his lighter—anything that confirmed he’d been here. But even though the fishery was in a state of annihilation, it seemed like he’d cleaned up after himself. The blanket and the food were gone from the corner where he’d tied me up, and even the fragments of Atomic Cuffs had vanished. Almost as though he knew if he left something behind, one of us nasty magicals could trace it—a sure indication that he’d encountered tracking spells before.

And yet… a certain sensation lingered in the fishery. A residual bad vibe, just like the one the man had created before. It prickled my skin and slithered into my belly, putting me on edge. Sure, it might have been the building itself, which was creepy and old and thrummed with haunted-house energy. But I had a feeling there was more to the wrongness of this place than that. I’d been sucker punched by the red mist that had rolled off my abductor in smoky waves. What lingered in the room was a diluted version of that sudden, illogical terror that had pulsed off of him.

“I know this is going to sound like a weird thing to say, but does anyone else feel spooked? In a way that doesn’t make sense?” I addressed the entire group of hunters, who shuffled awkwardly. Apparently, none of them were willing to admit that they were scared, at least not in present company. But one or two had a wide-eyed stare, like spooked horses, that made me wonder… I couldn’t be the only one feeling this, could I?

Genie put her hand on my shoulder. “You might just be reliving what happened. And this place isn’t exactly a day spa.” She gestured around at the creepy warehouse.

“Maybe.” I wasn’t totally convinced, but she did have a point. It had barely been an hour since I was last in this dripping, stagnant place, seconds away from being hooked up to a car battery. Naturally, I wasn’t going to feel comfortable here.

“Do you want Victoria to let your family know about all of this?” Nathan added his concern to the mix.

“NO!” The word exploded out of me. “No, Chaos no! I know Victoria will want to handle it all in-house, and I happen to agree. My mom would freak out, and she doesn’t need the added hassle. Then she’d want to get involved, and she wouldn’t be allowed, and that would just cause way too much drama.”

There were things that I didn’t mind telling my parents, but this couldn’t be one of them. I already knew about the difficulties of international relations, and telling her about my kidnapper would do nothing but frustrate her. She’d be stuck in the States, wanting to help me but constrained by red tape and Victoria’s jurisdiction. Even if Victoria wasn’t dead set against external interventions, we didn’t have time for bureaucratic hoop-jumping to find out who these people were. I’d asked for independence, and this was it.

“I think that’s wise,” Charlotte agreed. She lowered her voice to a murmur. “And if Harley were to get embroiled in this, she would bring that brother of hers.”

It appeared the Finch-Basani feud was still alive and well, even though Finch and the twins hadn’t seen each another since the Mapmakers’ Monastery. I didn’t have much to laugh about right then, but the idea that the Basani twins had passed the bad blood down to Charlotte made me smile in spite of myself. How could Charlotte have a vendetta against my Uncle Finch when she had never even met him? My mind turned briefly to thoughts of Family Weekend, and I wondered if my uncle would dare set foot in the Institute again. Maybe he’d burst into flames.

I took a breath to push away the black spots in my vision. “Now that we’ve got that sorted, I’m not sure there’s much more I can tell you about the guy. He spoke about a curse that turns him into a red misty creature—a Fear Dearg, if I understood him right—and he mentioned a group called the Veritas, as I said. He tried to pass it off as a nickname, but I think that might be the organization behind this.” I carried on, telling them everything else the captor had said to me, from his insistence that this was all my fault, to his pleas and the possible damage his curse was inflicting on other people. “Do