Persie Merlin and the Witch Hunters - Bella Forrest Page 0,93

Not exactly. But I did trust Persie and Genie’s judgment. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have been doing this on their behalf.

Coming to a halt outside Victoria’s office, I knocked politely. As I waited, I took a steadying breath and straightened the lapels of my tweed jacket, going through the questions I wanted to ask and the fabricated backstory as to why I wanted answers to them. I wasn’t much of a warrior or an antagonist, but I did have one card up my sleeve—I was a very gifted liar. While that wasn’t necessarily something to be proud of, I knew it would give me the advantage of not looking as though I had “guilty” branded across my forehead.

A moment later, Victoria replied. “Come in.”

I did so, finding her at her desk, browsing through a pile of folders that put my own stack of research to shame. She looked at me over the rims of an elegant, expensive-looking pair of cat-eye glasses that I rarely saw her wear. No doubt implementing the prison mentality that any visible sign of weakness made you look… well, weak. Personally, I liked to think a smart pair of specs made you look formidable, at least in terms of intellect.

She removed the glasses and folded them back into their case, which she laid next to her phone. I’d texted her a bit ago, asking if I might have a private meeting with her, with regards to “evidence” I’d found in my books about what had occurred in the fishery. Now that the three of us—Genie, Persie, and I—had made a decision to keep the larger truth from Institute hands, lest it cause another and far nastier code red, I knew I had to be craftier than I’d ever been before. I didn’t like telling untruths, or even half-truths, but I had to hope I was doing it for the right reasons. I did not want blood on my hands, not when I would likely spend a lifetime trying to scrub away the blood of my father’s legacy. This was a small way of showing that I was not like him. He would certainly have told the authorities, vouched for these infected individuals being more monster than human, and watched mayhem ensue, bathing in the havoc and devastation that he’d caused.

“What did you want to discuss?” Victoria prompted.

Here goes nothing… I was about to relay the info dump of my life, in the hopes of eking intel out of Victoria. My forte, in some ways, but it did not usually come with such high stakes. If I failed in my endeavor, we would have nothing. Still, I felt somewhat comforted by the knowledge that I had Genie standing by to provide a diversion if this didn’t go to plan. I had asked her to give me twenty minutes. If I didn’t text her within that time to say that it had been a success, then she would take up the reins and give me a window to put my back-up plan into play.

I shook myself out of my reverie and said, “I came across some passages in the journal of Ronan Lomax from 1972. In it, he spoke about being in Merrion Square in Dublin on the day that crowds burned down the British Embassy after Bloody Sunday—you know, during The Troubles.” I knew Victoria, being of Irish heritage herself, would be no stranger to this dark part of our history. “He mentions seeing a group of men acting very strangely on the sidelines of the incident—and they must have been acting very strangely to be noticeable at such a time of heightened anger. He goes on to say that, shortly after, he saw these same men snatch a young woman from the crowd. He gave chase, only for them to use a device of some kind which vanished the entire group into thin air. The woman turned up three weeks later on Grafton Street, beaten and bloody, with no memory of who she was or where she’d been. Ronan reported that the Dublin Coven recognized her as a magical and took her to their Infirmary where she died, a few days later, from her injuries.”

Victoria leaned back in her chair. “That was almost seventy years ago, Nathan.”

“I know, but hear me out.” I sat in the chair opposite, pulling out the journal in question and turning to the yellowed page. The idea had come to me while I’d been talking with Genie and Persie. It