Persie Merlin and the Witch Hunters - Bella Forrest Page 0,95
these weren’t lies. I had notes on the two disappearances, but both instances had been declared the actions of a rogue magical called Erin O’Dowd, who was now serving a life-term in Purgatory. She certainly wasn’t an innocent wallflower who had been wrongly sentenced; she had been a serial killer around the same time, but she’d only targeted non-magicals up to then. And she’d been into more creative torture spells as her MO—hexes that burnt people up from the inside out or turned their lungs into metal while she watched them suffocate. It didn’t fit with what had been done to the missing magicals, nor did the part where they’d been left alive. She’d confessed to killing those non-magicals when the Irish security magicals had caught up to her and she’d gone to trial, but she had always maintained that she had nothing to do with the tortured magicals.
“Again, you leave me at a loss as to your intent, Nathan.” Victoria drummed her fingertips on the desk, her patience apparently wearing thin.
I swung in with the heavy blow I’d been waiting to use. “I find it hard to believe that you’d be unaware of these events, or the existence of potential witch hunters in Ireland, when you are always on top of possible security breaches and dangers to the Institute.” I paused for breath. “And I would rather you keep me informed of what you know regarding witch hunters and these Veritas individuals so that I don’t have to waste time sifting through endless research. I’m not a trainee, Ms. Jules. I am a scholar’s assistant, and I want to use my talents to help you. I can’t do that if I’m not up to speed.”
Victoria sighed as if she wanted to hoof me out of her office. “Were you a scholar with the right clearance, I would have no qualms about informing you of the Institute’s wider knowledge. Unfortunately, you are not.” She offered me a tight smile. “I have great faith in you, Nathan, but there is also the matter of your emotions being somewhat compromised. That is not an insult, nor do I frown upon one’s personal affections. You and Genie Vertis are of similar age, and you are not a scholar so there is no issue with fraternization, but I could not risk top-level information accidentally finding its way to students, no matter how powerful they might be.” She gave me a knowing look. “In that sense, I have no choice but to put you in the same bracket of clearance as the trainees.”
Damn. I stared in disbelief, my mask of confidence slipping slightly. How could she have known about Genie and me when I hardly knew what was going on, myself? There were no cameras in the Repository due to certain monsters—AKA, the pixies—using high-pitched soundwaves to mess with the feeds, so she couldn’t have seen us in there. Not that there was anything to see.
She laughed softly. “I confess, I may be wrong in this matter. However, it is not normal procedure for someone like yourself to spend hours at the bedside of an unwell student unless there is a deeper connection. If there is, I wish you well—Genie Vertis is a delight and a rare asset to the Institute.” Her expression hardened abruptly, throwing me for a loop. “But the point stands. I cannot tell you what you want to know, in case I am correct about a blossoming romance.”
“You aren’t,” I said, a beat too quickly. “Even if you were, you should know me better than that. I would never cross those lines. I only want to do what I can to help. If the Institute is in imminent danger, then I want to be there on the front line, protecting it.”
She nodded, but I knew she didn’t believe me. “I know you mean well, Nathan, but this is a matter for the Institute’s executive branch to handle, not you. If it were a monster-based matter, then I would, of course, involve you. As it is not, there are people who are better equipped for this task, and I must put my trust in them to find the answers.”
Then it’s lucky for me that I don’t give up so easily. I held my tongue and tried to look just morose enough to fool her. The mile-a-minute rambling had been my first line of attack. The archers in this battle, if you will. Genie and Persie were, at this very moment, gearing up