Persie Merlin and the Witch Hunters - Bella Forrest Page 0,67
you’ve potentially lived a fifth, or even a quarter, of your life.”
Two shrill beeps cut our conversation short. Genie reached her phone first, with me still trying to fish mine out of the super-tight pocket down the side of my leggings. Her eyes widened in surprise as she read the message, and I followed suit a moment later. Nathan had good news, and it couldn’t have come at a better time. Over the last few days, there’d been no new leads on my kidnapper. I was starting to think no one would ever find him.
“We should go and help him,” Genie said, a beat too quickly.
I smirked. “Any excuse, right?”
“We’re already out and about. We might as well make ourselves useful.” She slid her phone back in her pocket, her cheeks flushed a pale pink. Against the Atlantean porcelain of her skin, any hint of a blush was as blatantly obvious as a flashing beacon. “And I’ve still got a knuckle sandwich waiting for that bastard who took you. It might be a little late for lunch, but I’m ready to deliver anytime, anywhere.”
I chuckled, joining her as she walked toward the coastline. “So, it’s got nothing to do with the fact that you’re totally smitten with our bespectacled friend, and have been looking for a reason to go see him for days?”
“We’ve both been busy,” she mumbled. “And I’m not smitten! I’ve been called a lot of things in my time, but smitten isn’t one of them.”
“Maybe that’s because you’ve never met the right guy,” I offered, knowing full well she was head over heels for Nathan. At the mere mention of his name, she got all jittery and excitable. Just this morning, over breakfast, Colette had said something about getting extra tutoring from Nathan, to help her get ahead in Ingram’s classes, and Genie had almost unleashed a vortex of coffee. It had risen just over the lip of her mug, a few blue sparks glittering out of her, signaling her Water abilities. I’d had to give her a firm nudge, as she had been apparently oblivious to her subconscious reaction.
Genie tucked her hands into the pouch of her hoodie. “He’s nice, right?”
“Oh, yeah, he’s a good one.”
“I know Marius and I used to flirt all the time, but that was just fun banter—a way to pass the time, you know?” Genie stared down at her sneakers as she walked along. “Seeing him never made me feel like… my head was full of bees, and my insides had gone into some kind of meltdown.”
As confessions went, that wasn’t the most romantic image I’d seen painted. “Is that how Nathan makes you feel?”
“Sometimes,” she admitted. “Other times, I find myself just staring at him and not thinking anything at all. Like my brain has emptied out, and there’s just… him. I’ve even started to like tweed and corduroy.” She covered her mouth with her hand, stifling a snort. “It’s like… there’s nothing I want to change. That’s good, isn’t it?”
I shrugged. “You’re asking the wrong love guru. But, yes, I guess you’re not supposed to want to change the person you like, so that’s probably a good sign.” We’d reached the cliff path and turned left toward the lookout spot. “What I want to know is, when are the two of you going to get past the will-they, won’t-they stage? It’s killing me, watching you both being so completely besotted, but neither of you doing anything about it.”
Genie’s cheeks deepened to a curious crimson. “He… may have tried to kiss me.”
“WHAT?!” I yelped so loudly that I frightened a pair of blackbirds, peacefully roosting in a nearby tree. “When? How? And why the heck didn’t you tell me sooner?!”
“After we were going over those books, and I made you go and sleep,” she confessed shyly, "I may have snuck back to the Repository. We were talking next to the pixies’ orb after giving them some more tonic, and then… we weren’t talking anymore. The air got all still and fizzy, if that makes any sense. He leaned in… and then Boudicca decided to snog the glass, Cynane made some embarrassing smacking sounds, and Spartacus—well, I can’t even repeat what he did. Let’s just say there was a lot of self-fondling. So, the moment kind of came and went, and I haven’t been alone with Nathan since. And I know I should’ve said something, so please don’t be mad. I was just trying to… process it, I guess.”