Home > Harley Merlin and the Stolen Magicals (Harley Merlin #3)(11)

Harley Merlin and the Stolen Magicals (Harley Merlin #3)(11)
Author: Bella Forrest

I pushed open the giant doors and walked inside, my boots echoing on the marble floor. The guards checked my identity, before allowing me further, on the pretense of me having a meeting with Tobe. All around me, the glass boxes glinted, and wisps of shadows twisted within the misty depths. Here rested the savage product of countless magicals’ Purges—the Chaos creatures thrown up and cast out, manifested from the toxic buildup of too much powerful magic.

I glanced at the charmed padlocks, feeling out the raw energy that held these beings in place. Such a small lock, yet capable of containing enormous monsters; the juxtaposition never failed to amuse me.

After the gargoyle incident, where Finch had freed a whole bunch of the winged beasts and almost exposed the coven in the process, more people had kept their distance from the Bestiary. Not me. There were very few things in this world that scared me—Katherine Shipton being one of the rare exceptions. Nobody deserved to have that much power and influence over others. I wanted to know how she’d ended up like that, what had driven her toward megalomania. Santeria culture centered around the idea of good spirits and bad, but nobody started off their life evil. Even those who were trailed by bad spirits weren’t bad by nature. Babies and children were inherently pure.

What happened to you, Katherine, to make you such a class-A psychopath?

The idea of evil spirits prompted Raffe to pop back into my thoughts. Although he’d been born with the djinn already inside him, he hadn’t been born evil either. The djinn was part of him, yes, but it didn’t control him. Good continued to triumph over the dark. Katherine Shipton didn’t have a djinn to excuse her insane behavior. Not that we knew of, anyway.

“Santana, what a pleasant surprise.” Tobe’s soft growl snapped me right out of my heavy thoughts. “I thought you would still be in the banquet hall, celebrating Harley’s official welcome into the coven.”

I smiled as the Beast Master approached, his talons clicking on the floor. “I needed a bit of peace and quiet, away from everyone else. Insomnia is kicking my ass, and I didn’t want to end up snapping at anyone. Don’t suppose you’ve got a creature in here with some kind of sleepy breath, do you?”

Tobe chuckled, a warmth glimmering in his amber eyes. “Plenty of nightmare demons—Mara, Ogun Oru, a few Succubi, a Kanashibari or two, and a Boo-Hag tucked away at the back. All associated with sleep paralysis and inducing nightmares. Some of them will sap your energy, too, given half the chance.”

“This massive museum of monsters and not a single one that can knock me out at night?”

“There is one, but she is kept in a soundproof box in the rare section of the Bestiary,” he admitted. “She’s an Ibong Adarna. If I were to allow her to sing, she would send everyone in close proximity into a deep slumber.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad.”

He grinned, baring his sharp fangs. “It wouldn’t be, if she didn’t also turn her victims to stone, once she has reached the end of her seventh song. A beautiful creature, make no mistake. But, as with many beautiful things, she carries hidden dangers. A brutal truth, learned the hard way during my long life on this earth.”

“Is that how you got to be so wise, mi bestia gentil?”

“I’ve certainly had the gift of time, in learning many lessons. For, in the end, that is all life is—a series of teachings that we may choose to accept or reject,” he replied. “Mistakes and failures are guaranteed, but it is how we choose to educate ourselves after we stumble that molds who we become.”

I chuckled. “I need to print that on a bumper sticker.”

“Selma often spoke of life’s errors as lessons. She would tell me of her own missteps so that I might use them as cautionary tales. She was, by far, my greatest teacher,” he said sadly. Selma was a long-dead, ancient witch who had manifested Tobe during a Purge. He was the only good, intelligent beast to ever come out of one.

“Do you miss her?”

“I do. I have never met her equal, in all my 1,058 years—a witch so sweet and kind.”

“Not even Imogene Whitehall?”

A purr rumbled in Tobe’s throat. “She is, perhaps, the closest in spirit to my beloved Selma, though none can replace her.”

“You’re good at this, you know,” I said, nudging him in his feathered arm.

“At what, Santana?”

“Putting people at ease when they need it most.” I’d often come here to seek his counsel and his comforting presence. He’d been my saving grace in this place, and I wasn’t sure what I’d do without him.

“I do what I can.”

I perched on the edge of a glass box, a small shrew-like creature appearing at the bottom, its beady eyes staring up at me in disapproval. “How have you been feeling after everything that happened with Finch and those gargoyles? It can’t have been nice, being accused like that.”

