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

“Well… where is it?”

I peered at the shelves on the far wall, where an empty glass panel sat. There was no water behind this one, only a gilded room. “Her spirit used to be in that cage there.” I pointed at the panel. “But… not anymore. Katherine might have moved her to one of these charmed boxes for easy transport.” The study was littered with them. Big wooden boxes of every size. I moved to the first one and flipped the lid but found nothing but sheets upon sheets of papers and files.

Together, we searched through every single box in the place. And when that turned up nothing, we started on the shelves, and under the massive oak-and-gold desk, and in every nook and cranny we could find. After twenty minutes of searching, I realized it was hopeless.

“It’s not here!” I snapped.

Harley glanced at me. “We can go back to the hut and rethink this. Run through all the places you know about and brainstorm where else she might have put Hester’s spirit. Somewhere closer to the spot she might need to do the ritual, maybe?”

“I hate this place.” I kicked a box for good measure.

“Do you have any other ideas?”

My mind was racing. “I’ve got one other idea, yeah. The next logical place she’d hide Hester’s spirit would be—”

Both of our heads snapped toward the study door as it opened. Nobody should have been able to get in—except Katherine.

Tess walked through, her expression equally surprised before it transformed into one of suspicion.

“And what the hell are you two doing here?” she asked, her tone cold. I almost said, “Katherine gave the password to you?” but I reeled it in real quick. It looked like I’d been well and truly replaced, not that I cared. Right now, I was just bothered that Tess had caught us.

This wasn’t going to end well, and I really didn’t want to have to kill Katherine’s most valued cultist. All the lies in the world wouldn’t be enough to cover that up.





Twenty-Eight





Harley





Finch and I exchanged a look as Tess waited for our answer. There was nothing we could do—we’d have to play dumb. After all, we were the newbies here. Maybe we’d be able to convince her that we’d just stumbled upon this place—this hidden, high-security, critically important place. Yeah, right.

“We were trying to get a feel for the island layout,” I said, finding my voice. “You showed us this place before, and we wanted to take a closer look at the human labs. Only, we made a wrong turn and ended up inside the Hexagon instead of on top of it.” My heart was pounding so hard I was sure she could hear it from the other side of the room.

Finch nodded. “And then we saw Katherine heading along one of these hallways, and we wanted to talk to her about our place in the cult. You know, like, what are we going to do, when do we start fieldwork, that sort of stuff. But we lost her, so we had to ask for directions. Anyway, someone said this was her office, so we figured we’d wait, instead of wandering through the Hexagon and getting lost again. You know, seeing as she isn’t here.”

Tess eyed us both, saying nothing. Judging from the waves of suspicion coming off of her, she didn’t buy our story, and I had no idea how this would turn out. It was all I could do not to sprint past her and make a run for freedom. Not that trying to escape would do us any favors, either. She continued to examine us, making me wonder what the heck she was thinking. We’d turned into rambling idiots, instead of the poised, composed siblings we’d been during the trials.

I braced myself for a fight. I’d out myself with the full extent of my abilities if it meant we got out of here alive.

“Well, you shouldn’t be here. This door has a password—there’s no way you should be in here,” Tess said, at last.

Finch shrugged. “The door was open, so we figured it was okay to come in and wait.”

“And you think that means you can just go waltzing into wherever you like?” Tess barked. “If Katherine finds you in her office, she’ll kill you on sight. Nobody comes in here without her say-so, not even to wait. Do you understand?”

I nodded effusively. “Absolutely. Won’t happen again. We didn’t know.”

“Yeah, major crossed wires, that’s all.” Finch cleared his throat.

Tess pursed her lips. “Follow me.”

“Huh?” I didn’t like the sound of that.

“You want to see Katherine, right? That’s literally what you just said.”

“Uh… yeah, of course,” I replied, flashing a look at Finch.

“Right, well, follow me, then.” Tess walked toward the door and opened it, gesturing for us to go on ahead. We hurried past her without hesitating, trying really hard to downplay the comedy duo act we seemed to have taken on. She closed the office door behind her and set off down the hallway, with us in hot pursuit.

Looks like we’re seeing our favorite person again today. My stomach sank. Once was bad enough. Plus, I didn’t actually have a good reason to want to speak with Katherine. I’d have to come up with one pretty quick, or Tess would never let us get away with what had just happened. It’d just shine a big, glaring here-are-your-spies spotlight on the fact that we’d been snooping in Katherine’s private study.

We headed through more of the same clinical, concrete-and-steel corridors, until we reached a massive metal blast door that stood at the far end of one of the branching hallways. It looked ominous, and if Katherine was lurking behind it, then it would only serve to prove my point.

“What’s this place?” I asked, continuing to play dumb. I knew exactly what it was. Finch had already told me.

“It’s the war room,” Tess replied, as if it was the most normal thing in the world. I envisioned a massive circular table inside, all lit up in low science-fiction lighting, with world leaders sitting around in sharp suits, debating what to do about the latest nuclear missile crisis. Note to self: Ask Wade to change up our movie choices. Seriously. Next time I saw him, I was picking the film.

Tess stood in front of a retinal scanner on the right-hand side of the blast door. A moment later, it slid open with a screech of metal on metal, a red light spinning wildly over the top of it. It definitely had a comforting end-of-the-world vibe to it, so at least I could give Katherine points for consistency.

Inside, the setup wasn’t all that far from what I’d imagined. There was indeed a massive round table, with garish strip-lights framing everyone in a cold, blue glow, and a cube of screens in the center. Embedded into the table itself were touchscreen panels, though nobody seemed to be using them right now. In fact, the cube of screens was blank. No war today, huh?

Ten magicals sat in the sleek leather chairs nestled around Queen Katherine’s Round Table. Her proverbial knights, hanging on her every evil word. I spotted Naima and Kenneth immediately, but I didn’t recognize the other eight. There was one skinny woman with a long, silver braid down her back. Next to her sat a woman with short, sea-green hair and black eyes that didn’t seem real. In fact, out of the ten magicals, there were only two guys. One was Kenneth, and one was a handsome Korean guy, who shot me a smile as I stood there. I quickly looked away, staring at the ground. Judging by the way they were all nodding and agreeing, they’d come to the end of whatever they were discussing.

“You all know what is required of you, and you know what will happen if you fail,” Katherine said. “You are dismissed. Don’t disappoint me. You’ve got no idea how hard it is to get bloodstains out of these dresses.”