Persie Merlin and the Witch Hunters - Bella Forrest Page 0,61
nothing but terror and a sense of impending doom in its wake.
Is this how it feels to be a Fear Dearg? Does all that terror come from within you? I forced my eyes open and the overwhelming fear ebbed. I lurched forward onto the desk, panting as sweat trickled down the sides of my face. A few drops splashed onto my sketchbook, spreading some of the gray out of the defined lines.
Who would do that to a person? I realized that I didn’t mean the kidnapper—I meant the person who’d done that to him in the first place. The kidnapper had made it clear that he hadn’t always been that way, meaning it had to be some sort of curse or long-term hex. If it was a hex, then he’d have had something on him: an object, a hex bag, or a tattoo, something he might not even be aware of. If it was a curse, then the signs of it would be inside him somewhere: a marker in his blood, or in the minimal amount of Chaos that non-magicals possessed. Although getting an extraction of either kind from him would be like pulling the teeth out of a rabid, un-sedated wolf.
I took a few deep breaths and looked out my window at the rainy afternoon sky. Inky purples and grays and greenish blues added texture and mood to the usual creamy white of the clouds. Had he pissed someone off? Stolen magical artifacts from the wrong person? He’d pinched those Atomic Cuffs from someone, for sure, though maybe I was jumping to extremes. Kidnapping me seemed like last-resort territory, after he’d exhausted all other avenues. But undoing curses tended to go smoother if the victim went back to whoever had cast it. That wasn’t unique to djinn curses. Assuming it was a djinn curse, and that he didn’t know who the djinn was, then he was only at the beginning of a long journey of anguish and pain.
Not that I care if he suffers. I tried to convince myself that was true, only to recall the total despair in his voice when he’d told me it was hurting others, too. A curse didn’t care who it infected. What if it was hurting innocents? Killing them, even?
“I need answers,” I thought aloud. I’d gotten into the habit of doing that since coming to the Institute, to stave off the quiet of being alone. Yes, Victoria had told me to lay off the investigating and leave it to the pros, and I didn’t intend to defy her. I just wanted clarity. And there were two pros who could, at the very least, help me achieve that clarity. Plus, secretly, I wanted to see if Victoria had listened to my suggestions about who could be useful to her.
Taking out my phone and setting it atop a small pile of books, I dialed home.
Mom picked up after three rings, her face appearing in the video chat. “Persie!” She glanced back over her shoulder. “Wade, it’s Persie!”
Dad skidded into frame a few seconds later, grinning from ear to ear. “She lives!”
“Huh?” I frowned. Had they heard about my kidnapping? Common sense kicked in—there was no way they knew. If they had, they would’ve been at the Institute, and my dad definitely wouldn’t have been smiling like that.
“We thought you’d forgotten about your old ma and pa. You haven’t called in a week—we were starting to feel abandoned.” Dad scooched Mom over on her office sofa, instantly recognizable from the dark maroon leather. She gave him a playful shove, but stayed nestled into him as he put an arm around her shoulders. My parents would never understand that the video frame fit in a lot more than it had in their day. They could have sat at either end of the sofa, and I’d still have been able to see them both.
I laughed, hoping it sounded genuine. “Sorry about that. I’ve been training like crazy.”
“So we’ve heard. You must be exhausted. Have the bath salts been helping?” Mom smiled, but there was an odd tension in her mouth.
“Uh… a little bit,” I replied, flummoxed. “Who did you hear that from?”
Dad swept back his hair and put on a haughty expression. “That head huntswoman of yours. She’s quite a fierce woman, isn’t she? I felt like I was back at school when she called.”
“Are you forgetting who you’re married to?” Mom teased. But, again, it rang hollow.