“Everything was resolved in the end, and I’m not one to bear a grudge,” Tobe replied. “The Bestiary is secure once more, and that’s all I may ask for.”

“What about all the LA snobs striding about the place like they own it? I bet they’re watching you like hawks, thanks to Leonidas.” I glanced around in case any of them were listening. A few guards wandered down the corridors farther back, but there weren’t any here.

“I can understand their concern, so I pay it no mind. We must all be on high alert, now that we know Katherine has many contingencies in place. Finch and the Ryder twins were just the beginning of her endeavors, and we must be ready for anything she may throw at us. The more people we have here, protecting the coven, the better. Having officers here puts my mind at ease that the Bestiary will not fall, under any circumstances.”

Everything about Tobe perpetuated a feeling of calm. He never raised his voice, his words always spoken in a soft, lyrical tone. He was a cool cat, and one of my favorite people. Plus, he was way cheaper than a therapist.

“They’ve given us two LA Coven agents to help find the kids,” I said.

“I sense you are none too pleased by this development?”

“They’re just so—”

“Exceedingly dull?” Tobe chuckled in the back of his throat.

“Neither of them seems to have any real personality. Honestly, it’s scary. It’s like they’ve sent us two super-advanced bots instead of actual people.”

He nodded slowly. “The LA Coven is different. They view their recruits as exactly that—new soldiers, destined for a role in a formidable army. They are less keen on a soft approach, though I much prefer pacifism to outright conflict.”

“Me, too.”

“On the subject of potential conflict, how are you feeling about the upcoming Family Gathering?” His feathers ruffled in amusement.

I groaned, startling the shrew-like creature below me. “I’m trying not to think about it.”

The Family Gathering was an annual event that took place at every coven—a traditional dinner party, complete with fancy clothes, fancy food, and fancy music, where magicals and their parents gathered over dinner and drinks. It was supposed to encourage socializing and a catch-up on what coven members had been accomplishing, but it inevitably ended up feeling like a chore. In some cases, it could also lead to unpleasant airings of dirty laundry, after one or ten too many drinks.

Then again, I’d managed to get out of it for the past four years. The Gathering happened on the same evening, in every coven across the world, with the expectation that siblings would all end up training at the same one. However, that hadn’t been the case for my four brothers and me. So, my parents had done what any good parents would do and visited one of us a year. This year, it was my turn. And, to be honest, I was crapping my pants about it.

“You don’t get along with your family?” Tobe asked.

“It’s not that,” I replied. “I love them, I really do, but whenever I speak to them… they’re disappointed in me. They want me to do more with my life. They think I’m wasting my potential here in San Diego. It’s not the Catemaco way.”

Tobe grumbled. “They want you to return home?”

“Yeah, pretty much. They expect me to go back to Mexico sometime this year so I can end up some stuck-up, elite magical’s wife and take over the Catemaco Coven with him at my side, as co-director. A tradition I’m not exactly thrilled by, as you can tell.” I exhaled wearily. Catemaco was a small but vastly important hub of the magical world. As it was the birthplace and center of the Santeria practice, my family had run a tight ship in the town for hundreds of years, but my rich lineage came with certain ridiculous expectations.

“Don’t you miss Mexico?”

I shrugged. “Sometimes, but I’m happy where I am. And I’d rather pluck out my own eyeballs than head back just to get married to some tipo I don’t know. They don’t understand that. They can’t grasp how I can love my culture and my heritage, without wanting to live in Mexico. The thing is, I feel like I can do more good here, in the States, instead of a tiny town with no opportunities whatsoever.”

“I can understand that,” Tobe assured me.

“I’m glad someone can.”

Across the room, Quetzi slithered into view, his gold-and-green scales shining in the low light. The feathered serpent coiled up in the right-hand corner, his white-and-fuchsia plumage shuddering like the tail of a rattlesnake, as his intense eyes watched me from afar. I’d always been in awe of him, given his link to my people. As a fixed feature of Aztec culture, he was part of my own Mexican history, once worshiped as a god for his extraordinary abilities. Once upon a time, at the height of his deification, he’d worn the ehecailacocozcatl around his thick neck—the breastplate of the wind—as a means to better harness the elemental forces under his control. Many of my people still wore versions of it, especially those gifted with Air abilities, though Quetzi no longer had one around his neck.

   
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