Persie Merlin and the Witch Hunters - Bella Forrest Page 0,105

got bit first, if ye know what I mean?” A soft chuckle fogged up the lenses, obscuring her eyes with condensation. “Mess-ups can happen, though.”

“What do you mean?” Genie entered the conversation, her eyes squinting with curiosity.

“Well, if they put this ‘ere curse on the wrong person or summat,” Ariana replied, adding a few drops of what looked like liquid gold into the beaker. “These curses are intended for non-magicals. That’s how they were designed, and this one int any different. If it accidentally got cast on a magical, say—full, half, any kind—there’d be no way of knowin’ what the effects would be. It’d go haywire, I’d guess. I definitely wouldn’t want to be anywhere near if that happened. Why’d you ask?”

I wonder… Perhaps that was exactly what had occurred, and it had made the curse on Reid contagious, turning others into Fear Deargs as well. Although, that would have meant that Reid was, in some way, magical. That didn’t seem particularly likely, considering the group he belonged to. I firmly believed, regardless of what Victoria had said, that Veritas and the witch hunters were the same. But there was no way Reid would be allowed into their gang if he was even remotely magical.

And yet it was the only logical explanation that I’d heard thus far as to why the curse was infectious. Could it be?

I put on an expression of nonchalance. “No reason. I’m just hypothesizing, since you said that the Primus Anglicus used it for revenge. I wondered if they’d ever tried to spread the net of revenge wider by killing lots of birds with one stone.”

“Nah, I see where yer mind was going with that, but there’s no reason and no precedent for it turning contagious if it was cast on a non-magical,” Ariana reiterated. “The Primus lot were powerful, but they weren’t daft. Turnin’ a whole village into monsters would only bring more enemies and alert more folks to somethin’ fishy goin’ on. They’d have kept it targeted on whoever had pissed them off and let said village believe that the person in question had been touched by the devil or summat.”

So… something went wrong. It was becoming clearer by the moment that the spread of Reid’s curse was an unfortunate side effect, and it suggested there was more to him than met the eye. Perhaps the person who had cursed him didn’t know he had any magic in him. Perhaps Reid himself didn’t even know. It wasn’t always obvious in a person, especially if they were born Mediocre. Either way, as long as Ariana could come up with a cure, we would have a way to fix all of this. We could delve deeper into Reid’s Chaos-potential later, once the spread of the contagion had been stopped.

Ariana scooped up a tablespoon of belladonna and dropped it into the freshly made mix of ingredients, which had settled into a faint orangey color. The moment the belladonna hit, the liquid began to bubble violently, unleashing a red smoke which spilled out over the edges of the beaker and wafted across the workbench. The moment I saw that smoke, I knew she’d found the cure. It looked exactly like the red mist that had enveloped the Fear Dearg.

“That’s the badger!” Ariana whooped. “Smells right, looks right. I’d say it tastes right, but ye wouldn’t want to drink it.” With a spring in her step, she opened up a drawer in her workbench and took out a small bronze ball. Deftly, she twisted a tiny circular panel in the ball to reveal a hole. Lifting up the beaker, she poured the contents into the bronze ball, then twisted the panel back into place. She shook it a few times to make sure nothing leaked before holding it forth proudly. “One anti-curse hex ball to add to yer surprise birthday present. Though ye had best give me credit for this.”

I held out my hand and she placed the ball gently on my palm. It felt almost painfully hot. “I will, I promise.” I had used enough hex balls in my time to know how this one worked. In essence, it was more of a potion ball than a hex ball. When grabbed tightly in the hand, which I took care not to do, a needle inside the ball would be triggered, injecting the liquid into the desired target.

“It didn’t say in that curse ye found, but it’s important to know, so ye should probably add it when ye write