Harley Merlin and the Cult of Eris (Harley Merlin, #6)

“It’s not a gift. I want it back,” she replied firmly.

“Then why are you giving it to me?”

She smiled in that sick way that let me know she was thinking about Wonderboy. “These are the pendants Wade and Krieger charmed, for when we need to get out of here. But he also charmed them in case we got into trouble here and we needed to warn each other. Three presses for emergency exit, one for a warning. Don’t get it mixed up. Krieger cloaked them so they’d pass under any of the cult’s scanners. All you do is press down hard on it, once, if you need to warn me, or if you spot anyone approaching the hut and need me to get my ass back ASAP. It’ll trigger my end and let me know something’s up.”

“Bit convenient.” I frowned. “How come nobody told me about this earlier?”

“Krieger wanted me to be sure I could trust you before I gave you one.”

I rolled my eyes. “He thought I’d hand it over to Katherine or something? Give her a one-way ticket to Isadora? Real nice.”

Harley sighed. “You can’t blame them for being suspicious.”

A small smile crept onto my lips. “So this means you trust me, huh? I’m touched. And not just in the head, before you make some snappy joke.”

She chuckled. “Just don’t make me regret it, okay? If you have to call me back, I’ll just pretend I was around the corner getting some fresh air. I’m sure they’ll understand, given what we’ve just been through. Just remember to press the medallion once if you need me to get back here, okay?” She smiled with Tess’s face, and I had to remind myself that this was Harley.

“I’m not an idiot, Harley.”

She grinned. “You sure about that?”

“Make sure you avoid the real Tess, or you’ll be in trouble.”

“I’m not an idiot, Finch,” she mimicked.

“And make sure you keep your questions vague if you ask anyone about your mom’s spirit or the Hexagon. Your Empathy voodoo might be good, but we don’t want any lingering memories of Tess asking a bunch of weird questions, you hear me?”

“I know what I’m doing, Finch,” she said. “It’ll just be some casual recon to see if my mom’s spirit is still where you think it is. People are bound to be talking about it, and I’m not wasting any time, if there’s even the slightest chance that you’re wrong. And don’t worry, I’ll keep a low profile.”

“Then you don’t know Tess at all. She isn’t a low-profile kind of gal.”

“Well, she is tonight.” Harley left the bathroom and disappeared through the front door.

Please don’t screw this up...

It wasn’t like me to be cautious, but I knew the stakes in this place. Asking questions and being discreet was fine, but there was a fine line to tread. I had faith in Harley’s abilities, but the danger of Katherine finding out about us was a terrifying undercurrent that I was having a hard time ignoring. It was making any risk seem huge.

I looked down at the medallion in my hand and turned it over. I’d never been a religious sort of person, so I didn’t really know what it was supposed to do. Bring comfort, I guessed. I slipped it around my neck and headed out into the main space of the hut. I really was bored out of my brain.

As I kicked back on one of the beds, my mind drifted toward Harley again. She was impressing me more and more. Not only with her skills, but with her resilience, too. It wasn’t every person who could see humans being tortured and carry on. She was made of tougher stuff than I’d thought. It kept surprising me, to the point where I was starting to look forward to what she’d do next.

Thinking about Harley immediately led to my mind turning to the Muppet Babies waiting patiently back at the SDC. I wondered how they’d be feeling right about now. They were probably going out of their minds. Wade, especially. I wished I had some way of contacting them, just to rile Wonderboy up a little. Coven drones needed to be put in their place from time to time. And he’d be worrying more than the rest of them, having left his precious Harley in my care. He didn’t think much of me, that was for sure. But then, he didn’t know that I was starting to give a damn. It’d surprised me, too. I even knew what I might say: “Your girlfriend is quite the firecracker. She’s definitely a Shipton. By morning, we either die or join the cult. Stand by for details once it’s safe to talk. Sleep tight, buttercup. F.” Wade would’ve loved that. Shame I didn’t have a way to send him the message. He’d just have to keep on worrying.

I had to distract myself. Reaching over to my bedside table, I opened the top drawer and pulled out a book. It was a history of Eris. I almost detached my retinas looking at the cover. This Eris thing was getting way too literal.

As I flicked to the first page, figuring I had a little time to see what tale Katherine wanted her cultists to believe, my eyes flitted up to the door. Harley was right about us running out of time. And who was I to stop her from running some recon? She was right, I might have been wrong about the location of Hester’s spirit.

And yet, I couldn’t shake my nerves.

I toyed with the idea of shifting into someone else and trying to follow Harley out into the compound, just to see if she’d listened to my warning about the Hexagon. Something held me back. The risk of both of us getting caught, mostly. On her own, she was less exposed. She knew how to hide. I just hoped that’d be enough to keep her out of trouble here.

Steeling my nerves, I turned back to the book. I only got through a few sentences before what I wanted to say to Wade came back to bite me in the ass. The prospect of Harley possibly dying here would be driving him nuts, even without a message.

But the truth of the matter was, she really could die tomorrow morning. And, I realized with a sinking feeling, the idea wasn’t sitting too well with me, either.





Twenty-Two





Harley





Disguised as Thessaly Crux, complete with bandaged hands, and praying my Shifter ability didn’t let me down, I snuck along the network of walkways in search of people.

I wanted to see what these cultists really did in their spare time, and I wanted to put together a lay of the land so I had my bearings. Finch’s warning about the Hexagon had made me want to go there even more, as that was likely where Katherine’s office was. That had to be the reason he’d been so intent on me avoiding the place. If I was careful and kept to the shadows, I felt I could pull it off.

Besides, all I wanted to do was get an idea of the security there and, most importantly, try to find out what people knew about this upcoming ritual, and whether they had any idea where my mom’s spirit was being kept. As I’d told Finch, I couldn’t risk him being wrong about that.

Still, I decided to take a detour first to check out the nightlife in the cult and see what these people did with their evenings. It was more to decipher how much security I might come across than anything else. It didn’t take long before I found myself back in front of the beehive that Tess had shown us on her whistle-stop tour of the cult, my eyes drawn like a moth to the glowing lights coming from within.